Identify and eliminate drag lines when fitting a bodice!

What are these wrinkles and how do you get rid of them?

It can be so confusing when a garment fits you perfectly, i.e. the bust, waist and hips. The vertical positions are all correct, i.e. the waist and bust are sitting where they should, and yet you still get drag lines - or wrinkles!

Why are they there if it fits? Once you understand what they're telling you, you'll able to fix them nice and quickly.

The short answer is – something doesn’t fit diagonally. But of course there's a little more to it than that.

The longer answer is the topic of my recent video (above). Once you've watched this short video you should have a much clearer idea of what the problem is - and more importantly the solution!

So let's break down the fitting process. We're just talking about bodices for now, we'll come on to trousers in a minute.

Before you start thinking too much about these lines, make sure it fits everywhere else first. There's not one set order to do this in, but personally I like to get the height correct first, so make sure the bust point is correct, followed by the waist and the shoulder.

Then make sure it fits correctly around the bust, waist and hip, making sure you've got the amount of ease you want.

My bodice fitting video (above) goes through all of this, demonstrating on a purposefully bad fitting sample. You will also benefit from watching my gape dart video (below) to make sure your armhole and neck openings fit well too.

Only once you’ve got all of that fitting correctly should you look at what the drag lines are doing, and what it’s indicating. The reason being, if you amend anything else on the fit you could introduce a new drag line!!

Working from a block or a bought pattern.

When you draft a block you concentrate on the vertical and horizontal lines initially, then you need to work out the dart sizes, this isn't easy from body measurements.

It's more straightforward when pinning a sample that's just in the need of some fine tuning though, getting these dart sizes right is key to not having any wrinkles.

When you buy a pattern, it’s based on ‘standard’ proportions, again this requires fine tuning to get everything perfect. So regardless of whether you've drafted your own block or if you've bought a pattern, this technique will help you to perfect it.

So what do the lines mean?

If you look at the line you have, it's pulling because it's too short from end to end. Adding some length between the two end points will eliminate that line.

You then have to establish if you need to take a bit of width out also. This is hard to explain in words, but my 'No More Drag Lines' video (top of page) show's you exactly what I mean.

I made the first video on this subject after a question came up on one of my other tutorials, asking how to get rid of these lines.

The video above shows what to do if you get lines in either direction between the common placement of an under bust and a side dart on a fitted top. This then inspired a second video (below) showing the same principle on a princess seamed top.

When you see me working with the patterns on both the darted and princess seamed bodices, I think it will help you to understand what's actually going on.

Forget about the list of adjustments you hear, and learn to look at your sample as a whole and just read those lines.

I don't really want to go in to any more detail than that because those video's tell you so much more than I can write here. Thank goodness for YouTube - it would be so much harder to teach this without video!

What about trousers and sleeves?

And now on to the more tricky bit.

These are most definitely the hardest garments to fit. The crotch curve will no doubt give you a headache the first time you tackle it!

There are so many curves to fit around, and we really do all come in very different shapes and sizes. Our proportions can vary a great deal, and there's nowhere like the bottom and tummy area, or the tops of our arms to really challenge us.

My two trouser fitting tutorials (below) will show you how to look at your sample and figure out what adjustment is needed.

The first came about as the result of a question I was asked a few times about fitting trousers, and then the second happened because of the questions that came up in the first! I feel like I could make a channel just about making trousers it's such a big subject!

And there's more....

There are so many tutorials I could link to here, but I don't want to overload you, so I've included the essentials that I think will give you the most info on this topic.

The above video talks about the dart sizes you will need for your figure, and how we can really play around with them to get a perfect fit - whatever our proportions are.

Below are a couple of quite specific video's that tackle areas I get asked about a lot. The armhole and the upper back!!

I'm going to stop there as I think that gives you a lot to watch and a lot to think about.

As always, if you're having a fit issue that's just really stumping you and you can't find the solution in one of my video's, please don't hesitate to get in touch to see if I can help.