The following questions were sent in by Elizabeth M.
Q: Do you have any tips for adjusting garment patterns for different body types? Going up a size doesn’t result in great garments for curvy women.
A: Never go up a size!
Choosing a size in a sweater pattern can feel like a minefield. We’re conditioned to believe that if we follow conventional sizing instructions (choosing a size based on your full chest size + the ease recommended by the designer), then the rest of the pattern will fit our bodies well.
But the chances of your body being the exact same proportions as a standard sizing chart are extremely slim. Because all bodies are unique, and—especially in larger sizes—the circumference of your chest, waist, and hips can fall into completely different sizes, it’s unreasonable to assume that if we choose a size based solely on our full chest/bust circumference, that the rest of the pattern in that size will fit us as well.
Going up a size will never resolve all your fit issues; it will only create more. Looking at building a hybrid of at least two sizes will give you a better overall fit.
Fit It Best with Your Upper Torso Measurement
Garments that fit you well in the shoulders look well fitted, even if the rest of the garment doesn’t. Because standard sizing charts are, in general, based on a pattern B-cup (5-cm/2-inches difference between the upper torso and full chest), and you may have a larger or smaller difference, choosing a size based on your full chest is misleading.
In the two articles about Ease in Garment patterns (part 1 here, part 2 here), I’ve written in depth about how to choose a size or hybrid of sizes to get a sweater that fits you well.
These sweaters represent the difference between choosing a size based on your full chest measurement plus recommended ease (left) and choosing a size based on your upper torso measurement plus ease (right). Both are set-in sleeve constructions, but only the right sweater has armholes sitting where they should be. The left sweater looks more like a drop shoulder sweater.
What About Boobs?
If you’ve ever tried to make a sweater based on your full chest measurement when the difference between your upper torso and your full chest is more than the standard 5 cm/2 inches that patterns assume, then you’ve experienced fit that doesn’t work for your body. Choosing a size based on your upper torso measurement plus ease, means your sweater will fit your upper back and shoulders better, but, when you have a large bust, you need to make some accommodations on the front of the body. It’s much easier to add bust shaping to the front of the sweater—increasing the amount of fabric on the front of the sweater only so that there is enough fabric to comfortably cover your bust—than to live uncomfortably in a sweater that’s too big everywhere.
In a straight-shaped sweater (no shaping in the body), the whole circumference of the sweater body needs to fit your largest body circumference. This is not an ideal shape for someone with a large bust, so let’s look at two alternative sweater shapes that work well.
An A-line-shaped sweater is looser at your hips and smaller at your underarms. Modifying an A-line sweater to fit a larger bust is relatively simple. In this type of garment, you’re reducing the number of stitches from the hem to the armhole, so when you need more fabric on the front of the sweater, you just decrease fewer stitches in the front.
An hourglass-shaped sweater is intended to follow your body shape closer than any other shape. The calculations are a little more involved, but you can refine the shape to fit a fuller bust precisely.
Here’s How to Do It:
This is for a garment worked bottom up, in pieces. These types of adjustments are a little simpler for this type of garment structure, as you work the front and back separately.
A. Calculate how many extra stitches you need in the front, as follows:
1) Determine the difference between your upper torso measurement and your full bust measurement: Take your two body measurements and subtract.
2) If using an existing pattern, subtract 5 cm/2 inches from that number, because the designer has already accounted for this amount of space; but if drafting your own pattern, use the full difference, as you will need to account for it.
3) Multiply your result by your stitch gauge per cm/inch. This is the number of additional stitches required in the front of your sweater, over and above the number in the original pattern.
B. Adjust the garment shaping from hem to underarm.
Adjustment for A-line Shaping:
Because you’re decreasing from hem to underarm, what you’re going to be doing is decreasing fewer times, reducing the number of decreases. Take the number of stitches the pattern has you decrease and subtract the number of “extra stitches” as calculated above. For example, if the original pattern has you decrease 20 stitches as you work from hem to underarm, and the result of this calculation is 8, then you should only work 12 decreases.
Remember that with an A-line-shaped sweater, you always want the hem to be larger in circumference than the rest of the sweater. That’s what creates the A shape of this construction. If your full bust circumference is larger than the original hem circumference, simply add more space to the hem. In this case, add enough extra space to the hem circumference to ensure it’s a minimum of 5 cm/2 inches larger than your full bust circumference.
Adjustment for Hourglass Shaping:
You will be adding the “extra stitches” to the front of the sweater only, between the waist and the armhole. If you look at the shaping that already exists, you can add these stitches in evenly by recalculating the rate of shaping as follows:
- Total number of stitches to increase between waist and armhole = the number of stitches specified in the pattern + your “extra stitches”.
