If you've been sewing for years but are beginning to find that your usual fitting adjustments are no  longer giving you the results they once did, it may be time to rethink your approach to fitting.

Let's face it, bodies evolve over time. If it's been some time since you first learned your "go to"  fitting techniques, keep watching. In this video, I’ll share why the adjustments that used to work aren’t working anymore—and what you can do to start getting the fit you want again.

Inside this week's video you'll discover:

• Three key reasons why the techniques that once worked might be falling short now

• Four common mistakes that can create more fitting challenges and how to solve them

• Three principles I teach in my Fitting Essentials online course and the best project to get you started.

If you’ve been frustrated with fit, your approach may need to evolve. Consider how your body may have changed since you first started sewing, or if you're new to sewing, consider h...

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 insolvable without adding in patience and perseverance because good things take t...

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 making cycle which I am sure you find very ...

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 feedback from experts, and work on the correct technique…"

This struck me quite profoundly when considering how most of us approach fitting. In essence this statement defines what the path is made of. The stops we make along the path to mastery are what the author refers to as "stages of competency", of which there are four.

So what stage are you at? You can let me know HERE or HERE.

Next week, I'll share some tips on moving through the stages with...

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 2024 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 pattern size but I encourage you to just double check to
...