 Hi you guys, welcome to our very next Sew Along. This one is for McCall's 8-1-2-1, this super cute moto biker jacket. There are a lot of really unique and interesting details with this one that I think you guys are going to have a lot of fun with. This video is sort of like the preliminary sort of introduction video to the Sew Along. I call it Episode Zero. We go through a ton of information in this video. It is very, very, very much a part of the Sew Along. It just doesn't happen within the week of the Sew Along because it requires or talks about so much prep work. So in this video, we're going to be talking about the pattern. I also have some plus size pattern options. For what it's worth, some of them are a little bit simpler as well. So if you're sort of new to sewing and this is very intimidating to you, check out those some of the steps. Obviously, you won't have to pay attention to, but some of them will really help you get through whatever moto jacket you are sewing. Next, we're going to talk about fabric. We're going to talk about how I came across my fabric, how I shop for fabrics, how I get inspiration, how I looked ready to wear for help in knowing kind of some fabrics to use, obviously, but also things that are a little bit interesting, you know, not your sort of obvious choice. And those are the differences between making something that everyone's like, oh, you made that. That's cool. Or where did you get that jacket? And you tell them you made it and they're like, no way. That is the coolest, coolest thing. We are going to be doing the fast fit worksheet together. We are going to be using my measurements, but going through how to use the fast fit worksheet when it applies to this pattern. We're also going to tissue fit the pattern on my ditto form. So my ditto form is a exact copy of my body. I went in, I got scanned, like a 3D scanner, like you stand on this like turntable thing and you spin around and it 3D scans your whole body and then spits out a dress form. I don't really know what happens between those two things, but a dress form shows up and it looks just like your body, which makes it so much simpler to tissue fit on yourself, because you can do it on an inanimate object and you're not trying to like, you know, do all those weird contortion moves. If you don't have a ditto form, call a friend, call a family member, get someone to come over and help you tissue fit this thing. I have alternatives for if you don't have either one of those things. So don't worry. It's a long video. I've divided this all up into chapters. So we're going to kick things off with the pattern information, then fabric, then fast fit workbook or worksheet, then tissue fitting. Okay. And after all that is over said and done, I recommend to digest it in bits and pieces. After all of that is done, we'll meet back here again and we'll talk about next steps. All right. So let's talk about plus size pattern options. I have three of them. The first one is the Seamwork chip pattern. And if you're not familiar, Seamwork is like a membership program. Seamwork is like a membership program. You pay, I think six or eight dollars a month and you get two patterns with your membership every single month, plus a lot of resources about sewing those garments and then just other kind of like industry stuff. And then you also get access to their back catalog. You can also just buy chip like one off without getting a membership for 16 bucks. The sizing of Seamwork, as you can see here, the Mrs. Patterns are drafted for a C cup and Kirby Patterns are drafted for a double D. Both are drafted for a height of five eight. Okay. So you petite girls, if you are Kirby and petite, you're definitely going to have to make some length adjustments in the sleeve and probably through the waist. But to see the extent of their size range, this is including Mrs. and the Kirby. The bust goes from a 33 up to a 54. And then the waist, because the hip on this pattern doesn't really matter no matter which version you're making because it doesn't extend down to the full hip. It really stops at the high hip. So we're only going to be looking at bust and waist, but the waist goes from 25 to 47. The finished garment measurements in the bust are 36 and five eights. So three and five eights inches of ease there up to 57. And I think that says one eighth. So we'll just call it 57 inches. The waist goes up to 56 and seven eighths finished. Then we have our biceps here, which will also be checking on the fast fit workbook. And then we have the length, which you can you can double check as well, especially if you're someone who's not five eight. I think it would be helpful to check these because you can see starting at a size 10, it's pretty much, there's only a quarter inch difference between a size 10 and a size 26 lengthwise. But design wise, this one is very similar to our McCall's pattern. So there are a few things that are different about the chip pattern than the McCall's pattern. Basically, the chip pattern is a much more simplified version. Because as you can see, we're missing the little sleeve flanges. There's no bottom band. There's no zippers on the sleeves. In fact, the sleeves are just a one piece sleeve. And there's nothing fancy going on with the back either. The next one I