The history of standardized sizes for clothing

Do you ever wonder how people came up with the idea of sizing clothes? The creation of sizes allowed for the mass production of ready-to-wear garments. It was not created at a meeting of industry professionals, but evolved over time. Great leaps in sizing occurred because of war - somebody had to quickly and efficiently outfit an army.

Winifred Aldrich traces the development of sizes and ready to wear in her article History of Sizing and Ready-to-Wear Garments found in the Sizing in Clothing book*. Aldrich is a British pattern maker, designer, and researcher. I own two of her pattern drafting manuals and consider them among the best drafting manuals available (link in the sidebar to the left for the children's drafting manual). She knows her stuff, and she presents it well.

The understanding of body proportions began slowly with tailors producing clothing for men. They used strips of paper to measure the body and transfer the measurements to cloth. In time tailors devised tape measures and drafting systems. A size was not the beginning of the drafting job, rather the completed garment represented the size of the customer. As the industrial revolution progressed, tailors began to teach and sell their drafting systems. This included some already drafted patterns, sometimes in more than one size.

The concept was revolutionary and men began to be able to purchase their clothing ready made. Women, on the other hand, still had most of their clothing custom made into the early 20th century. There were attempts at creating patterns for women with named sizes, but it still required customization. There was a lack of knowledge of women's body measurements most likely because of the Victorian ideals of the time.

It is important to understand that our understanding of body measurements and proportions were not formalized until the 1940's. Ruth O'Brien, an employee of the U.S. Department of Home Economics and the Department of Agriculture, was commissioned to conduct a body measurement study of the American population. The purpose was to create a set of size standards based on reliable data that the apparel industry could use. The work involved in this study was enormous and revolutionary. O'Brien and her department created a measurement procedure that is still in existence today (only to be superseded by 3D body scanning). The data from these studies have been study and analyzed around the world.

To put this in perspective, it wasn't until the 1940s that we could finally see and understand human proportions with any clarity. It's easy to pan this early work as outdated and wrong but the 1940's was not that long ago. We still have so much to learn and understand.

A fun little factoid. Grading using the shifting or slide method, a common method still used today, can be traced back to 1908.

Aldrich's article goes into much more depth about the history of sizing. She includes pictures of early patterns and sizing systems. It is well worth a read if you can get a copy of it. This article is a combination and expansion of two previously written articles found in the journal Textile History.

*As I review individual articles from the Sizing in clothing book, I will not give a detailed discussion of each article. Rather, I will summarize and highlight a few key points along with my own thoughts on the subject.

Book review : Sizing in clothing

This is one of the books I ran across while working on my own book on grading. Sizing in Clothing (Woodhead Publishing Series in Textiles) is a collection of scholarly papers edited by S. P. Ashdown on the current (as of 2007) issues related to sizing ready-to-wear clothing. It is a dense read and it took me every bit of time I had with the book to get through it. I'm glad I read it.

The audience for this book is very narrow in scope. This is not a book for someone starting their own apparel line. Do not run out and buy this book unless you have a real interest in sizing theory - it will not help you figure out the sizing for your line. If you did want to buy it, the book runs in the $200-$250 range. I obtained a copy through inter-library loan, which also proved a bit of a challenge. Only a handful of college libraries carry a copy they are willing to loan outside their library system. So I had to read this book on a deadline and handle the book with kid gloves over the holidays.

Some technical designers, pattern makers, and graders may be interested in some of the included articles. Over the next several weeks, I will post a review/discussion on some of the topics covered. My two favorite articles were on the History of sizing systems and ready-to-wear garments by Winifred Aldrich and Military Sizing. There are other really great topics about sizing and target markets, size standardization (a hot topic!), apparel production and sizing, and of course, pattern grading.

Because each chapter is written by different authors, it's hard to give a review of the book as a whole. Some articles were very well written and easy to read, such as my two favorites listed above. Others are written in a formal academic style which is very difficult to read and even more difficult to ferret out what the author is trying to say. As a collection, the articles cover nearly every angle.

Since the articles are written mostly by academics, there is a bit of a disconnect with those working on the front lines (the exception being the Military sizing article). It would be easy to characterize the writers as sitting in their academic ivory towers telling us what to do because they "know better". Embedded in many of the articles is criticism aimed at the industry for assumed sizing problems that the industry either "created" or refuse to solve. While some of the criticism is unfair in my opinion, the information they provide us is still valuable. I'll discuss some of this later in the individual reviews. Despite all of this, I'm glad there are people out there willing to think about these problems, propose solutions, and test them out.

