Peggy Sagers: What is a template in sewing?

It is a pattern or part of a pattern that works, and so we repeat it on other garments.

One thing better than discovering templates is understanding how they look on a flat pattern and how to transfer them from pattern to pattern.

Using a template, you can know before you cut a new blouse that your neckline or armhole will fit perfectly, saving time and frustration.

Such a simple concept is genius.

Today we'll learn to create our own templates on "Fit2Stitch."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ male announcer: "Fit2Stitch" is made possible by Kai Scissors, Reliable Corporation, Plano Sewing Center, Elliott Berman Textiles, Bennos Buttons, and Clutch Nails.

♪♪♪ Peggy: My goal today is to help you sew more.

And I think the more confidence we have, the more we sew, especially when it comes to patterns.

If we talk about the number one reason women get frustrated with sewing, it's fit.

And over and over, I hear it, and all I wanna do is help you make it simpler and easier.

So today we're gonna do what we call templates.

Templates are repeatable parts of the pattern that we can carry from one pattern to another, to another.

And I'm gonna recommend you have three templates in the upper part of the body, the bodice, and three templates in the lower part of the body.

I'm gonna show you how to find them.

I'm gonna show you how to take them from your clothing.

I'm gonna show you how to duplicate them.

All right, so let's get started 'cause we talk about fit and style.

And it's interesting for me to point out to you that the three templates in the upper part of the body: we're going to call it the neckline, the shoulder, and the armhole.

If we talk fit versus style, the neckline is actually a style decision.

However, it has to be at least to where it doesn't choke us, so we call that portion of it fit, and it has to be where it's not too low because that's just not attractive.

So although the neckline is a style issue, there are some fitting elements that we consider.

If we go to the next template, which is going to be the shoulder, the shoulder is always a shoulder.

It doesn't change from garment to garment to garment.

So I'm gonna show you how to duplicate that shoulder angle repeatedly.

The only time we change a shoulder angle is if we put in a shoulder pad.

And I'll show you that as well.

And then when we talk about the armhole, the armhole, again, even though it's a fitting issue, and many of you say, "Oh, it doesn't fit; the armholes are too low," that's actually a style choice.

And when I say style choices, really what I mean by that is, we the wearer get to decide how low we want our armhole, how big we want it, how we want the sleeve, those are elements that we can control.

The angle of the shoulder, no one says, "Gee, I want my shoulder to be more square on my garment so that it hangs down and slops below."

Those are things we just don't do.

So that's why we call the neckline and the shoulder, we call them style issues, style templates, and we're going to have multiple.

And then we call the shoulder seam a fit template.

Okay, so just for a minute here, let's take the garment and let's just draw it out.

Let's just draw out and understand.

We're gonna do first a bodice and then we'll go to the lower portion.

The very front of the garment we call the center front.

And typically most of us, if you go from the very center of our bodies to our waist, 12 inches, 13 inches, something around there.

It's a straight line.

The reason it's straight is we have it on straight of grain.

Straight of grain, what we know about it, it's stable, it's secure, it holds fast.

There are exceptions, we know that.

The next we do is we have a neckline.

And we notice that this neckline follows a French curve.

And where on the curve is called styling.

I'm gonna show you different necklines here in a minute, but notice it's a straight line and then a curved line.

And the job of the neckline is simply to connect the center front to the shoulder seam.

We have square neck lines, we have all kinds of different options, but the only goal of a neck line is to connect the center of the front garment to the shoulder seam.

Then we have a shoulder seam.

And a shoulder seam is like center front, it's a straight line.

And so we draw that into place.

And again, that, you will gonna find today that that repeats itself over and over because we're dealing with the same body, we're dealing with us.

And our shoulders just don't change from week to week.

They certainly do from year to year.

We know that, you know, there's many things with aging that changes the angle of our shoulder, but not quickly.

It's a more slow process.

Then when we leave a straight line, we go to a curved line and we go to what we call an armhole.

