 Hi you guys and welcome to another Sew Along. It's going to be a great week of us hanging out together. If you don't know me I am Lindsay and I sew my own clothes and I have for years and years. I started this channel to share my love and excitement for garment sewing and over the years that is still the same but I've also added a teaching element to what we do here and that is what has sparked these Sew Alongs. But this pattern that we're gonna be working on this week is simplicity 9642. I chose it because it has different bust cup sizes and then it also has two sleeve options which is great for transitional weather and then three different lengths. So it should be a lot of fun a lot of really cute details in this pattern including like like an under bust gather princess seemed skirt and a very very prominent puffy sleeve v-neck optional ruffle hem so it's gonna be a good one. So with all my Sew Alongs I must be organized and so I started doing these little things for myself making these to-do list and checklist and all that kind of stuff and then I realized hey there's some people out there that probably would really like these and to no surprise you guys have gobbled them up. I make a free to download Sew Along Workbook for absolutely every single Sew Along I do. So this is the workbook for simplicity 9642 it includes everything that you need to make this pattern. So you will have a project planner this is what you be working on the first couple of days here where you're gonna find inspiration you're gonna come up with fabric options that you like. You're going to jot down your sizing any alterations that you need to make and then you're gonna make a list of all the project materials that you need including notions and then you can check it off whether you have it in your stash or you need to go buy it. There's also a price column there too if you want to keep track of how much this project is gonna cost you that's always fun. Then there's also a project checklist where we're gonna go through each one of these steps over the next several days by the end of it you will have all of this filled out and checked off. It also has a daily checklist so once we get started sewing on Thursday the fourth video you will be able to start checking these things off these first three videos are going to be all about prep so if you're good on prep and you know how to pick your size you know how to make your alterations you know how to cut out your fabric and which fabric to choose you can just skip right to the sewing portion which starts day one of the Sew Along. So that it covers it at the end there is also a project summary where you can write down just sort of your thoughts about the pattern if you make it again changes you'll make and stuff like that. Like I said this workbook is completely 100% free download it it's a lot of fun to check things off it's very satisfying and that's this I'll also be referring to this a lot throughout the Sew Along just to help all of us know kind of where we are in the process of completing this pattern and helping all of us stay organized. So this video is all about how to choose your size this is this is something that will make or break your project as you finish it you will realize it's either something that you're gonna love and wear all the time or something that you just don't feel comfortable in for one way or another so this is a very critical video I have my very own system for how I choose my size and sewing patterns it's called the Fast Fit System I have worksheets that are available on my website again I will link those in the description box and then I'm also put I think maybe a hundred of them into this workbook format that you can get on Amazon I will link to that as well but the Fast Fit System is what I use for literally every single pattern that I make I will take my measurements every single time and I will fill out one of these worksheets absolutely every single time so that's what we're using today to determine what size we are going to make I'm going to be demonstrating for you how I come up with the size of the pattern that I'm going to make using my measurements and those calculations so follow along with that but obviously use your own measurements so that brings me to the materials that you are going to need the the stuff that you're gonna need for today's video to go ahead and gather it up one is a measuring tape I'm going to be showing you where to measure yourself and the measurements that you're gonna need to kind of determine which size that you're going to need for this project you're also going to need kind of obviously a calculator and a pencil let's get into this and starting off with how to measure yourself and which measurements you're gonna need to determine the size to make I have got my trusty ditto form here this is an exact replica of my body that's what makes the ditto form so incredible you literally get on like this little I don't know like a lazy Susan and like you spin around and like this and it's there there's a 3d camera capturing all the measurements of your body and that 3d imagery is sent off to where they make the foam form and then it is wrapped in fabric afterwards she is great I love her so much for so many reasons in order to show you guys how to best take measurements I'm going to just be using her kind of as if she were my model so I'm not standing around turning backwards and making it all awkward for everybody okay so the first measure you're gonna want to take is your high bust your high bust is above your bust line but underneath your armpits coming around the back and it should be relatively perpendicular to the floor or sorry parallel to the floor it should be flat all the way