Hagen skirt sew-along – Part 2

CHOOSING YOUR SIZE

As always, I recommend that you don’t just choose a size without first measuring yourself and comparing to the measurements on the size chart. Is your waist-hip ratio different to our sizing? Not to worry, we will now go through how to change the pattern to fit your curves.

The waist measurement should be taken at your natural waist – the thinnest part of you just above your belly button. Compare this to the waist measurement under the body measurements. The measurement under the finished garment measurements tells you the finished skirt waist, not at your natural waist but 1 cm below. Confusing, I know! Just go with the body measurement and know that this pattern is designed with 2 cm (3/4 “) ease on the waist.

Take your hip measurement at the widest part. In our patterns we assume this to be 19 cm (7,5″) below the waist. This pattern is designed with 4,5 cm (1 3/4”) ease on the hips. This is not a huge amount so the skirt will hug the body from waist to widest hip and then get wider towards the hem.

Choose the size based on your hip measurement and adjust the waist if needed.

What about if your hip measurement is between sizes? Just go for the larger size and you will end up with a little bit more ease on the hips which won’t make a huge difference to the fit.

ADJUSTING THE FIT

Let’s say your waist circumference is 3 cm more than the one on the sizing chart. Normally, we would divide the difference by 4 when adjusting a pattern. However, this pattern has a waist dart at the front and we will adjust that as well. We’ll divide by 6 instead.

3 / 6 = 0,5

This is the amount you will need to add to both side seams and both dart legs. If this number is larger than 8 mm (5/16″) you can eliminate the dart completely.

Now let’s look at an opposite scenario: Say your waist is 5 cm smaller than on our sizing chart.

5 / 6 = 0,8333

Let’s move side seams and dart legs by 0,83 cm. Remember that dart lines are moving to the opposite direction than side seams since we’ll want to make the side seams smaller and dart larger.

Hope this helps to make any adjustments needed. Next time we’ll be sharing a free pocket variation not included in the pattern.