Pattern Fitting With Confidence

Pattern Fitting with confidence is an excellent resource for altering a sewing pattern. It is illustrated very well. It has clear instructions. I am very happy with this purchase.

When this woman died in 2017 it was a tremendous loss for everyone in the sewing world. I own a small library of sewing books and magazines. Some of these books claim to be bibles on fitting garments, but all they accomplish many times is creating confusion from something simple. Nancy was a true teacher who covered in this book every type of fitting change and technique, fine-tuning in a simple manner. She also helps you choose the best color, style and fabric for your unique body shape. When your garment is finished, it actually looks like what is on the pattern envelope cover!

Every garment sewer should have this book

Nancy Zieman is well-known for sharing her vast sewing knowledge and experience. Pattern Fitting With Confidence is no exception. Whether you're new to sewing or have advanced skills, there are enough tips and sewing wisdom packed into these pages you can't go wrong! The book is well written and illustrated, easy to understand and use, as well as a great reference to add to your sewing library. What have you got to lose?!

Great illustrations and descriptions.

new, fresh, clean Nancy Zieman has an easy to understand method to altering and fitting clothes.

This book is starting from how to fit for commercial pattern, and how to solve main wrinkles after basting. What eye opening method is slide and pivoting technique to adjust to your size. In Japan, usually we cut in half and add/abstract the measurement, but I had been in doubt because it does not fit to change each part of your body such as abstracting your waist while adding your hip. So this book really answered my question. Also there are not many fitting instruction book nor course are available in Japan. Even at school of fashion does not teach fitting. I admit there are so many people with so many type of bodice, that is why fitting books and course (both on-line and off-line), which is very envying to me! Only a couple of things I do not like is that there is no page info. Shown as this is e-book. Like "your size chart on page 123", you cannot tell where to go, and it is hard go back and forth between the chart and where you are reading now. In the reference page, the pictures are very vague and hard to read. Some measurements such as 5/8" does not properly shown, but just blank. I hope these are corrected soon. Otherwise this is a good book, and I hope many of these kind of books will be translated in Japanese! この本は市販の型紙を自分のサイズに合わせる手順から始まって、仮縫いで生じるシワを主要な6種類に分類して補正の方法を示しています。日本では一般的には単純に裾や脇のサイズを増減するか、型紙の真ん中で増減するやり方位しか紹介されていませんし、もう少し詳しく知りたくても作図を一から勉強しなくてはなりません（実際私がそのパターンで深みにハマり、今学校で40過ぎての手習い中です）。 ところがさすがアメリカ、国が大きく体型も様々な人がいるせいか、補正以前に市販の型紙をいかに自分サイズに合わせるかのテクニックが広く知られているのだなと思います。 やり方は至極シンプルで、市販の型紙を元に補正したい箇所で増減したい分量を入れていきます。ですがサイズ全体ではなくその部分のみずらしたり回転させるというテクニックを使って変更を入れるのです。 また、自分サイズのボディを安上がりに作る人たちまでいて（ネット動画も見つかります！！！）、感心を通り越して逞しさを感じます。 他にもいかに自分サイズで洋裁を楽しむかという視点の商品やコースが充実していて、かなり羨ましいなぁと思います。英語は決して難しくはなく、電子辞書だと分からない単語もその場で調べられて非常に便利。でも、こういう物の翻訳本が沢山出版されても良いのにな。

I like this book so much that I have it in print (from years ago) and I just bought the Kindle version. I made a perfectly fitting blouse pattern using Nancy's pivot-and-slide method and have made several versions of the blouse in the years since. It is easy to read, easy to understand, easy to do. The best advice was buying a pattern based on my high bust and not on my bust measurement. It fit my shoulders and neck without all the gaps and pulling. I am going to help a friend of mine who wants to make a few things and I want to update my blouse pattern.

Book arrived in a timely manner. Great tips

Honestly you cannot go wrong with any instruction that Nancy has written. This book make sense, is well illustrated and easy enough to follow when making alterations on existing sewing patterns.

This book is brilliant. Her methods are really easy. Just one word of warning for English buyers: the measurements are American sizes! Couldn't understand why I was measuring as a size 8 but that is size 12 in English sizes!!!

Excellent, excellent book. See also the related 1h YouTube video (not linked in the book, but you can find it if you search for "Nancy Zieman method"). A couple of small complaints: As Nancy clarifies, for this method to actually give you a good pattern, you must start from a pattern that already fits your neck and above bustline bone structure correctly. Now: (1) The diagram doesn't make it super clear how to take this measurement. However, if you google it, you'll find forum discussions where people suggest putting two hangers / books under your armpits, and measuring straight the space in between. I'm going to try that, as I'm really bad at taking measurements precisely. Anyway, it would have been nice if the book included more explicit guidance on this so I didn't have to google. (2) This measurement correlates straightforwardly with the pattern sizes from the Big 4, but sometimes those patterns use S-M-L sizes, so it's not clear how to handle that, and there are now many other pattern makers that use their own sizing system too. I'm guessing you can try to measure the pattern from armpit to armpit across the front, but I wish I didn't have to guess. In short, it would have been nice if the book included more explicit guidance on how to take this measurement on the patterns you buy directly too. Independently, it would have been nice if every pattern vendor included more information on the patterns they're selling you. As it is, you're left guessing big time, and can't judge if what you're buying is going to suit you even at a basic level till you've bought and measured the actual thing. I've had this experience with a lot of pattern vendors, whether it's those nice project books such as Sew many dresses or The Gentleman's wardrobe or random pattern vendors on the internet. In short,

Lots of useful knowledge!