40: Grading Home-Sewing Patterns to Fit

No matter what your measurements, all sewing patterns can be graded to fit you.

Wish someone would show you how to achieve good fit with home-sewing patterns?

Written at students’ requests, Laurel’s book, Grading to Fit, presents how to do this.

First develop a set of slopers (the home-sewing Industry refers to them as fitting shells) from which you determine your grading coordinates. This procedure enables anyone to grade any style home-sewing pattern to their custom fit.

If you should need help, Laurel teaches private lessons in Oreland, PA, 19075, one mile from the PA turnpike Fort Washington exit. Oreland is 10 minutes northwest of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia.

This diagram shows how to draft an asymmetrical waistline. Asymmetrical fit is addressed in the Fitting Home Sewing Patterns/ Grading to Fit course, its book Grading to Fit, and the entire Contemporary Fashion Education program. Well fitted asymmetrical clothing gives the wearer the appearance of having a symmetrical. figure.

Shown here is Laurel’s master sample book for Sewing Techniques from the Fashion Industry. Mastering the material in this independent-study course will take the misery out of your sewing. For example: you will learn how to sew zippers with ease, matching seam line to seam line.

Design Room Techniques from the Fashion Industry  shows how to make a sample book as you work through the book, learning the basic sewing skills used in industry to produce high-end couture garments worth thousands of dollars.

Laurel’s classroom-tested diagrammed books show the procedures, step-by-step, enable students to speed through the course work.

With Laurel’s books you will learn how patterns are drafted, and how exquisitely made clothing is sewn in the industry’s high-end designing departments. You will use fully diagrammed books, written to support these courses. The books present, step-by-step, the procedures used by the best pattern makers and sample makers in the industry.

You will use these procedures, hands on, to draft patterns and produce samples, exactly as done by the professionals.

Laurel Hoffmann, instructor and author, is one of the top 1% most endorsed on @Linkedin in the United States for sewing. Her first job in the industry was at Anne Pakradooni’s boutique on Main Line. She then worked as a production pattern maker/technical designer in industry where she learned and did high-end couture sewing that sold at Saks and Bergdorf Goodman’s in NYC and other stores. She was trained by three European master tailors, the top layout artist at Alfred Angelos, and later by the top grader in Philadelphia.  She became a production pattern maker/technical designer in three years, overseeing apparel production. She then taught in college, first in the degree fashion program, then in continuing professional education for 20 years. Her students have included design room personnel from leading fashion houses here in the Philadelphia area. Her goal is to make high-end industrial pattern making and sewing techniques available to everyone.

Laurel