Hi all,
I would like to ask for help with something this community knows far better than I do:
how to measure a garment.
I am Antonio, and in my spare time I am writing Agio Fit, an open data model for garment
fit. It has two documents. A Cut Profile describes how a finished garment is cut, from
measurements taken with the garment laid flat. A Fit Profile describes a person: body
measurements if they want to record them, how they like each part of a garment to fit,
and what they kept or returned. Fit is then the ease between the two, zone by zone. The
profile belongs to the person and lives wherever they choose to keep it; nothing is
collected centrally. It is a v0.1 draft, the specification is CC BY 4.0, the reference
code Apache 2.0, and there is nothing to buy.
FreeSewing goes from body measurements to a pattern. Agio Fit goes from a finished
garment back to the ease it leaves on a body. You have a careful, documented vocabulary
for the body. Mine for the garment was written from how brands publish their size
charts, not from practice, and every time I test it against something real I find a
problem.
The latest came from reading your measurements reference. You distinguish highBust,
just under the arms, from chest at the fullest part, and plugin-bust drafts from the
high bust. My chest_width is taken about 2 cm below the armhole, which on the body sits
much closer to the high bust. Yet I compare it with the fullest chest circumference, and
my plan was to pair it with the bust as well. On a garment shaped for a bust, I suspect
that compares two different levels and gets the ease wrong. How would you pair them?
These are the five definitions the shirt form uses today. The garment is laid flat,
fastened, and not stretched; widths are taken perpendicular to the centre line and are
half the circumference.
chest_width: Across, from armhole seam to armhole seam, about 2 cm below the armhole.waist_width: Across, at the narrowest point. Where the garment does not narrow,
halfway between armhole and hem.shoulder_width: From shoulder seam to shoulder seam across the back. This is a
straight line and not half of anything. A raglan or kimono garment has no shoulder
seams and should leave this out rather than estimate.sleeve_length: From the shoulder seam to the edge of the cuff, following the sleeve.
On a raglan, from the base of the collar, which should be said in a note.neck_circumference: Collar fastened and laid flat, measured along the collar from the
centre of the button to the centre of the buttonhole. This is the whole circumference,
not half of it, despite the garment being flat.
Where could two people measuring the same shirt read any of these in two ways? Two
measurements are missing on purpose, armhole and total length, because I could not
define them without ambiguity. If you know how, I would like to hear it.
More generally, if anyone with pattern-making or fitting experience would be willing to
look at the full vocabulary now and then, it would help more than anything I can do on
my own. It is volunteer help, and I want to be clear about what I can give back: if a
suggestion ends up in the specification, I will write it in myself, publish it under the
specification’s CC BY 4.0 licence, and thank you by name in an acknowledgements section.
That is all I can offer: no payment and no stake in the project. A reply here, an issue
on the repository, or a “this is wrong because” are all welcome, with no expectations on
either side.
The measurement definitions:
The project: https://agiofit.org
Thanks for reading.