found is the Ellie and Mac modern moto jacket pattern. And these go up from or these start at an extra extra small and go up to a five XL. And this is their size chart. It doesn't get any bigger than this. Sorry about that. But the curvy fit patterns are based on the average height of five five, but the extra extra small bust starts at a 33. And the five X bust goes up to 60 inches. And then the waist starts at 25 inches and goes up to 56 inches. There are also no line drawings for this pattern. So we kind of just have to, you know, use our imaginations a little bit. But you can see here, we've got the asymmetrical zip, we've got this, we've actually added a zip welts. There is also the option for this bottom band that has like a little bit of a buckle. So that's a fun detail. So we've got fish eye darts instead of princess seams, lovely detail for that extra shaping. And you do have the two piece sleeve. So when we get to the instruction on adding the zipper, you could do that on this pattern if you wanted to SBCC pattern, the Moto sheet jacket. Now this pattern, the all of their patterns are drafted for petite. Here is their finished garment or their measurement chart. And it looks like the bust starts at 33 inches, goes up to 55 inches, the waist starts at 28 and goes up to 50 and a half. And here are our line drawings. So this one is definitely a little bit, I don't know, I want to say like a little bit, well, in some ways it's simpler, like we don't have the collar. And in other ways, it's a little more frilly because we have this gathered peplum instead. But we still have the princess seams, we still have the two piece sleeve. So you could add the zipper if you wanted. So this one is really cute too. You know me, I love a peplum or a ruffle or, you know, anything like that. So that's what this one looks like finished. So those are three options that I found for you plus size girls. Now I am at the very, very top of McCall's Mrs. Chart. So when I do my fast fit workbook, I'm going to be showing you guys, if you are an inch or so, maybe inch to three inches, larger than the McCall's size chart, I'm going to show you how we can kind of fudge that a little bit, make some small alterations that will get this jacket to fit for us, mostly because there are so many vertical seams on this pattern. You have your princess seams, you have your side seams, and then you have the princess seams in the back as well. For example, if you added a quarter of an inch to each of these seams, it would be two, four, six, eight, 10, 12. That's 12 different seam allowances. 12 times a quarter inch is three inches. You can easily add three inches just by adding the littlest sliver to each one of those. Also, same difference would be taking a half inch seam allowance instead of a five-eighth seam allowance. So because there are so many vertical seams, it's really easy to kind of like fudge the sizing a little bit. I hope you guys like the options that I found. If you know of any other plus size moto jackets, leave them in the comment section below and we'll put together a little list that you can check out outside of these. So anytime I am looking for inspiration for fabrics, this is what I do. I head to Pinterest and I put in the garment that I'm making and then something specific about that garment. So for us, it's going to be a moto jacket. If it were a jumpsuit, I would do knit jumpsuit possibly. If it were a dress and it had a flutter sleeve, I would do like romantic dress or flutter dress so that you can get a somewhat specific. It's not going to be too broad of an idea of the garment that you want to make. In this sort of broader category, you are going to be finding all of the options that are like the most obvious. These are the ones that are the most popular. The most stores have them. The most bloggers have made outfits from them and for our jacket, we're seeing a lot of leather. We're seeing some suede. There's probably going to be maybe some denim in here somewhere, but a lot of the same options in different color ways and obviously lots of different style options as well for how to wear this once you get it sewn. That might help you pick a fabric as well. Then you'll start getting into some options that are a little bit different. You can see this one is a double knit. We might now, I just want to scroll down a little bit more to see if there's anything else that jumps out, sherpa. You just get a few of those additional off-beat options. Then you go back to your search and you put in sherpa moto jacket. Now you're seeing some that have leather and also like a sherpa underlining. You're going to see some here that are 100% sherpa on the outside into a moto jacket. You can scroll through those and get some inspiration there and see, do I want a full sherpa moto jacket? Super, super cute. Now we can go and check out the one for double knit. So we have the one that we originally saw and then now you're going to see a lot of knit moto jackets as well. Now we've got this one that is a pebble quilted knit. So if that jumps out at you, something you really like, you can check that out. As in this raw, he has one in a printed knit. You can just go through all of this and see if any of these jump out at you. If you see a fabric that seems interesting, like