213 Fit

The quest for trousers that actually fit involved eBay-stalking vintage pattern drafting books - Flat Pattern Cutting and Modelling for Fashion (Helen Stanley, 1972), Pattern Drafting and Dressmaking (Dorothy Moore, 1971), Dress Pattern Designing (Natalie Bray, 1961) - a Craftsy class, and sixty hours of work that produced a toile so catastrophically wrong I couldn’t bend my knees to climb the stairs.

Cal Patch has spent years solving this from her studio in upstate New York - flat pattern drafting that starts with the body, not the size chart. This episode is a conversation with her about where the lightbulb turns on.

The other revolution arrives by YouTube: top-down-centre-out, originated by Ruth Collins and taught in Stacey Taylor’s free tutorial series, starts with the one thing every well-fitting pair of pants hangs on: the waistband.

The Pegs from Merchant & Mills are the making project - 1950s cut, high waist, narrowing to a turned-up cuff. The trousers aren’t finished. The method is sound.

FURTHER READING

* The 1958 US commercial sizing standard

* Ruth O’Brien & William Shelton’s 1941 WPA study on women’s body measurements

* The finding that approximately 8% of women have the hourglass proportions commercial patterns are graded for, Joy Spanabel Emery, A History of the Paper Pattern Industry

* The 2025 plus-size runway representation collapse

* Butterick’s 1863 graded tissue paper pattern - the first commercial sewing pattern

Music: Story of Our Lives by Tim Halperin

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