And the armhole's job is any two points because its job is to connect the side seam to the shoulder seam.

Again, that's its only job.

We've seen square armholes, we've seen all kinds of different things, but once we know what we like, we can repeat that.

And then we have a straight angle line again.

We call that the side seam.

Straight angle, straight angle, straight angle.

Notice they're every other one.

And then the waist is what we call a curved line.

It follows the French curve.

So, what we wanna do, and why I want us to have a basic understanding of this, is because as we go and change these necklines, every time we change a neckline, its goal will be is to connect two points, which is the center front to the shoulder seam.

Every time we change an armhole, its goal will be the same thing, to connect two points, which is the shoulder seam and the side seam.

So that's it, and you recognize that the center front is always straight.

The neck lines we're going to make templates for, the shoulder we're gonna make a template for, the armhole we're gonna make a template for, and then we just simply draw on a straight line.

The waistline we're gonna make a template for, but it's actually we're gonna put it in the bottom portion of the garment rather than the upper portion of the garment.

And that's because in many garments, we actually don't have a waistline seam.

In a shirt, for instance, the shirt goes beyond our waist.

Blouses, they go beyond our waist.

Many jackets go beyond our waist.

And so that is generally considered only important when we're doing the bottom part of the body, such as a skirt or a pair of pants.

That's when we pull in that waistline seam.

So for now, the upper portion, we're only gonna deal with the neckline, shoulder, and armhole.

Remember, neckline and shoulder are both style.

Shoulder is not.

Shoulder is going to be the same repeatedly unless we put in that pad.

Okay, so let's take a look, and I wanna talk about armholes first.

Armholes, typically, I'm gonna set you on a journey and you're gonna go out and discover your favorite armholes.

And you're gonna have four of them.

Most of us get to have four.

And what those are, and I put the largest on the bottom, is we have a jacket, then we have a blouse, and then we have a knit top, and then we have sleeveless.

Now, I put them in size order specifically so that you could start to recognize that those are the orders that you will find them in.

And they're for good reason.

When I go to the jacket, I typically add a shoulder pad up here.

And instead of the angle of the shoulder being like that, as I talked about, it's actually gonna change, and it's gonna incorporate that shoulder pad, and when we incorporate that shoulder pad, the shoulder pad is only incorporated in this part of the bodice.

It's not incorporated at the base of the neck.

So that changes the shoulder angle simply because we add a shoulder pad in there.

But also, if you notice, it changes the armhole size.

So that's what makes our jacket armhole the very largest of all of our armholes.

Many people don't understand that the blouse armhole is actually next, smaller than a jacket, and it simply goes inside of a jacket, and it's typically a very soft fabric.

And so it doesn't matter that it's a little bigger for us to move, and it's definitely bigger than what our knit armhole is.

And that's because we know that our knit sleeve stretches when we move and it can be smaller to our body because we rely on the fabric for stretch.

When we have a woven blouse and we go to move, we need greater circumference so that we can move.

And I'm sure we've all had a blouse where the sleeve circumference is so small, it's driven us bananas.

Like, we take the blouse off because it's so uncomfortable.

And then the very smallest armhole we have is, of course, the sleeveless garment, our tank tops.

And what we can do with that sleeveless garment is where-- is a good place to start.

I think it's a great place to start, especially if you're just learning to sew, you make a garment, the armholes are wrong, and it's really frustrating.

So I'm just gonna take my French curve and I'm gonna put it down and just follow.

Now, keep in mind, this is a finished seam line.

This is finished.

There's no seam allowance on it, it's finished.

And if I notice the numbers, I'm gonna notice those numbers and you're gonna go from point A to point B.

And then I'm gonna simply take it right back to my tissue, and I'm gonna see if those two points work.

And in this case, when I go to lay it down, it's not.

It's smaller than what this is.

Now remember, the difference is this has seam allowance.

