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Episode 48: Sizing and Schematics
64 Plays7 months ago
I share a little about sizing information that should be included on your pattern.
Grading Resoursces:
- Inclusive Size Resources for Designers - Kim McBrien Evans
- Sizing With Spreadsheets — Swanky Emu Knits
- Jill Wolcott Knits
- Ysolda Teague
- Craft Yarn Council
- Woolly Wormhead
Size Charts for Purchase, ASTM—American Society for Testing and Materials
- Standard Tables for Body Measurements for Plus Women's Figure Type, Size Range 14W – 40W
- Standard Tables of Body Measurements for Adult Female Misses Figure Type, Size Range 00–20
- Standard Tables of Body Measurements for Young Men Type, Size Range 32 – 48
- Standard Tables for Body Measurements for Mature Big Men Type, Size Range 46–64
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Show and Focus
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to Craft, Design, Edit, Sleep, Repeat. I'm your host, Lisa Conway. Welcome to my world where we try to understand the business of knit and crochet design.
00:00:38
Speaker
So welcome back, everyone. I'm really glad you're here.
Challenges in Guest Finding and New Schedule
00:00:43
Speaker
I have some more announcements and then we're going to talk a little bit about sizing and schematics. So first off, I'm really struggling finding designers or others in the industry that are interested in participating in the podcast.
00:01:05
Speaker
So for the time being, what you are going to receive is one episode per month, probably fairly short, 10 to 15 minutes max. And then bonus episodes when I do contact a designer that is interested in joining me. So you will only restart receiving episodes the first Tuesday of every month instead of the first and the third.
00:01:37
Speaker
I'm not thrilled about this, but it is the way it is. And I'm going to keep the episodes with me short because I know I'm not as sparkly as Denise or Nikki or Tiffany were. So I'm hoping that I can increase the number of interviews and do more of those and less of these.
00:02:05
Speaker
In the meantime, let's move into today's topic of sizing and schematics.
Importance of Clear Sizing in Patterns
00:02:15
Speaker
So first of all, let's talk about sizing and how you should represent your sizing.
00:02:27
Speaker
You want to be as clear as possible with all of this information. You need your knitter to be able to see immediately what size is appropriate for them. And some of the standard sizing names, small, medium, large, that sort of thing can be a bit confusing because
00:02:56
Speaker
What one person sees as a large is not the same thing as what another person sees as large. As a matter of fact, when you walk into a store and you are looking for a pair of jeans, for example, two different manufacturers will have the same size noted and
00:03:21
Speaker
they'll be completely different. And that's because they account for different ease. So it's really important to know your sizing in a way that makes the knitter able to judge which one will really fit.
00:03:43
Speaker
It's best to create a size chart that is in your pattern, a sizing sample that is the finished size rather than the size it's intended to fit.
00:04:00
Speaker
Now you can include the size it's intended to fit, but make sure that you include that with a statement on what the expected ease will be. So for example, if you want to label your sizes 28, 30, 32, etc.
00:04:20
Speaker
for the size intended to fit that include a finished size of 30, 32, 34 that shows the intended ease of approximately two inches. And in your
00:04:41
Speaker
sizing statement, the statement where you say, you know, here's the number of sizes that you can get from this pattern. It should say what the ease, the intended ease is that was calculated into the finished size.
Creating Schematics and Notation Clarity
00:05:00
Speaker
That also helps your knitter know if they are a 32 inch bust, for example, and you've only accounted for two inches of ease that the size 34, which has two inches of ease of two inches, so it would be a 36 inch finished size, is what they want because they want more like four inches of ease.
00:05:30
Speaker
Or if they want negative ease, they can go down a size. It's important that they be able to determine what it's going to. Finish measuring the finished, what the finished measuring will be so that they know how it's going to fit their body. They can judge for themselves which size will be the most comfortable for them.
00:05:57
Speaker
So giving guidance and explaining what the sample was knit at, for example, my recent pattern I knit the 120 centimeter with
00:06:17
Speaker
two to five to 10 centimeters of ease on my body. So I said my body was X. There's the amount of ease, you know, this, this is what the sample ease was. So people could say, okay, yes, she's a larger woman, but she's knitted at this ease. And that's how it fits her body.
00:06:43
Speaker
And so I know if my body is this size with that ease, this is what it'll approximately look like. And then you move into the schematic, which shows all of the various measurements. If the pattern has a lot of sizes, you probably don't want to show the measurements on the schematic.
00:07:11
Speaker
You probably want to do a chart and then label the schematic with numbers or letters I prefer to use letters myself because there's so many numbers in the chart you don't want additional numbers as the.
00:07:30
Speaker
line header. Now, I've labeled the sizes as numbers, so I've got 1 through 20 in sizes, but then the various measurements are listed as A, B, C, or D. A being the chest measurement, for example, and B being the length to underarm and C being the
00:07:56
Speaker
sleeve length to underarm or whatever, and labeling those various measurements. Important measurements may include the neck width or the width across shoulders or the wrist diameter, the wrist circumference.
