does this post make my butt look big? not anymore!

This past Sunday, I went to a fitting class held by Sandra Betzina at the local G street fabric shop. And it was good.

When it comes to technical skills, I am an excellent seamstress. But fitting is my downfall, particularly when fitting myself. Half the things I make I don't even show here because they are so bad. This is one reason I got into historical costuming--I could show off my technical skills, and everything was fitted over a corset, which I find so much easier cause all the bumps and grooves are largely smoothed out. So I was very excited to see G Street offering this short workshop.

Basically what Ms. Betzina did, is she took two of her Vogue Today's Fit patterns--one for pants and one for a jacket--and had muslins made up in every size. She took our measurements and then we tried on the appropriate muslin(s). Then she went over point by point what the fit problems were and how to fix them. She had a sheet of paper with outlines of the pattern pieces, and marked on it for each person what size(s) to cut, what changes should be made, where, how much, etc. It was..... fabulous. Not only to have her do this for me, but to watch her do it for each person in the class was great. All those fitting problems that I have always read about were right in front of me. And as she folded and tugged bits of fabrics, the fixes that I always read about started making sense.

Ok, true confession time. I don't really like most of her patterns. They always seem a little too....odd for me (though I will say that she had some samples that she brought to class, and a lot of them are MUCH better in person than they are in the pattern photos). There are a couple exceptions, but for the most part I just flip past them in the catalog. But the changes that she showed that I need for this one pattern will translate, I am sure, to other patterns in any line. Like the baggy butt and narrow shoulders alterations--those will work across the board. And I did get the pants pattern she used in class and am going to make it up with the exact changes she gave me for that pattern. And then experiment with a few other patterns that are not hers--make the butt and inner thigh and other changes, and see what happens.

I feel like I can make pants--real live FITTING pants. For maybe the first time since I gained weight and could no longer just make them out of the envelope.

**twirl, cartwheel, twirl, backflip**

I'll let you know how it goes in real life.