- Number of shaping rows = Total number of stitches you need to increase between waist and armhole ÷ 2
- Rows available for shaping = (Length between waist and armhole subtract 3.5cm/1.5 inches) x rows per inch/cm.
- Note: if the pattern lists the distance between waist and armhole in rows, subtract 3.5 cm/1.5 inches worth of rows from that.
- Rows available for shaping ÷ number of shaping rows = rate of shaping
Apply this new shaping to your pattern.
C. Adjust the garment shaping from underarm to shoulder.
To maintain the garment fit at the shoulders and in the neckline, once you’ve reached the armhole, you must remove all the “extra stitches” you’ve added. This is done in the same way in both A-line and Hourglass construction.
- If your neckline has rows that don’t have any shaping, you can decrease away your “extra stitches” in those rows. This works especially well for deep necklines like V-necks and scoop-necks.
- Alternatively, you can decrease these stitches 2.5 cm/1 inch away from the armhole, as illustrated below.
Q: Do you have any tips on fitting for larger bosoms on petite women versus larger bosom adjustments with medium and tall women?
A: No curvy woman ever has to dress in tent- or box-like shapes if they don’t want to. Where there are curves, there are ways to fit curves. Even when you’re petite.
Body shaping—especially hip, waist, and bust shaping—is possible, no matter your height. Your body lengths, such as the distance from your waist to your underarm or your waist to the hem of your sweater, don’t determine how much shaping is possible; they only determine how the shaping will have to be worked.
Q: For large-chested women with petite frames how do you handle the shaping? It feels like you have to increase a lot of stitches in relatively few rows. Is that the case?
A: There are better solutions, because increases and decreases have a significant impact on the structure of our hand-knit fabric. Working increases or decreases very close together—every two rows, in the same place—will cause your fabric to bias (the fabric shifts so that your stitches run in diagonal lines).
Rule #1: To avoid biasing, shaping rows should be placed at least four rows apart.
When creating modifications for petite bodies that are also busty (Hello! It’s me!) you may find you don’t have many rows to work with. But here’s the magic of hand-knit (and crocheted) fabrics: You can fool it just by changing the position of your shaping and spreading it out over multiple columns of stitches (creating vertical darts). In an hourglass-shaped sweater, you often see shaping placed at the side seams; however, I prefer placing my bust shaping on the front of my sweater instead. It gives me more space for executing my shaping, and it gives me a sweater that is shaped more accurately to my body. (See the next two illustrations for a visual of how this works.)
Single darts: I place the darts at 1/4 and 3/4 of the total stitch count at the beginning of my sweater front.
In row 1 of my shaping sequence, I increase 1 at the outside edge of each marker.
In the remaining rows of the sequence, I work evenly with no additional shaping.
With a very small length of fabric to work with, I often find I have to add a second dart to ensure I’m able to increase enough stitches.
The second marker is placed halfway between my first set of markers and the side seam.
With two shaping points on each side (four total), I usually have enough space to spread out all the required increases.
Rule #2: You can have a shaping row every two rows, only IF you move the shaping stitch to a different position.
In row 2, I work a row evenly with no shaping.
In row 3, I increase at marker b.
In row 4, I work a row evenly with no shaping.
Just like hopscotch, I’m jumping to increase at a different position to fool the fabric into thinking I’m not increasing every two rows.
Sometimes the sweater shapes that result from the changes you make don’t look like they would every look great on a human body, but, then again, sometimes those shapes are exactly what your body needs.
Q: Any tips for sweaters that lay nicely on the hips of pear-shaped bodies or wider hips?
A: A-line-shaped sweaters are ideal for wide hips. You can adjust the amount of ease at the hips to create the shape you want and change how your body is perceived.
Antiope (shown above) has 15 cm/6 inches of positive ease at the widest part of my hips. When viewed from the front and the back, you can see the shape of my body fairly clearly through the sweater, yet the A-line-shaped fabric gently skims my shape.
Denote (shown above) has 20 cm/8 inches of positive ease at the widest part of my hips. Just a touch more positive ease has completely changed how closely the sweater follows the shape of my body. Details are less discernible and smoothed over.
Hourglass shaping can also work well for bodies with wider hips. Moving the hip-to-waist shaping to the front and back of your sweater (away from the side seams) gives you more control over the shaping of your sweater. The shaping darts are worked in a similar way to the bust shaping described for hourglass sweaters above, with two important differences:
- Shaping darts are placed at 1/3 and 2/3 for the back of the sweater but remain at 1/4 and 3/4 for the front.
- The sweater will be decreased from the hip/hem to the waist instead of increased.
Bust dart position on front…
and bust dart position on back.
Do you have a question about how to make sweaters fit you better? Ask here!
All images by Kim McBrien Evans.
