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Interview Copyright for knitters Overloaded! Knitting for others

Irreverant discourse and Q&A with Bonne Marie Burns of ChicKnits.com

Give me your tired, your poor, your ill-fitting DESIGNS...

Oh, how we all love make-overs. On any given afternoon around the globe, talk shows, TV shopping networks, cable access, you-name-it, are all jamming the air waves with stupendous before-and-after dramas...

Well, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy ain't got nothin' on us. LaBonne's Tips for RealityKnits© are here!

Just for grins, we're going to stage a little reality show of our own. We're going to make-over many of the ideas we hold about patterns and knitting. If your mail to me is any indication, you want to know EVERYTHING there is to know about SIZE. From re-sizing to my-sizing, the questions fill my inbox to overflowing. I've gotten so many in fact, that, in this issue, we're going to skip the quotes and get right to it.

In our show, no one wears ill-fitting clothes! (Especially ones that come off their own needles...) Sleeves are long enough and have the right amount of ease. Length and structure of the torso pieces flatter and enhance whatever Mother Nature blessed us with. Whether you're a twig or an elegant oak, your clothes do not bind, gap, or ride up. If you have a bountiful bosom or a shapely long waist, your knitted garments will mold to your frame as if Da Vinci himself stroked you on a page.

RealityKnits Episode #1: Whose Size is It Anyway?

Fashion sizing seems to be the 4th dimension. Even Einstein would agree that off-the-rack sizes never actually match commercial knitting patterns with any kind of standards or regularity. Commercial sizes don't even match between price points or manufacturers. It is unreal.

Many of us have totally trusted our regular size from a pattern we want to make and find ourselves with armful of awful when we should be jumping for joy after hours of knitting what we thought was going to be a masterpiece.

I have had fabulous disasters just blindly following a knitting pattern in *my* size according to the retail clothes I owned. My personal disaster *best* is a sweater I re-knit 3 times! (YES, I am STUBBORN!) AND it still isn't right - the sleeves are too big and the body is tight. Ce la vie!

So, let's roll those brain cells and get real!

Exercise #1:
Your personal size

You need:

fabric tape measure
pen
printout of this picture --> [right-click on the picture to open it in a new page, then print the page]
a knitting friend

Measure each of the indicated areas and write in the numbers next to the areas of the body on the drawing. Go HERE, a page masterminded by the Craft Council of America, to get information about how you should measure these areas. The info we want is on the right.

It is best if you have a friend help you with this! Not only is it fun, but they will most likely be able to keep the tape measure horizontally aligned better on the parts of you you can't see. And they won't cheat on your hip measurement like I do when I measure myself. Then you can return the favor and mock them back.

If you're asking yourself why you need all of these measurements when you're making a hat or just a tank, and skip any of the above, I will know and this page will magically disappear as I pull the plug on your monitor.

Exercise #2: Wardrobe Size

Look in your closet and you will see three basic kinds of knitted garments:

shells (or vests)
pullovers
cardigans

They look something like this:

If you look closely, you will see each is differently sized than the other. The Pullover is larger than the Shell. The Cardigan is bigger than both. They all function differently in your wardrobe and need to fit in slightly different ways.

In the design world, this is called *EASE*. It describes how tight the garment fits to your frame. Shells have the least ease or are "very close-fitting". Cardigans have the most ease because they usually go over other clothing or are "standard to loose-fitting". Pullovers are inbetween; usually we like them to be more "close-fitting".

These great descriptions of general amounts of ease can be found on the same page we found How to Measure in the Fit Chart on the left. The CCofA have gathered this information to try and standardize the knitting world's idea of Ease to be more in line with Retail Clothes. I like it. I THANK THEM! Please print out this page for later. (Better yet, go to the bottom of that page and save their 16 page PDF booklet for your study and pleasure.)

So for this exercise, you need:

fabric tape measure
pen
printout of this picture
printout of the Sizing Chart
printout of the Fit Chart
AND, go get from YOUR closet a shell, a pullover, and a cardigan. Pick the ones you think fit you the best.

Measure the areas on these garments that are indicated by a double tipped arrow on the Picture Printout. Write your numbers into the little spaces provided to the nearest half-inch or whole inch. Be sure to multiply the width measurement by 2 so we can compare notes in the next step.

Do this for all 3 garments.

When you're done, come back and we'll talk...

NOW, place the two pages of measurements you've taken side-by-side. First of all, you'll notice none of the garment measurements match your body measurements at all. Put the CCofA Sizing Chart next to the garment measurements and see if they are close to any of the sizes they give. Are they the sizes you thought they would be?

NOT?!

TAKE A DEEP BREATH, and place your Body Measurement Page next to their Amount of Ease Page.

Add your chest measurement number
to the
number the CCofA gives as the amount of ease for a pullover
and what do you get?

VOILA! The measurement of your favorite pullover!

Do the same thing with your shell and cardigan. Do we see a theme developing here?

As in, what's the secret to choosing the SIZE you need to make to actually FIT you?

Your *SIZE* is the pattern size whose width measurement is closest to the width measurement of your similar garment!

Your favorite garments are templates for similar garments that you intend to make! Place your garment-in-progress on top of your favorite garment to check for size accuracy throughout the knitting process and you'll have more and more successes under your belt in no time at all!

I just want to say how proud of you I am. Most knitters have never done this. Most knitters just cast on and sail away into the black hole of ill-fitting garments and then flame the designer for not writing a pattern that fits them.

Well, that day is over! If you understand your own personal measurements and how tight you want a garment to be, you will never knit one that does not fit you correctly. Chic-ly. Beautifully.

A special thanks to the Craft Council of America for their thoughtful and extremely useful pages at www.yarnstandards.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LaBonne Tricoteuse AKA Bonne Marie Burns would go to any length required to make sure all God's creatures are wearing chic and well-fitting clothes, especially knits.

Here she is trying out yet another technique to correct her mistakes and perhaps prevent other adventerous knitters from going down the same misbegotten roads she's traveled. You can read her adventures here.