1930s and 1940s sewing ease?

[St. Louis]

Over the holiday break I've been working through my stash of 1930s and 40s sewing patterns and fabrics. I have a question for the more experienced dressmakers here. I understand basically how to fit myself, but I don't know exactly how much ease I'm supposed to build in. That is, I find that there's a great deal more ease than I expected, sometimes as much as 2 inches in the waist area and at least 1 1/2 inches in the hip area. Is that how these garments are supposed to fit?

Let's take a skirt as an example. I take a modern size 6 in ready-made clothes, maybe an 8 (depending) and about a 10 or 12 in modern patterns. Okay, so I check my measurements against the 1930s pattern, and I see, judging from the pattern envelope measurements, I'm roughly a size 16 in 1930s skirts. Not a problem.

Then when I check the actual pattern, either in a muslin or just by taking careful measurements, I find that the skirt would actually be fairly loose on me. I.e., as I said, the pattern has built in about 2 inches, sometimes even 3. I'm not talking about a full swingy skirt here, but rather a fairly fitted straight skirt. I found the pattern on the wiki page: http://vintagepatterns.wikia.com/wiki/Simplicity_1492

I find that with about an inch and a half ease, the skirt fits without being tight. I can still sit down.

As I said, I know enough about sewing to be able to fit myself but I don't want to make the clothes tighter than they would have been in the 30s and 40s. Just how much ease should be built in? Were these clothes supposed to be rather loose fitting?

 

[sheeplady]

If you're making the dress to the correct measurements, than the ease is going to be whatever the designer put in the pattern. Some patterns have their ease listed on the back cover or written on the pattern pieces (newer patterns). The other good way to tell how much ease you have is to lay out your pieces, measure each piece, and subtract the seam allowances (remember to do this for each piece) and also any darts or tucks. Then add up the pieces that cover whatever area you want to get the "full measurement" and subtract your "body measurement" to get the ease. This is easier on patterns that have the waist, bust, and hips marked but you can still do it by estimating where these things fall.

If you do like a tighter fit, I would do the above to lessen the ease.

At least when I started sewing (in the 90s) there was acceptable amounts of ease for each type of garment- i.e. casual garments had a certain range of ease and patterns labeled as fitted had a lower range. I believe that this was for each manufacturer, however.

Also, this is totally an aside but occasionally patterns are just not... right. I've run across this in sewing and crochet that occasionally I get a pattern that is obviously not designed correctly. With the older patterns I find this to less true than modern ones (I think they actually tested the old ones) but with the modern ones I find mistakes in the instructions or worse the pattern pieces far too often.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Take into account also the undergarments the item is designed to fit over -- a girdle, a slip, whatever -- and the fact that the fabrics used didn't contain spandex, which is what modern clothes substitute for ease.