00:08:21
Speaker
And it's important to note on the schematic, whether it's a circumference or a length or a width. So, circumferences should be marked with a curved arrow so that it shows that this goes all the way around.
00:08:40
Speaker
and lengths or widths with straight arrows or lines to show that this is just the width of the item, not the full circumference of the item. Those notations are really important to ensure that the
00:09:05
Speaker
knitter knows what they're measuring on their body versus what the sweater is measuring so that they know that they're going to get the right fit.
Grading Patterns and Size Chart Accuracy
00:09:16
Speaker
So make sure that you include finished measurements and size to fit
00:09:26
Speaker
what body with how much ease. These are really important messages to make sure you have in various points of your pattern. Now, how do you get those sizes? That's grading. That is something that I've been working hard to learn. And I think doing my my sweater pattern has definitely helped me improve my
00:09:56
Speaker
technique, my method, and my understanding. It's a complicated situation. It's a lot of math. And I realized that not everyone's capable of doing it. And I did have to do a lot to learn the process. I've done multiple classes. I have practiced. And now that I have done my own, I see where I was making some mistakes in my practice.
00:10:26
Speaker
So hopefully I will be better off in the future. But we use size charts to do this. It's really important in doing the math that you don't apply the same proportional change to every part of the body.
00:10:50
Speaker
So let's say you knit a medium and now you're trying to do the math for a small and a large and an extra large, whatever those may mean. Or you knit a size 32 and now you need to do the 28, the 30, the 34 and the 36.
00:11:12
Speaker
You can't just apply two inches of difference on every size of the body and have it fit the body correctly. So we use size charts. And I know we've talked about these in the past. I know I've given it places where you can find them. I will add those to the show notes again so that you can find them for yourself.
00:11:41
Speaker
But a size chart is basically the average sizes or measurements for different body sizes. So if it's a standard
00:12:00
Speaker
28 inch bust, for example, they have gathered information on if it's 28 inch bust, what would their waist be? What would their arm length be? What would their neck width be? And those size charts are much more accurate than just providing a proportional change to each size.
00:12:26
Speaker
One of the problems with proportional change is there are certain segments of the body that rarely change even though one gets bigger or smaller.
00:12:38
Speaker
Neck width, for example, is very limited in how much the size changes from one to the next. Where you might gain four or six inches at the bust, you're probably only going to gain maybe a quarter to half an inch most at the neck. Because we just don't gain as much weight in that area. We don't have as much padding around our neck.
00:13:08
Speaker
Shoulder width is another one of those that is not proportional to how much padding you have on the rest of your body. A 28 inch bust person and a 36 inch bust person have approximately the same shoulder width.
Understanding ASTM and Hat Size Charts
00:13:32
Speaker
Our shoulders just don't get that much padding.
00:13:35
Speaker
So it's important to understand that just changing by proportions is not going to fit every size and using a size chart, and there are a number of really good ones out there, is the best way to adjust sizing across the various parts of the body.
00:14:00
Speaker
The best size charts available are provided by the ASTM. And once again, I'm not going to remember what ASTM stands for, but it's basically standard measurements. And they provide standard measurements across a lot of different fields, not just bodies.
00:14:28
Speaker
So they've gathered all of this information. It's an organization that's done the research to gather all this various information and then
00:14:43
Speaker
pass it on by selling the size charts. The charts are not cheap. They are very expensive, as a matter of fact, in the hundreds of dollars to collect an entire segment of the population. So you've got children's sizes, you've got women's sizes. And I know they used to have, I don't know if they still do,
00:15:12
Speaker
two different segments for women's sizes. They had more or less a standard body, and then they had the large body. I don't know if they still do that or not. And then men's sizes. So
00:15:32
Speaker
If you're investing a couple hundred dollars or more in each of those different charts, it's a big investment. And that's why so many people have gathered their own information. So there are designers out there that provide or have created their own size charts. Wooly Wormhead, for example, has a really excellent size chart for hats.
00:16:03
Speaker
Now Wooly Wormhead is famous for her hats and she did the research to determine if you have a 22 inch circumference, what does that do to the overall depth of the hat needed, that sort of thing. So I will be linking all of those in the show notes.
00:16:26
Speaker
for you any of the any of the size charts that I know about that I know are are reasonable the ASTM the various designers that have sweater charts and there's two or three that I can think of.
00:16:46
Speaker
I will make sure those are available. But do make your schematic clear. Make your sizes clear.
Conclusion and Resources Reminder
00:16:56
Speaker
Make sure that the knitter knows how much ease is going to be in the finished product so that they can determine which size is best for them.
00:17:08
Speaker
That's all for today. I don't know exactly what I'm going to talk to you about next time around, but I will see you in a month. Have a great day. Don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you listen and join the conversation in our Ravelry or Facebook groups.
00:17:36
Speaker
For show notes or knit tech editing and related services, please visit my website at arcticedits.com.