These last few springs I have gone through the same ordeal.  I try to wear my nice winter clothes to church for as long as possible, but eventually I get to the point where it is too warm for slacks and sweaters and I need to change my wardrobe lest I melt into the floor before the second reading.  Every year I try to do a little shopping to see if I can find some nice spring/summer type clothes that a) are not too revealing  b)  too expensive  c) actually fit d) aren’t so fashionable that they’ll look odd next year  e) I actually like and want to wear.  Now if I liked to shop, I might be okay here, but I hate to shop.  There are so, so, so many things I would rather do than shop I cannot even begin to describe where shopping falls on the list.   I have a shopping stamina of about fifteen minutes, finding anything in that amount of time, especially with my requirements, is pretty much impossible.

I’ve been sewing recently though, and I started thinking…  maybe I should just give up trying to find something I like and just make some things instead.  After all, I  have made clothes for myself before, why not do it again?  So, I enlisted Matt this evening to help me find my measurements so that I could figure out what size pattern I would need.  I saw in an ad for Jo-Ann’s that Simplicity patterns are going to be $1.99 Thurs - Sat, so it seems like a good time to try and embark on this undertaking.

I’ll admit it - part of the problem with fit nowadays is that I am apparently somewhat underweight compared to modern US standards.  In stores, I usually have to wear a size 4, and many stores do not even carry that size.  In some stores, like Old Navy, I just can’t find things that fit well because not only do their sizes run large, their hip/waist ratios do not match up with my body.  So I took my measurements and matched them up to the Simplicity sizing charts and I found that I wear a size 12.  Wow!  12!  That was a bit of a surprise!  Simplicity says that their sizing is based on standards shared with all the other pattern manufacturers, and that their sizing has not changed for decades.  What a novel idea, don’t you think?  Anyways, I’m still rather amazed at this piece of information, and I’m glad I took the time to figure this out because otherwise I would have spent a lot of time working on something that just would not have fit at all!