wearing and design ease.

Hi Veronica,

Wearing ease, is the amount of easing added to a pattern to allow for comfortable movement based on a persons particular needs or preference. This is what you add yourself to an existing pattern.

Design ease, is incorporated in ready made patterns, to give a specific look to a garment. When you draft your own block pattern you can add design ease for the style that you create.

The block pattern that we made is close fitted and therefore does not have any wearing ease. You can add your own wearing ease to it.

This can be about 1 to 2 cm for the waistline and from 2 to 5 cm for the upper and lower hiplines.

You can sew a quick skirt using muslin fabric to test your wearing ease.

Hope this helps,

Thanks,

Nehzat

Hi Nehzat,

Yes that helps clarify wearing and design ease, thank-you.

I am still unsure of when to add the ease that is desired to my pattern that I made from my block. If I wanted to add 2cm of ease to the upper and lower hip would I divide 2cm by 4 and add 1/2cm to the hiplines and redraw the side? or just add to the seam allowance? (yikes, I'm sooo confused, sorry)

I wanted to tell you that I have struggled so much with making darts look perfect that it became an obsession. I tried every idea out there that I could find and still the darts that I made looked bad to me. So then I watched your video, very closely, on how you sewed (and ironed) your darts and wow! my darts on the skirt I made look so beautiful I could cry! It's what "they" say a dart should look like (almost invisible and dimple free). I cant stop looking at the perfect darts that I can now make and no longer fear! and while I am gushing I might as well tell you that the skirt block you taught to draft fit my dressform so well it was shocking! I didn't do the lined with the slit version yet. I did a simlpe straight skirt first. When I feel more experienced at drafting I will definitively go back and make the lined version with the slit.

Thanks for your help with my passion of dressmaking and design.

veronica

Hi Veronica,

It is better to add the ease to the seam line first before adding the seam allowance. You are right, you should add a quarter of the ease to the front pattern and a quarter to the back pattern. This is because we lay the front and back patterns on two layers of fabric.

So in your case, since you want to ease by 2 cm, you will add 1/2 cm to the upper and lower hiplines. You would do the same for the waistline if you want to. Then redraw the side seam lines and then the seam allowances.

I am really happy to see that you were able to sew the darts the way you always wanted and how the skirt fitted your dress form well. Let me know how the skirt you are sewing for yourself turns out. I'm happy to help you further any time.

Thanks,

Nehzat

Thanks, Nehzat for the help, I appreciate it.

veronica

hello im new as well and thank you for your site it is very well done, i am a long time sewer for 30 years, and as you all now there is allways a place to learn more.

im intrested in learning more about pockets all kinds of differnt pockets welt, and all the others

on pants skirts shirts.

and another one would be labels.

thank you and looking forword to more lerning.