French terry for example, then go back to your search bar and type in that type of fabric. Then once you have that fabric, you're going to hit up the stores and try and find that fabric. For me, I was able to go to Joanne and on in Pinterest, where is it? I think I landed on tweed somehow. And so then that gave me the idea of like something with kind of like a plaid vibe to it. I love the sort of Chanel take on all of this. And so whenever I went to Joanne, I was looking for something that had kind of like a plaid vibe to it. I thought that that would be really fun to kind of juxtapose the rocker hard edgy design of a moto jacket, plus like the prepiness of a tweed jacket, something like this. So this things like this were my inspiration for my moto jacket so that when I went to Joanne, I could type in plaid and do plaid fabric. Now their search terms are not the best, their search functions not great. You really have to kind of dig deep in order to find what you're looking for. And then you'll find things like this, the platitude brush cotton fabric in gray and black. That looks like sort of what I was seeing in my Pinterest inspiration, sort of that small plaid print. Right. And you've got all of these as well. And you're going to want to make sure that the weight of your fabric is also appropriate. So you can start to go through some of these and do like brush cotton flannel shirtings and make sure that you're going to get something that's heavy enough outside of Joanne. When you're when you're shopping like a independent retailer, a lot of times they will have their fabrics sorted by garment type. So you can see here we can go to jackets since this is like a lighter weight jacket. And you know, especially if you trust them like I do with stylemaker fabrics that they know how to make clothes. They know what fabrics are ideal for certain clothes for certain garment types. You know that pretty much anything you find in here is going to make a really, really cool moto jacket that will hold up with the structure that you need. So you can go through all of this and just find something that you need. Here's our Sherpa that we saw before as well. And then I can just kind of start looking for that plaid that I wanted or I don't know, maybe now all of a sudden I'm like, no, I want a moto that's like pink sweatshirt. You know, this might broaden your horizon, broaden your range of what you were thinking as well. I just want to encourage you guys to yes, we can make sort of the quintessential look how great this coding would be, right? Right on, right on for what my inspiration was. But moto jackets do not have to be leather and suede, right? Your tiered dress does not have to be cotton. You know, these, these ideals of what these garments should be made from don't necessarily have to be. And that's how you make things that people stop and go, whoa, where did you get that? And then you get to tell them, I made it. So the fabric that I did decide on is this really cool brushed cotton plaid from Joanne. It is green and navy. It's a brushed cotton. So it's not super heavy weight. It is cotton. So it's breathable. Think of like a cross between like a flannel and then just like, you know, regular cotton. So it's going to be soft. It's going to be cute. It's going to be fun and different and unique. And then I have the lining. Nothing special, but it does not have rayon. It's 100% polyester, which obviously makes the jacket a little less breathable. But it's easier to sew. And sometimes you just pick your battles. And this is one that I didn't want to fight. So I'm not. All right, we are going to be figuring out what size to cut for McCalls 8121. Feel free to follow along with me. If you do not have the Fast Fit Worksheet yet, you can grab it from my website, insidethehem.com. If you like this cool bound version, you can grab these on Amazon, but just know it's going to take, you know, a couple of days to arrive. This jacket does not extend to her low hip, which is somewhere down here. It actually ends at her high hip. Okay. So we're not going to be factoring in hip measurements at all. We're going to be doing bust, our full bust, and our waist. And that is it. All right. First things first, get our measurements. I know mine by heart because I just did this yesterday. All right. Body chart size. So you're going to find that here on the envelope, on the little flap. We are going to be coming down and looking at our bust. So we follow the bust line across. I'm trying to get as close to my bust measurement, which is a 40. So that's going to come to an 18. Size 18 equals 40 inches. Okay. And then the waist, I am a 38, which is in between a 22 and a 24. Anytime you're in between the size like this, you always size down. So I'm going to do a 22. And that equals 37 inches. So now we're going to go to finish garment measurements, which are printed on our pattern pieces. This is the bust measurement for 16 1820. And then there's a separate pattern piece for 22 and 24. So obviously I'm immediately concerned because they have split this into two different pattern pieces. If we lay them on top of each other. All right. So I've got the grain line matched up and I've got the bust line matched up. And you can see it's actually not that bad. I really don't know