The Right Measuring Tool for Pattern Making

Pattern making and pattern alteration can be a bit of a daunting process but having the right kind of rulers will help you out quite a bit. So let's take a quick look at some of these great rulers to add to your toolkit. The first is something that I'm sure you're familiar with. It's a regular tape measure, but I just wanna be sure to tell you to get a fiberglass tape measure because fiber glass tape measures do not stretch. So when you're measuring your body and transferring measurements, you'll be much more accurate if you make sure that you have one that won't stretch.

The next one that I like to use. And this is my favorite ruler of all for pattern alteration is a an 18 inch clear flexible ruler. So 18 inches is just about right for any kind of pattern alterations you're gonna be doing on a garment. It's a great length for the bodice or the skirt. And it's great for it to be clear too.

So this is, this is kind of an acrylic material that's flexible. So another great thing about it is that you can kind of take flexible measurements because of course, garments have tons of curves. So you can, if you need to you can kind of line it up with the edge of pattern pieces and take measurements that way it's not it's not completely flexible but enough to help you out quite a bit. And another thing I like about it the fact that it's clear allows you to see measurements in two different places at once because you can see right through it. I also have a baby version of the clear flexible ruler because this is great for smaller areas.

I kind of keep this handy all the time. And this one, instead of being 18 inches it's six inches by one inch. So this is very helpful if you're doing some kind of little alterations in an armscye or in an at the neck line, I like this one a lot too. The next ones I'm gonna talk about are really handy for armscyce or any kind of curved area. And they're called a seam allowance curve.

And the thing that's great about them is they're actually the width of most seam allowances. So there's one here the when I have is three eighths seven inch wide so that's a common seam allowance area width. So you can use it to trace seam allowances really easily If you're making pattern alterations. This one is slightly wider. So this is the five eighth inch width.

And the great thing about these is that they have shapes built into them already that are common in patterns. So you can see just by lining it up right here how close that is to the an armhole shape and same with neck lines. It also has a great straight edge. So there's just a lot of handy areas on here for when you're drafting and altering your patterns. The next one is a really common pattern making ruler that I really like a lot.

It's called a styling design ruler. And this is great too, because like the seam allowance with ruler, it has measurements marked along curves. So it's easy to measure them instead of having to flex your tape measure or flex your ruler. And it also has a lot of the the hip curve is built in the armhole curve is built in. So again, very helpful saves you a lot of time as you're measuring and very easy to trace too.

So you can just move this around however you need to, you can set it on different areas and that makes it really easy to take measurements and mark your patterns. This one's really similar. This one's called the curve in the square. I like this one too, because once again it has just so many handy areas for measuring and adding and subtracting to the pattern. And then it also has a nice square edge.

So whenever you're making patterns it's important to square at corners. So you can line that right up with a center back neck line or whatever you need to alter. Next step, I've got a hip curve. So this is another classic pattern making ruler and this one's metal. So it's very sturdy and you can see right away that it's shaped like the curve of your hip.

So it's great for skirts. You can see if I lined it up on the hip of this bodice here right away it kind of starts to take that shape. So this one, I like a lot too. You'll see this one, commonly with pattern-making supplies. I have a couple other handy little things too.

This is not a ruler, but it's a flexible weighted tool. So you can really make it into any flexible curved shape that you need to. And so if you needed to transfer a shape exactly from one pattern to another you can really play around with that quite a bit. It can flex in a lot of different directions and they come in different lengths. Finally, these are not necessarily designated as pattern-making rulers but you can find them in many art stores.

They're really inexpensive French curves. So you can get these in all different sizes. And these are also really handy if you have a very curved area that you're trying to transfer. So they don't necessarily have measurements on them but if you need a curve, this one is really easy to trace. So those are just my favorite pattern making rulers that make the whole process much easier.