Sunday, December 8, 2013

What is Ease? How Does it Make Your Hand-Knitted Sweater Fit - Or Not?

Why does one manufacturer's size 6 jacket fit you, but another manufacturer's size 8 is too small? Often it's the amount of ease they allow in the garment. What is ease? What's the difference between negative and positive ease?Ease is wiggle room in your clothes.If you put on a blouse with no wiggle room, manage to button it up and it looks good as long as you don't breathe, you might consider yourself the height of fashion. But if you lift your arm to brush your hair, you'll feel so hampered by the cloth you might even tear the blouse. That's a blouse with no ease.How does ease work with a stretchy garment like a sweater?You know that clingy sweater you have that outlines your every curve and makes your mate's eyes pop? It fits you like a second skin, right? Maybe even tighter than your skin. That sweater has no ease at all, maybe even negative ease.If it looks smaller than you before you put it on, rather like a pair of pantyhose looks impossibly small, it's definitely negative ease. The relaxed fabric has measurements smaller than your measurements.Sometimes you want a snug fit. Sometimes you don't.If you don't want everything to fit like a corset, you want positive ease.For enough wiggle room to move around in daily life, the general amount of ease you need is two inches. If you have a 40-inch chest, you can brush your hair, hail a cab or wave at the President when you wear a sweater that measures 42 inches around the chest.If you want to play baseball or horse around on the floor with the kids, you may want at least four inches of ease, maybe more. Then your clothes won't mind how your muscles bulge or what contortions you try in your attempts to escape the swarming rug rats.Check your favorite sweater's measurements and you'll discover just how much ease you like best.Armed with this knowledge about ease, you can include the amount of wiggle room you want the next time you knit or crochet a sweater. Betcha this time the darn thing fits.

For more sweater fitting tips and tricks from a professional tailor who knits, visit my KnitFitNinja blog at http://knitfi

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