Tips and Ideas
as swimsuits or active wear are).
Without it, you would not be able to
bend your arms without popping a
seam and you wouldn’t be able to eat
that extra slice of cake!
Design ease is additional to
the wearing ease and is added by
the designer to serve a particular
purpose or to achieve a certain look.
A practical example is a nighty. A
nighty needs to be a fair bit bigger
than a similar dress so that it is not
restrictive and will be comfortable
to sleep in (Image 3). However, the
designer Issey Miyake includes a lot
of design ease in his garments as
part of his signature style (Image 4).
While we always need to keep the
wearing ease built into a garment,
we can play with the amount of
design ease to achieve different
looks and to make greater use
of our patterns. The amount
of ease included in a pattern is
calculated by subtracting your body
measurements from the actualsize of the fi nished garment. The
fi nished size is usually printed in the
bust, waist and hip area of the front
pattern pieces (Image 5).
The secret to this is to look at the
line art on a pattern rather than the
photos and drawings. For example,
Connie’s pajama pattern B
(Image 6). As you can see from the
line art (Image 7), this could also
be made up as an interesting tunic.
When you want to reduce the design
ease you will usually just go down