around and then it's coming up over your breast issue this is a hard like foam so it's not pushing in as it will on your actual body so yours will be a little bit flatter but when we do this I get 38 and a half on my high bus so go ahead and write down what number you get for that and then the next one is your full bust and that is coming across the bust apex like so and again parallel to the floor like so for me I am getting 39 and a half okay so high bust is 38 and a half full bus is 39 and a half the difference between those two numbers one inches two inches three inches four inches indicates what bust cup size you are if it's one inch it's an A two inches is a B three inches is C and four inches is D okay so the next step is the waist and the waist as you can see is very high up I have a high waist but my belly button is way down here even if you have a lower waist it's still not going to be where your belly button is most likely what you're looking for is the smallest part of your body the easiest way to find that is to tip over to the side like a teacup and you can feel this little like ridge almost where your ribs are like folding over in on your side so there's like a little bit of like a roll of skin there a little indentation that is where your waist is so you can see on this dress mine should come in line with this here way up high okay and that measurement for me is 33 and then the last measurement that you need to get your size is a is your hip measurement so we're coming down here again the hip measurement is lower than you think it is you can actually see my hip bones are right here and my hip measurement is way down here it is the fullest part of your bum so if you have a higher set bottom it might be a little bit higher if your bottom sags a little bit it might be a little bit lower so mine is kind of somewhere in the middle all right so measurement measure way down low at the fullest part of your bum mine comes in at 46 and a half okay so now I'm gonna write that number down and that is what I'm gonna use for the next part of the video so I'll meet you over at the cutting table and we'll start using the fast fit okay so now that we have our measurements taken we are going to work our way through the fast fit system this is something that is going to allow us to analyze the patterns body chart size the finished garment measurements including the designers design ease and also help us analyze sort of just how we like things to fit sometimes people just like a looser fit sometimes we'll like a tighter fit so we'll be able to kind of use all of those points of reference to figure out the best size for us to cut so starting with the body chart size we are gonna come through here and we're gonna go to the body measurement chart located here sometimes they're on the little tab of the envelope but on this pattern they are in the actual chart itself so first things first is to figure out our cup size and which is the difference between high bust and full bust like I illustrated at the ditto form and that is one inch so that means my cup size is an a and then the body chart size okay so we're gonna find 39 and a half on this charts we're gonna go bust and we're gonna come all the way over until we find 39 and a half which is in between a 16 and an 18 it is closer to the 18 so I think I'm gonna air on the side of the 18 if it is dead smack in the middle you always go smaller but because I'm only half an inch away from the 18 that could easily just be a measuring error also I'm gonna do the 18 so that equals 40 inches on this chart now the waist is 33 inches so I'm coming down and I'm gonna find 33 inches and I am right smack dab in the middle between an 18 and a 20 so on this example I am going to size down to a size 18 which is 32 inches and in the hip I'm 46 and a half and if you come over you'll notice that I am off the chart I do not fit technically into this pattern but I will illustrate that if you are depending on the design of the pattern if you're 3 5 sometimes 8 inches bigger than the pattern you can still make the garments really it comes down to how many vertical seams there are and in this pattern there's 1 2 3 4 5 and with the generous 5 8 inch seam allowance that we have here in America that's a lot of wiggle room so I don't feel very uncomfortable buying a pattern that when I'm off the chart it when it has that many vertical seams which is why I'm going ahead and doing this even though technically it wouldn't fit but I'll show you how to determine how much you need to add to the pattern to get it to fit and how to do that in this sew along so I'm gonna write down the information for a 20 and that equals 44 inches and then we'll figure out the rest of it as we go all right so now we're gonna find the finished garment measurements the big four has been getting so good lately at putting our finished garment measurements on the envelope so we have them here so let's just keep things simple and use them here now again I'm an a cup so I'm gonna be using this set of information here if you're BC or D you use these you know they get bigger as the cup sizes increase so I'm an a bust cup for an a size 18 now I'm comparing an a to the 18 that I am going to cut in theory so I come over to the 18 and it is 42 and a half so that's all I'm writing down here 42 and a half the waist also for a size 18 is waist is here so I'm coming over to an 18 and that is 36 and a half and then the hip is off the chart but I'm using a size 20 so that's going to be 51 and a half all right now we are going to calculate the ease that has been added to this pattern there's a standardized kind of wearing ease just so that you can like move around in your garment and then the designer