But surely, it is the same as any other pattern, that it will take some tweaks to fit you and therefore it is not the fault of the pattern as this is just the starting point?
@Missie - yes, that’s always true, but I think in this case it’s actually worse than that and the directions are genuinely wrong. If you look at my first picture, which shows my experiment using the same measurements for different books, the other four are all within a reasonable tolerance. Not the same, but definitely similar. The one in blue, from Ann Haggar's
Pattern Cutting for Lingerie book is a bit longer, but still the same size as the others if you aligned the crotches.
In particular they are all agreed that the area where the crotch goes under the body should be around 7-9 cm *finished* width (pattern width 4-4.5cm) for a finished length of somewhere between 8-12cm, when gently widening out at the back.
For the front gusset, he starts on the front crotch line at 4cm (8cm finished, much like everyone else). Then for the leotard, the front part of the gusset goes out to 9.5cm pattern (19cm finished) where the front and back parts of the gusset join. That's much wider than the others. The swimsuit is slightly narrower at 7cm in the same place, but at 14cm finished still considerably wider than the others in the same place at the lowest point on the body.
This is compounded by the front half gusset measurement. The gusset is explained as a custom length (½ waist-waist minus crotch depth), and you use ½ gusset for the back. In the front, however, the corresponding measurement is a fixed 9.5. My personal ½ gusset is only 6.5, so using 9.5 adds 3cm at the front to the overall length. It needs to be one or the other - personal, or fixed, not both.
The way the back is drafted, the balk half gusset continues to get wider as it goes up, broadening out to 3/16th hip (⅛ hip for the swimsuit) at the back crotch line (that's 17.5 for me, finished 36cm). Even allowing for the bum to pull the back crotch line up, that's a heck of a lot of fabric very low down. Plus it's 3cm too long in the crotch because of the fixed 9.5 length so it has no negative ease anymore.
I made three changes:
-- used my personal front crotch length
-- treated the specified 9.5 width on the half crotch line as a finished measurement (using 4.25 for the pattern on the half gusset line)
-- put the 3/16th hip on the hipline not the back crotchline
Everything else I did the same. It’s now a much better fit and a normal shape (see photo below). It is also within the tolerances of the others - not the same, but not wildly different.
So yes, I do think it’s the pattern not me. As I said at the beginning, it may be OK is you are his size 10 (a UK 4ish) and have the body of a swimsuit model with a great big perky bum to haul up all that extra fabric, but be very very careful if you are using it to make a basic block for an ordinary person.
And it's not only me - when the original site was up 10 years ago, there were a number of "hobbyists" who wrote in or posted blogs showing simialr problems around the back crotch and seat. Like me, they got dismissive replies that it must be their errors because they weren't fashion students. Most of the blogs have gone, but I found
this (scroll down a bit to see the right part). She used the swimsuit (and is quite skinny), but had exactly the same problem as me with a very baggy bum, and she also made exactly the same changes cutting back the crotch and lifting the leg line.
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