It’s pretty much the same as using one of the fabric yardage tables on the back of a pattern envelope. You find the row that represents your size and the column that has the width of the fabric you want to buy and look at their intersection in the table.
The big difference between this table and the table on the back of a pattern envelope is that here you will find 3 numbers - labeled Minimum, Average and Maximum. They are just what they sound like. The minimum is the smallest amount of fabric that was called for by any of the hundreds of patterns that were used to build this table. The maximum is the largest amount of fabric that was called for by any of those patterns. And the average is the average amount of fabric.
The sketches on the back are designed to help you visualize just what types of outfits called for those minimum, average and maximum amounts of fabric. Look for tradeoffs between length and fullness. The dotted lines represent shoulders, waist, hips & knees.
So, imagine as best as you can the type of garment you would like to make with that beautiful fabric, see how it compares to the sketches, and then use the numbers in the table to estimate how much fabric you should buy!
Remember that an average is a number that is pretty much in the middle of a group of a numbers. That means that there are a lot of patterns that call for a little less than the average amount of fabric listed in the table, BUT there are also a lot of patterns that call for a little MORE than the average.
It is like grades on an exam in school. The average score might be a 75. But that does not mean that every student who got a ’C’ scored exactly 75. Some of those ’average’ students, for example, got 73, while others got 78.
So, if you think you’ll probably end up making an average pattern, you still may want to buy a little bit more fabric than the amount listed in the table as the average… But, you’re probably wondering, how much more?
That’s where the Safety Margin Table comes in. This table helps you decide how much more by showing you the safety margins that you get by adding different amounts of fabric to the average.
You start by consulting the main table, with your size and fabric width, and finding the average amount of fabric. Then you look at the Safety Margin Table. It tells you, for several different amounts of add-on to the average, what percentage of the patterns that were used to build the table can be made with that new amount of fabric.
For example: If the Safety Margin Table has the value 67% under the +¼ yard heading, that means that adding ¼ of a yard to your average will set you up with enough fabric to sew approximately 67% of the hundreds of patterns that were used to make this table.
Does 67% seem a bit low? Look under the +½ yard column and you might see that adding ½ yard to your average will set you up with enough fabric to sew approximately 85% of the hundreds of patterns that were used to make this table.
The cool thing about this table is that it allows you to pick the size of the safety margin that makes YOU feel comfortable!
Please note that each type of garment (skirt, pants, etc.) has a separate Safety Margin Table. Those tables are NOT interchangeable.
It was a lot of work – but it was pretty straightforward. We collected those tables that tell you how much fabric to buy from the backs of patterns – lots and lots (and lots!) of patterns! After we exhausted our pattern collections, we turned to the internet. There are many sites that will allow you to print the “back of the envelope” information for the patterns that they sell.
We set up five big spreadsheets and entered the fabric requirements for all of those patterns of each type (skirts, pants, jackets, dresses and tops). We kept the numbers broken down by clothing size and by fabric width.
There were a few simple formulas to find the minimums, maximums and averages for each column in the spreadsheet. Another formula converted yards to meters.
We rounded numbers up to the nearest 1/8th of a yard (or .05 of a meter). We used a statistical test to make sure that the averages were stable.
Finally, a few more formulas to come up with the Safety Margin tables, and Voila!
Absolutely! We are currently working on a set for women’s plus sizes. After that, we are planning to do sets for men’s and children’s clothing. If you would like to be notified when additional sets are available, drop us a comment and we will email you.
We’re sorry, but currently the answer is No. If this is important to you, let us know. If there is enough demand for single cards, we may offer them in the future.
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Gwyn hug is Gwen’s sewing label. She puts it in all the clothes that she sews for family and friends. It has two meanings. First, it means that her handmade clothes are like her hugs. Second, loosely translated from Welsh (Gwen’s ancestry), gwyn hug means a blessed cloak.
Well, sometimes, when I am very ’lucky’, our kitten Oliver takes time out of his busy day of sleeping, eating and tormenting the older cats, to ’help’ me package up the orders. This is his way of showing that your package passed his vigorous - oops, I mean Rigorous quality control test.