adds in the ease that they want to get this look so the ease in this pattern is the difference for every pattern is a difference between section three and section two and I'm really bad at math so I always use a calculator because I don't trust myself so 42 and a half minus 40 equals two and a half inches of ease and then 36 and a half minus 32 is four and a half and then 51 and a half minus 44 equals seven and a half okay so now this is when kind of experience and information you know really will help you out I do have in my garment sewing guide of guides the ultimate garment whatever it's called it's free download on my website I'll link it in the description box I do have sort of suggested ease depending on the style and the fit of the garment so it will have something for like very close fitting semi-fitted loose fitting and then the kind of the ideal ease for each of those depending on the body part so for a bust that is sort of close-fitted like this one anything between two and three is pretty good this one you might even be able to go up to a four and still feel pretty confident but I'm gonna leave mine at two and a half I don't mind a close-fitting bust so two and a half is good for me and then for the waist now this photo here's a little bit deceiving because she's walking and got her hip kind of popped out so it looks very close-fitted you know showing that curve of her body but if you look at the line drawings you can see it is a little bit more loose fitting the the drag lines from the drape of the fabric are here and you can see from the like the waist is down here somewhere so from the waist down it is sort of just trying to be like an a-line so I know that even though my bodice is supposed to fit kind of you know relatively close-fitting as we go down the waist and the hip get looser and looser to kind give you that a-line effect this is also where I'm going to say to myself well how do I want it to fit like what am I comfortable in and I know I'm not super comfortable in something that's really clingy to my bottom in a stable woven fabric so I'm okay with four and a half and seven and a half and again I'm gonna be able to more easily take away from this after I do my first fitting than it is to add on so I'm just gonna stick with this these are all very much within like a standardized range nothing's too out of the ordinary here so I'm good with the pattern ease of this pattern all right so now we're gonna talk about intended fit so this is if this pattern was custom made for my body given this this amount of pattern ease and my actual measurements for getting the body chart size and finish measurement chart sizes all together if this were custom made for me by whoever designed this pattern given this ease amount what is the intended fit so you add your measurements and the pattern ease together so 39 and a half plus two and a half is 42 and then you do 33 plus four and a half is 37 and a half and then we'll do 46 and a half plus seven and a half and that is 54 okay so if this were custom made for me this is the circumference of each of these areas now this is the circumference of the actual pattern so these two things have to match so what do we need to do in order to get these two things to match is what goes in section six so size to cut is going to be an 18 with half an inch added because I need to go half an inch bigger in order to get to this number for the waist it's one inch so again size 18 with a one inch increase okay now remember the hip I was off the chart by a size or two but I only need to add three and a half inches to the size 20 3.5 inches added and with all those seam allowances it's gonna be really easy to do that so I will show you how to add all of this to your pattern pieces in the next video okay I didn't want to overwhelm it with too much this is all you should be worried about now do this first and then come back and see how to alter it'll start to make a lot more sense when you just have this information this is what you know you're going with and then we'll apply it to the pattern pieces in the next all right so we already have some things that we can check off of our lists in the workbook in the project planner page you can write down your size to make with the alterations that you need that's everything that we wrote down in section six of the fast-fit worksheet you can also come over to the project checklist and check off the first two things under prepping well assuming you're pre-washing your fabric while you're also doing these tasks so pre-washing your fabric to the fast-fit worksheet and then we will start to work on alterations in the very next video if you are looking for the rest of the videos in this series I have both a playlist going as well as in the description box each videos direct link so you can find it either way but any questions that you have about how to use the fast-fit worksheet just general questions leave those in the comment section of this video if you are curious to know if the math that you've done for your fast-fit worksheet and the results that you're getting make sense it's best to reach out to me on Instagram that way YouTube is just not great about back and forth conversation so this is going to be like you ask me a question I respond and then you respond back YouTube's not great for that Instagram DMs is the best place plus you can send me a photo of your fast-fit worksheet filled out and that'll really help me understand what you're talking about as well so general questions feel free to leave them in the description box everything else take it to Instagram but that is going to do for me for now I will see you all back here very soon where we will start altering our pattern pieces