So when you go to compare this to this, make sure that you're taking away the seam allowance, whatever the seam allowance of the pattern has, and I go and I draw that in place.

So very simple to lay down a garment, measure that, and I would do front and then back, keep them separate, even though they're going to come in fairly close on a sleeveless garment.

You still want to differentiate between that front and that back armhole.

And then what you're going to do is you're just going to make these little templates.

And templates are just fun to use and they're very simple.

And the reason they are is because they're rigid.

And that's really what I want.

And it's easier than using a French curve all the time.

Once I have my template, my sleeve template, in place, all I do is put one point at the shoulder, I put one point at the side seam, and I draw it in.

That's it.

And just as much as I-- now, remember seam allowance.

Always remember seam allowance.

So I think--I suggest you either work all the time with seam allowance or all the time without it.

But keep in mind that when you're measuring an armhole, it doesn't have seam allowance.

You've got to add it on so you can come back out and, you know, add the seam allowance to there just to make sure you're keeping them straight.

When I suggest making a muslin, and I always suggest it, when you do an armhole, cut off that seam allowance.

Because so many times when we make a muslin, we don't actually finish the sleeves and necklines, we just throw it on to kind of check circumference and check those other issues.

So if we just, when we're doing a muslin, cut off that seam allowance at the armhole, cut it off at the neckline, then we have a much clearer vision as to, is this right and is this what we want?

And I'm gonna tell you something.

Some of the easiest things to do when you're shopping is to measure these armholes and to measure these necklines.

And they're very simple to duplicate.

The materials that you want to use can be anything.

I use lightweight plastic because I just think it's enough.

I put them all in a ring and I kind of hang them in my sewing room.

You could do cardboard.

It doesn't matter what they're made out of.

As long as you understand and write on them, "my knit sleeve front," "my knit sleeve back," "my blouse sleeve front," "my blouse sleeve back," just to make sure you're clear.

And I think the greater understanding is to make sure that we're aware that there are different size armholes for one person.

You're not--every armhole isn't gonna be the exact same size.

But I do think a good starting point is a sleeveless armhole because so many of us can't get that sleeveless armhole right.

When we go shopping, the armhole's too low before we start.

And some of us, if we have a larger bust in order to get the circumference big enough for our bust, the armholes, like, they're down to our waist.

It is difficult to raise an armhole once it's cut.

So this is why we wanna do this ahead of time.

We can duplicate it repeatedly, and there we go.

Okay, let's turn our attention now for a minute to the shoulder seam.

What is the shoulder seam, and what perspective does it play to center front?

Because center front is a straight line, everything really evolves around that center front line.

It's what stabilizes, it's how we get the garment off and on most of the time.

So what I wanna do is I'm gonna draw a straight line and I'm gonna extend center front up past the point of the shoulder, all right?

Just past the point of that shoulder.

I wanna draw it straight up.

Here's the point of the shoulder.

I'm gonna bring it straight up.

Then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a 90 degree angle to center front, and I'm going to intersect that base of the neck.

The base of the neck on the body is just right here, right where the shoulder changes from front to back.

And I wanna bring this up.

A 90 degree angle is right here to center front, intersecting the base of the neck.

And that right there is my angle, not with a shoulder pad, I drew that in earlier, just so we would see it, but that is the angle I want and that is the angle I wanna repeat.

So again, make a template.

What I've done is I put center front right at center front, and you don't even need to see it as much as you just need to realize the placement points.

I've got center front.

I've got this point that needs to go at the base of the neck where this is, and there's my shoulder line.

And so every time before I even start into a pattern, I should lay down, figure out what my shoulder angle is first.

That's the first issue you've gotta do.

But if you've made a garment in the past and you like it on you, then I would lay it down and get the angle from that garment.

And this is, I think, the exciting thing is a lot of this you've probably already done, have done, you just don't realize that you can carry it forward from pattern to pattern and pattern and not-- so many of us make up the garment before we figure out something's wrong.

