In Fitting Fashion

You're invited!

I'm going to be giving a free online presentation on January 24 and January 27, 2023 called Three Advanced Strategies to Achieve the Fit You Want. This is an encore of a really well received presentation that I did last year so I'm going to do it live all over again. If you missed it last year, here’s your second chance.

In this presentation I’ll be sharing how to assess your fitting photos so that you can get a good idea of what your personal fitting needs might be, I'm going to present to you some ideas about how you can look at the pattern much more closely so you can make adjustments to it before you see your first sample and then I'm also going to tell you what order you need to make your fitting adjustments in.

I think you’ll find what I have to share really valuable and may just help you move along the path to fitting mastery. If you’ve been following along with those posts, this presentation is perfect for you if you are at stage...

No doubt you've heard this cliche before: "practice makes perfect". Although this is generally used as a form of encouragement, I prefer the phrase practice makes progress.

Of course in order to make progress it's important to practice new skills mindfully, with focus and attention. As this author states: 

"An hour training session with a wandering mind can drastically decrease the learning process. Eight minutes a day of mindfulness has been shown to be the minimum amount of time to start seeing physical changes in the attention centers of the brain."

Eight minutes minimum. I point this out because, based on the "minutes viewed" data on my tutorials, most of us struggle to stay attentive for more than 3 minutes. While this could say something about my ability to create engaging videos, consider how much information you may be missing in those remaining 5 minutes.

Of course this equation becomes...

Last week, I shared the four stages you generally go through on the path to fitting mastery.

As you move along the path through the four stages you'll undoubtedly be confronted with failure. While we all try to avoid it, failure is an extremely important part of achieving mastery in a subject, as long as you are able to consider it a helpful friend.

I know you've heard it before, but have you embraced it?

If you're not quite there yet, the key is to learn from the failure. Take a step back, zoom out and consider what may have gone wrong and how you might approach it differently based on the new knowledge the failure brought to the surface.

Those who succeed are those most willing to experience failure first.

With failure comes new knowledge as long as you move through the process like this: develop a hypothesis, test it out, analyze the results, develop another hypothesis and continue until you succeed.

This looks alot like the sample...

As we approach the beginning of a brand new year, my inbox has been filled with "year in review" emails. While I do feel it's beneficial to look back on what you've already accomplished, it's important to use that knowledge to make decisions about the future you want to build so you can keep learning and growing.

Learning and growing leads to mastery which is something I constantly strive for as someone who teaches others about pattern making and fitting.

Mastering any skill can be a long road so I googled "the path to mastery" and landed on this article. It certainly provided some insight-especially about the 10,000 hour rule. If you're not familiar with that rule it basically states that if you spend 10,000 hours doing any one thing, you'll achieve mastery of that subject, but here's another perspective.

The author of the article makes this statement:

"The number of hours is arbitrary, and what really matters is "deliberate practice" where we are highly focused, have integrated...

Fitting is generally thought to be a trial-and-error process. There is seemingly no roadmap, no sequence of logical steps to follow and no hope of ever getting a pattern to fit you. I’d like to challenge that thought because there is in fact a sequence of logical steps to follow that will lead to a pattern that fits.

If you want to know what that step by step process is and you have declared 2022 your year of fitting success, here are three things you need to do to get started:

1. Download the Perfect Fit Guide (and read it). It contains the step by step process that will put you on the path to fitting success.
   You’ll find the link in my bio.
    
2.  Take your body measurements.
   You'll find the Pattern Measurement Worksheet inside the guide with directions on what and how to measure.
   Watch this tutorial: How to Measure Yourself
   
   
3.  Choose Your Pattern Size. Choose a simple top or dress pattern to practice on. You may already know your...