Book Review : Better Homes and Gardens Quilting pieces of the past

I've had quilting on the brain lately. I don't really have time for it right now, but I do have plans. Who doesn't when they have other more pressing projects? When I'm in the zone for some other crafty venture, I usually waste time on Pinterest or borrow books from the library. In this case I came home with Quilting Pieces of the Past (Better Homes & Gardens).

This book was published back in 2004, which doesn't seem all that long ago. The book traces the last 175 years of quilting with 54 quilting projects and full size pattern pieces in an attached insert in the back of the book. The book is divided up into distinct historical periods followed by quilts that are reproductions of that time or inspired by that time. Many of the quilts in the book are drawn from previously published Better Homes and Gardens quilting patterns.

The historical information is very interesting but not nearly as in depth as I would have liked. But it does contain full color pictures throughout with fabric swatches representing the color and style of fabric used in quilts for each time period. The biographical information on the early quilt designers was interesting. Each section contains a historical time period showing the major events of the day so that the reader can understand what influenced some of the quilt designs.

Some of the reviewers on Amazon gave the book poor reviews because many of the projects were not updated with contemporary styling or colors. This did not bother me so much because the quilts were meant to be reproductions of older quilts anyway. It would be easy to update the quilts with newer, fresher color schemes and fabrics. The instructions are where the book struggles a bit. Most of the instructions rely on traditional cutting and piecing techniques. This means that some of the quilt blocks are more difficult to put together because of inset seams. This is particular true with the Lemoyne star block, Bride's bouquet, and a few others. More modern techniques have broken down these blocks to make them easier to piece using strips and special rulers. Some of the quilt blocks are quite intricate and would require very precise cutting and sewing. Several of the quilts are applique quilts and the book contains no instructions on applique.

Despite those deficiencies, I still really liked the book. I loved reading the historical sections and seeing the quilts that came from each time period. I do like many of the quilts in the book and I could see myself making some of them one day. If nothing else, the book could be used as a source of inspiration. It would be easy to take some of the more traditional blocks and up date them. This book is not really for beginners because of several difficult to make quilts  and the sketchy instructions. Still, there are a few projects a beginner could probably attempt without too much difficulty.

Book Rating: 4 stars

Cutting dimensions for quilting pre-cuts

I've been spending too much time looking at quilting projects on Pinterest and YouTube lately. Perhaps an act of avoidance for other things. Quilters throw around terms like fat quarter and jelly roll, but it took me a bit of time to know what those things mean in terms of actual cutting dimensions. I trolled around Pinterest looking for a printable that explained those terms for me. I found lots of pretty full-color infographics, but I wanted a one page, black & white piece of paper to hang next to my cutting table. I couldn't find anything suitable, so I opened up Inkscape and made exactly what I wanted. I prettied it up with different fonts and a border.

Click on the image below for the full size. It should easily fit onto an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper.

I slipped it into a page protector and now it lives with my cutting tools next to my cutting table.

Spending all this time thinking about quilts and quilting means that I do have plans for projects.

Grading rulers and how-to drawings

I've been hard at work on my grading book. The first half of the book explains children's sizing. The second half is a how-to manual on grading. I've been stuck on the how-to section for quite a while. I could not decide on whether I should do step-by-step photos or illustrations. I fiddled around in Inkscape and managed to pull together some pretty good how-to drawings. The drawing above is a sneak peak.

Photographs would be great but I didn't think I could pull off photographs that were good enough for print. There are some practical matters too. An eBook filled with as many photographs as I need would be enormous. Too big of a file size to process for print (fingers-crossed they turn out ok) and too big to download easily. There are photos in the book, but just a few. So yes, I am planning on an eBook version, though probably not for Kindle.

So the how-to section will be step-by-step drawings. The drawing above is the set-up for hand grading. It shows the guidelines and grading ruler placement. The shaded area represents tag board. The pattern piece is cut in tag board too, but is white for clarity.

The gridded area represents the grading ruler. My grading ruler is the rectangular gridded ruler in the middle below. I was lucky enough to find it at a thrift store stuck in the book below.

This style of hinged grading ruler is no longer available. Never fear, there are options. You can grade with any clear ruler that has 1/16" gradations like the 18 inch ruler in the picture above. You can also buy a grading ruler from Connie Crawford. The price can't be beat! I've been looking at special quilting rulers and those are tremendously over-priced in comparison.

The grading how-to section will cover hand grading in depth and a general overview of grading for CAD. CAD grading depends on the CAD software, so in depth instructions would be difficult to cover for each major system.

Because things can be lost in translation - meaning my drawings and photographs may not convey the best for everyone - there will be at least one how-to video. I'm not sure what I'm setting myself up for, but I'll give it a try.