These three templates in the upper bodice is what I would always do to check fit before I made up the muslin.

Then I would make up the muslin to check other things.

But these three things are things we can do ahead of time to make sure the pattern is going to come in where we want it to.

So let's do the same thing with a neckline.

Necklines, if I search for how many necklines are out there, my goodness gracious, there's so many.

But we don't use that many, and we can, but typically we use what's called the V-neck, this is called our jewel neck and this is called our scoop neck.

And in every case of these three, when I take the French curve and lay it down, it follows the French curve.

So all I have to do is go to my wardrobe and go and look at my favorite V-neck.

Pull it out of your closet, put the French curve down on it and say, this is the V-neck I like.

I'm gonna make a template out of it.

Here's my little V-neck template.

I'm gonna put it down on my garment, make sure it's the same.

Remember the differences of seam allowance and no seam allowance because that's a deal breaker.

But then I'm gonna come back to my garment and remember my pattern and remember what a neckline does.

It connects center front to the base of my neck.

Now, keep in mind that some V-necks can start wider than the base.

Some can start out here.

Those two points can be whatever you decide you want them to be, but I place one where you want it to be, and I swing one over to the center front.

And that's the V-neck that I've had.

This way, and remember, none of this counts.

The only thing that counts are the two points, one being at the shoulder seam and one being at center front.

I don't have to worry now that that neckline is going to be too low.

I can know with confidence, I can cut into my really expensive fabric and know the neckline's not gonna be too low because I have my fun little template.

And again, in the beginning, because once you get this under your belt, you'll go crazy.

But if I just get those three necklines, if I just get the scoop neck, and if I look at that scoop neck, you see that it follows that French curve beautifully.

Now, remember that that base is probably farther out, and so if I measure how far apart these points are and I realize that they're 8 inches I can go up from center front and realize that scoop neck is way over here.

So it's a much wider place that I have to start.

And so when I go to put this down, I realize that that's the point I want to be at.

And that's the part that I want to be.

So my scoop neck takes a much different look as I come around and go there with it.

All choices that you get to decide, but once we decide them, we want to make them repeatable.

It's so much easier to do.

Okay, so that's the upper body.

Let's move to the lower portion of the body.

And we're going to do that with a skirt and a pair of pants.

So we're gonna do the same thing.

There's three templates that are at the bottom of the body.

And I think what's interesting is in comparison to the top of the body, all three of those templates are fit.

Like, no one says, "Oh, I just want my waist to be a little more or a little less crooked than what it really is."

So I'm going to grab these garments here because even though our templates are going to be more fit oriented, there's still going to be differences.

And the differences when we talk about pants, and I've got these all stacked in cording, is you can see the different lengths.

And the reason the different lengths exist are the exact same of why they exist in clothing itself, in the top part.

And that is because my knit pant is gonna be the shortest because the fabric will move with me.

So I can have it closer to my crotch.

I can have it tighter.

I don't need to have the ease that I need in a woven pair of pants.

So I've got my woven on the bottom.

It's the largest, and if you notice, the longest crotch of all.

Then what comes next is my jean.

And that's because we wear our jeans kind of like knit pants sometimes.

They're maybe a little tight, but nobody's gonna tell us that, but that's just how they're worn.

And so the jean comes in somewhere between the woven and the knit.

And then my smallest, my shortest, my narrowest is going to be my knit crotch.

Okay, so when we do that, let's go ahead and just draw now out the bottom half and the things that we concern ourselves with on the bottom half of the body.

Again, I'm gonna start with a straight line, and that straight line becomes center front.

Then what we do is we have two French curve positions that come together and we don't know exactly how they go.

So what we do in the beginning is we either take it off a garment we like and we can put the French curve down.

And honestly, when you have a skirt, you can just lay a skirt down and trace it.

And you only have to trace the top portion.

You don't have to trace the whole thing.

Then the French curve comes in.

