Why Your Knits Don't Fit Series; Sneaky Size Charts.

Are you an A or B cap? If not, you are going to want to listen to this. Welcome to part two of my series, Why Your Knits Don't Fit or Why Your Knits Did Not Fit. And we are talking all about sneaky size charts this week. To put it into context, knitwear and crochet designers are usually basing their sizes and grading them aka making their sample and then doing the math for all the other sizes off of size charts. So you have ones that are going to be like your Craft Yarn Council, you have your Ysoldas, you have your Sister Mountain designs, but we're always basing them off of size charts. And the one thing that I know for sure Craft Yarn Council doesn't tell you is that those size charts are actually based on an A or B cap. So they're basing every single size knowing that the difference between either their upper bust and their full bust or their full bust and their under bust is going to be roughly about one to two inches. Which I don't know about you, I am lucky enough that I actually land in a B cap, but if are anything that is outside of this, this means that this is something that you have to take a peek into because you might need to adjust your pattern to be able to deal with these sneaky size charts. So the first thing that I'm going to have you do is I'm going to have you go and take a measuring tape and I want you to measure your upper bust so that's like right underneath your armpits and I want you to then take it against your full bust aka where the biggest protrusion of your bust ends up coming. If you find that you are anything over a two inch difference that might mean that you need to adjust because you don't have an A or B cap. If you've ever tried on a bra and you are a fem, the cups usually come from the difference between those two sections. Each inch is an additional cup so if you end up having six inches that is an A, B, C, D, E, F cup. I want you to actually legit stop this video and go and do it come back and let's see the difference and if you do have a difference how to be able to deal with that. Now the first thing to know is that when it comes to fabric especially knit fabric there's usually some stretch horizontally by about two inches. When we also are looking into like the style of today which is very boxy it's usually okay to be able to kind of manipulate around and if you're like okay well the math is mathy but I'm still worried. Know that most patterns out there are going to have some positive ease into them so that's going to play a little bit more into this as well. So if you notice that there is more than a two inch difference what I want you to do is I want you to take your upper bust and I want you to add two inches aka five centimeters and then base your size off of that one. Now the reason why I say this is because this is actually going to fit way better for your neck lines and for your shoulders. What happens when we're going off of our full bust is that normally for plus sizes especially you end up having more of a bust protrusion meaning that your full bust is quite a bit bigger than your upper bust and your under bust. So when we start taking from our upper bust it means that it's going to be fitting our shoulders better knowing that we can always play around to be able to accommodate that full bust later on. So this kind of helps make sure that your fit works out for the rest of your body knowing that we can alter the pattern to be able to work for your full bust and I will show you how in a few seconds. So after you've picked up from your upper bust plus those two additional inches or five centimeters then you might want to start playing into some bust darts whether those are going to be vertical bust darts or horizontal bust darts. I have a really really great chat with Jackie from the Woolly Badger about this. I will make sure that it's in the show notes as well. But if you end up having it where you base that size off of your upper bust and it's not an A or B cup if you have more than an A or B cup then you can play with making sure that you add stitches in the full bust when you actually need them or adding a bust dart. So if you don't know what bust darts are they are a great way to be able to add additional fabric by doing short rows in the bust section and that brings the lower hem down. So that is one way to be able to do that. So the main thing to know is that all of the size charts are based off of an A or B cup and if you are not an A or B cup that means that you might need to modify some things. This is the conclusion of part two of our series of why your knits don't fit. If you want to make sure to be able to catch all the other ones my hope is to be able to put them out every single week and they are nice snackable easy things that you can implement in your knitting patterns going forward as quick and simple fixes. So I hope you enjoyed this one make sure that you like, comment, subscribe, subscribe to my channel, make sure that you don't miss any of my future tips and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. See you guys next week!