why they did it. In that case, I would put the smaller one on top of the big one because the smaller one has more lines match up the bust point and this grain line again. And I would just trace it off guys, honestly. So okay, so we can stick with 22 and an 18. Initially I was concerned because how do you grade between two whenever the pattern pieces don't reflect all the sizes, but I think this is going to be fine. All right. So finish garment measurements for the bust of 18 is 18 equals 46 inches. And then the waist is not on the front pattern piece because the waist they're saying is actually a part of the band. I think it's right here. Okay. So that's not entirely the waist. But that's what they've done. They have marked the waist line on the band. And then on top of that, they did not include finished waist measurements. So you have to take all three of these pieces, number three, number eight and number 15. And you have to add them all together. I have done the work for you and I have a little chart. You're welcome. So I removed the seam allowances from all of these and calculated the width at the waistline for each one. So the waistline for a size 22 comes to 49 inches. So a 22 equals 49 inches. Okay. So pattern ease. Now pattern ease is going to be the same for everybody, no matter what size you're making. And it is the difference between number three and number two. You're actually taking the number three and subtracting number two from it. So 46 minus 40 is six. And 49 minus 37 is 12. My goodness. That is a lot. Again, just taking in the data points right now. I'm not over analyzing anything. We will get to the analyzation part, trust me. All right. So intended fit is how the designer wants this jacket to fit me based on my measurements. If I walked into their studio and said I want this jacket made couture custom to me, this is what measurements they would use. So we take my measurements and add in the pattern ease. That's 46. And then we have 38 plus 12, which is 50. Okay. Now the size to cut is where the fun happens. We have to analyze number three against number five, the finished garment measurements of this pattern, right as drafted, based on or based against how the designer wants it to fit my body if we were working together one on one. So ideally these numbers match perfectly. We have 46 46. That is perfect. So in theory, if you want to keep it simple, I cut a size 18. Boom, ready to go. The waist is one inch off, right? The pattern is one inch too small. So I need to add one inch to the garment to a size 22. This is fast fit one on one quick and dirty. You do the math, you figure out what size you're going to make. I want to encourage you guys, especially those of you that have used the fast fit worksheet before to kind of start to be a little bit more critical with how you analyze this sheet. And mostly that comes in with the in two areas. One is the body chart size. I don't love jumping a size from one area of your body, one level of your body to the very next level. I wouldn't mind doing a size 18 at the bus and a size 22 at the hip, but I don't want to jump from an 18 to a 22 at the waist. That's too complicated. So what I would like to see is what is a size 20 on the chart a size 20 at the waist is 34 inches. The finish measurements equals 46 and 7 eighths finished. So that is 20 and that is 46 and 7 eighths. Okay. There is a difference of three and one eighths difference there. All right. So now that would only give me, what did I say, three and one eighths for the waist. So all of this considered, I think what I should do is continue to cut the 18. And then I do want to try and make the size 20, but if they give you the five eighths inch seam allowance, not for you just to chop it off in the end, but they give you that so that you have that wiggle room to work with whenever it comes to fit. Okay. So I'm going to be making an 18. I'm going to be going to a 20 size 20 in the waist. So, but double check that for yourself. And then real quickly, I also want to check these sleeves. All right. So for the sleeves, they actually give us a sleeve and a lining. Both of them get a measurement and they're both the same. So I don't really know why they did that, but we'll just use the front. And I know that you're right down sleeve. And I know that I am 14 inches at the bicep and we are cutting a size 18 and a size 18 finished equals 15 inches. That's a little tight. It's not a lot of room to move around. So I want to add an inch because we have a two part sleeve. It's really easy to do because we have two four seam allowances, right? So that would be adding a quarter inch at seams. And we're going to be looking at the arm side a lot here because I do see this pulling up. I mean, it's got to do that a little bit, but the fact that it's pulling up flaring out, I think a lot of that tension that's causing all of that is coming from this point here because it's too low or too tight or too something. It is a very, very close fitting sleeve. So we'll be paying a lot of attention to that when we get to sewing the sleeve together. Again, you can opt with just doing the easy first version, not a problem. But if you really, really, really want to tackle fit and you want to get something that you know is going to fit your body the