And typically, we've got the French curve.

And the French curve actually, if you notice, it acts as a template for our hip and acts as a template for our waist.

So I don't actually make a template because I simply use the French curve.

Different on an armhole because an armhole a lot of times, as the French curve comes down into the armhole, it pivots.

The neckline a lot of times, it comes down and then it pivots.

So it's a little more difficult to use the French curve as a template for the upper body, but for the lower body, one fell swoop and you've got the template there.

So what I do on my French curve is I just put a mark that this is my hip line and this is my waistline.

And you can do that so that every time you go into a pattern, I put those two at waist and hip and I say, "Oh, this is perfect, this is exactly going to fit."

You'll see many a garments that are just not right at the hip line.

And if they are there on the French curve, then it doesn't matter how much circumference you add at the hip and how much circumference you add at the waist, that shaping is not going to match you.

And different bodies have different shapes.

Most of us are on this more curved edge.

But some of you, if you say to me, "Oh, I've got these flat hips and nothing's big enough and everything hangs on me," it's probably because you're on this flatter part of the French curve.

The waistline, what it does, is it simply connects the center front to the hip line.

That's all it does, but the shaping of that waistline, as you all know, changes over the years.

As women, we develop bellies.

As men, we develop bellies.

And so where do those waistlines go?

They either have to go above or below.

They won't stay in the middle.

So we get to decide which way they're gonna go, but there's nothing wrong with scooping out a waistline.

I've done many a garment that just scoops this out, cuts all this off, and that's how the wearer decides to do it.

And again, it gets to be our choice, but then once we do it, we simply wanna repeat it consistently over and over again.

All right, so let's talk about where our crotches come in and how our crotches come into play.

What we know about pants is that they're made from the skirt.

And so our waistline and our hip line all duplicate themselves, which is good news.

The only thing that changes is as we extend this crotch line out, is what happens, and it comes into play and comes up to the center front.

So how far this is extended out and how much curve is in there, it all follows the French curve, but it's so much easier, again, to duplicate that.

And I think that it's interesting to me because of, like I said, of all these three templates, they're all the same and they'll stay pretty much the same in every pant you make.

So if it's a knit pant, you use the same template.

If it's a pair of jeans, use the same.

You'll have one for the front, you'll have one for the back, and the goal will simply be get that to be the same, get the circumference from this point to this point to be the same, and it will just simplify pants tremendously.

And women have said to me over and over, "I can't get pants to fit."

And I think it's simply because we're just not aware of these templates.

So let me show you just an example of this.

I'm gonna take a pair of knit pants that are about 400 years old, that I love and I wear all the time.

And I've got this folded to where you can see that there is the front and there is-- here's the--here's just the front.

In fact, I'm gonna flip it like this, so you can just see it compared here.

And this has got a band on it.

When you've got a band on it, you wanna slide it down to consider the band as part of it.

And notice that it comes down and it stops just about right here.

If I were to trace that shape, you'd see that it's just really close.

It goes from right here.

Remember again, afterwards to always add those seam allowances in.

Those are very important.

But if I come in and compare it to my pant pattern here, I want you to just look at the difference.

Look how deep this pant pattern goes.

So right away, you know what I can see?

I can see it's not gonna work for me.

This is what I like, it's not this.

So don't be afraid, remember that the crotch seam sews to itself.

So don't be afraid to change that center front or center back to what you want it to be.

Way to go.

The next step is to take these simple concepts and see what garments we can make with them by putting them into place.

We'll find those garments that are easy to sew, add the element of fit, and just have some fun.

Join me next time on "Fit2Stitch" as we talk about easy-to-sew garments.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ announcer: "Fit2Stitch" is made possible by Kai Scissors, Reliable Corporation, Plano Sewing Center, Elliott Berman Textiles, Bennos Buttons, and Clutch Nails.

♪♪♪ announcer: To order a 4-DVD set of "Fit2Stitch" Series 13, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.