way that you like close to fit, you got to start critically thinking about pattern ease and what that means, what that means for this particular garment, what that means for how you like close to fit. So what you have to do in order to tissue fit this thing is basically put together the whole thing. And that includes the front panel, the front, your side panel, and your back. And then you're also going to have a yoke back and a yoke front. Okay, you do not have a ditto form, which is what this dress form is. It is my savior. Honestly, it makes this so much easier. I know that these are an investment. I've talked to you guys about them a million times, but basically it is a 3D scan of my body. It is my exact body. So whenever I go to do tissue fitting, it's like I'm doing it on myself. And for patterns like this, it's very, very difficult to do on your own. So I would highly, highly look into getting a ditto form for yourself. For those of you that say, oh, but my weight fluctuates, so does mine. So does mine. I promise you, it fluctuates a lot. You guys might even see it. But the bones and the structure of your body is pretty much the same. And I don't necessarily use ditto form as much as I thought for circumference. I rely on the fast fit worksheet for that. What I use ditto form for is all of these horizontal markings and vertical adjustments. I use it because you can tell that my shoulder has a significant slope to it. You would never be able to figure that out on a regular dress form. I use it because my breasts are different sizes. So if I needed to like do something close fitting and it was tied on one breast and loose on whatever it was, I could do that here. I use ditto form because of all of these vertical markings. And today is a really good example of how that's helpful. So this is what we've got. This is what we're working with. And I want to point out a few things. Everything looks pretty good pattern-wise. Like all the markings lined up. If you go to do this and you notice that there's a lot of extra space between these markings and your shoulder, that's because there's ease built in along this front. There is a natural kind of curve that's going to be created whenever it goes over the bust apex. The same thing happens within the side panel as well. So it looks like there's a crazy amount of extra in the side panel compared to the others. That's intentional. Okay, so if we're starting at the top and looking at the shoulder seam. And if I'm looking at this, the way that I can tell it's a little bit like my shoulder slopes down and the pattern is flat. And the reason I can tell that is if I lift this, look how much better that looks, right? We need ease, right? We need ease through the arms side so that we can move our shoulders. No big deal. But what we don't need is for everything to be settling into the bust. So here, let me turn this so you can see direct on and look what happens when I just raise this ever so slightly. Boom. Just a little bit goes a long way. I know it's really hard to tell. So I'm probably going to take in the shoulder seam toward the end toward the shoulder side. Then if we look and we talked about this a little bit in the fast fit worksheet, this little square is supposed to be at your underarm. That is where the seam allowance of the sleeve is going to hit. I like for my under for my underarms to be two finger links below the comfortable part, not in your armpit, but below the comfortable part of your armpit. And on my ditto form, you can see that that's right about where this little staple-y type thing is. This is where my arm ends. I'm thinking maybe that photo that was taken that's on the cover, this might just be a little bit misleading because the jacket is open. So again, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt here and sew this up as intended and then we'll do kind of like a dry fit. I don't know where I got that term from, but basically like before you sew any of the finishings, the lining, any of that, we will try the jacket on and just see and then we have that five eighths seam allowance within the underarm seam here to kind of play with. If we want to let it out some, if we want to take it in some, we will be able to do that at that point. So I'm going to leave that as is too, but double check it on yours to see. You might have a longer shoulder height, which is the measurement from here to the top of your shoulder. You might have a shorter one. It's really up to you and you're a unique body. Okay, something else that I'm checking is the vertical marks. So we have a bust line. More often than not, my bust line does fit with McCall's. That little point, the little circle with the square, the plus sign through it usually hits right at my bust point. So that's what you're looking for there. However, I'm short waisted. If you can see from my bust line to my waist line, there's not a lot of space there. I make up for it here in my waist to hip ratio. That's how my body is distributed. So more often than not, the waist seam, which if we remember is way down here, is off by a few inches. And this is the cases with this as well. So what I'm going to do is mark all along this waist line. So I'm going to start over here. And I'm going to mark through the front panel, through the front, through the side panel, and also through the back all along where that little ribbon is for my waist. And then I'll go to my work table and I will shorten the pattern by that amount, lest the seam allowances, of course. All right. So those are the things that I noticed with mine. The center front, the neckline looks really good. We do have a little bit of extra here, but again, you want that. So ease of movement. We're attaching that collar there. I think that's going to be good. The main thing you want to make sure of is that this hits at the right point up top. Okay. We talked about the shoulder being really important in this pattern. The back comes up really high on the neck, but you need that for your collar. So I'm not worried about that too, too much. Again, one of those things we can kind of shave off after we get like a good look see it kind of the dry run of how everything comes together. But I think you need it to be a little bit high up in order to get the collar to fit correctly. But other than that, I think once we shorten everything here, we should be good to go. You couldn't have a diddo form in the time you could not have it made in time for this so long, but I hope that this illustrates for you just how simple it makes this process. This would have been so much to do on my own body. I probably would have just said, I'm just going to guess, and I think that might be what a lot of you are doing too. So if you really want to get into fitting, if you really, really want to analyze tissue fitting is the way to go. And when you're home alone and you've got no one to help you like me, it's so nice to have like a carbon copy of your body. I'll have a link in the description box for Ditto Forms website. She travels around the country. Maybe she's coming to your area soon and you can get set up to get a scan. And then from there, I want to say I waited like a few weeks and then and then my Ditto Form came but oh man, it really does make quick work of this. In the meantime, before you can get your Ditto Form, obviously get a friend or family member to come over and help you. Or you can get stitchable tracing paper like Swedish tracing paper. And you could literally cut all of this out of that tracing paper and then sew all of these seams. You can sew that stuff. So then you put it on your body and it's kind of like a very, very unwearable muslin. Because it will show you like if you put all the all the horizontal lines on there as well. Of course, mark your center front and your center back and all of that. It will it will show you without pins and things ripping and tearing. I mean, that's the sad part about this paper is that it just you look at it wrong and it rips and tears. So you can get stronger papers that's meant to be sewn like Swedish tracing paper. So I'll have that. All right. So you have made it to the end of your prep work. Congratulations. Now for the next couple of weeks, you and me both, everybody will need to be making any biscuit is desperate to be in the sew along. So you will need to be making any adjustments that you need to your pattern pieces. You will be cutting your fabric. You can do it. Just follow the cutting guide. You'll have all your alterations made, cut with confidence. You'll also need to cut your lining and you will need to cut your interfacing. Pay close, close attention to the areas of the pattern pieces that tell you what you need. There are separate pattern pieces for the lining and some pieces you only need to cut one. Some are kind of full. So just pay pay close attention as you lay out your fabric. We need quite a bit of interfacing for this project. I have a preference on interfacing. I love the Thermo web product mostly because it doesn't require steam to adhere it to your garment. So it doesn't cause your fabric, especially something like a brush cotton to seize up on you. And then also we need a certain type of interfacing as well as a certain weight of interfacing. If interfacing is very confusing to you, I have a video here all about interfacing and it'll show you you know a whole bunch of different types and a whole bunch of different weights. So you can determine which one is best for you. So I'm going to be leaving some information in the description box. Lots of links. If you need help or guidance, check there first. Other than that, other than that long list, hopefully you are following along and checking off your sew along workbook. If you're not familiar, I designed a workbook. It's totally free and just for this sew along. It has tons of different checklists in it to help you kind of stay organized and stay on top of the whole process of making this jacket. Here we're going to be back very soon for episode one of the sew along, which is going to we're going to get to sewing now that we have all of this prep work done and you have two weeks to do it. We are going to get sewing the next time I see you and we're talking about this pattern. Okay, I'm excited. I hope you're excited. Do not be afraid. Do not be intimidated. This is going to be amazing and our jackets are going to turn out so cute. I promise I'm holding your hand. I've got you come along with me, come along with sleepy biscuit and come on this journey. Let's make this jacket together and let's make it awesome.