Sewing Business Blog

Altering Store Bought Patterns For Overweight Children – Chest

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Overweight children, plus size children and obese children will usually have much larger chests than average size children.  In addition, they will usually have large upper arms that make altering store bought patterns very difficult.  This tutorial will address both areas needing to be altered.

FULL CHEST

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With a large full chest, wrinkles will show on the center part of the bodice, as shown.  To correct, cut across the center pattern front, open as much as necessary and redraw the pattern.

HEAVY ARMS

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For heavy arms cut the sleeve pattern and spread the two sleeve pieces as shown in the illustration.   Redraw the sleeve cap.  By making this correction you will be enlarging the sleeve cap, so it will be necessary to enlarge the armholes.  Lower the front and back armhole line each 1/2 of the total amount required.

For more in depth information about altering patterns for overweight children, plus size children and obese children, check out our book  “Altering Store Bought Patterns For Hard To Fit Children”.   This book contains 70 pages and covers the alteration process for every garment you’d want to make for boys and girls, including large abdomens, large hips and derriere, larger than normal chest, adjusting the crotch length and much more.  Each alteration process has step by step instructions and diagrams.

If you’d like to try your hand at making your own patterns for overweight children, plus size children and obese children, we have classes available for boys and girls!  Simply take their measurements and follow our step by step instructions to make dozens and dozens of styles.

How To Alter Skirt Patterns For Plus Size/Overweight Children

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Regardless of what size pattern you buy for your plus size/overweight child, there are always changes that need to be made.  Sometimes a single change will do it, and other times there may be 2, 3, 4 changes necessary before the store bought pattern will actually fit the plus size child.  We are starting a series of alterations to patterns that may be needed in order to get the fit you want for your plus size child.

The first clothing garment we will work on will be the skirt.  Many of the overweight children have a large protruding stomach, so we’ll start with that issue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LARGE ABDOMEN (stomach) – the skirt will be too short and will ride up in the front.  Draw a horizontal line across the fullest part of the abdomen on the pattern as indicated.  Cut the line beginning at the center front and cut to within 1/2″ from the side seam.  Separate the pieces the necessary amount and tape in place, as shown.  Redraw the center front line, as indicated with dashed lines, from the bottom to the top, keeping the original line straight.  This correction will make the waist larger so you will have to make the “fullness” into a small amount of gathers, which would give a little extra fullness for the large tummy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A.  WAIST/HIP – check your child’s waist and hip measurements and compare them to the measurements on the pattern.  If the amount of change is the same for both, make the necessary change at the center front and center back lines.  draw in the new skirt lines as shown with dashed lines.

B.  LARGE WAIST – To make just the waist larger, extend the front and back waist line each 1/4 of the total necessary amount.  Draw in the new waist to hipline curve as shown with dashed lines.

These alterations to store bought patterns is an excerpt from the book “Altering Store Bought Patterns For Plus Size Children”.  Additional pattern making classes (for boys and girls) and full size clothing patterns for plus size children can be seen at Sew With Sarah.com (pdf/downloadable patterns in “sewing patterns”) and PlusSizeChildren.com for patterns already printed and ready to mail out.  If you have a lot of plus size children in your area, you might want to consider going into a business sewing for them – check our our Sewing For Plus Size Children As A Home Business manual.

 

Sewing For Plus Size Children

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As we get ready for the fall season and school to begin, we once again get many emails asking for information on how to sew good fitting clothing for plus size children.  Shopping for clothes for plus size children is very hard considering the fact that so few clothing stores carry clothing that will fit these children.  Pattern companies are not much better, since their patterns will only fit large size children of the same age – for example patterns for size 14 or the plus size 14 — but what happens if you  have a daughter that is only 8 years old that has the measurements of a 14 year old.  Those patterns will never fit the younger child because the younger person won’t be as tall as a regular 14 year old, nor will the arms be the length of an actual 14 year old.

At Plus Size Children.com we carry patterns that are made using actual measurements of those plus size children – boys and girls – that are 8 years old, 10 years old, etc.  As a sample of what we have, you can check out the shorts/pants for plus size girls, or perhaps the blouses and tops that are available.  Browse through all the categories and see what all is available.

If you have patterns already in your sewing room, but they just won’t fit the plus sizes, you probably would like to check out the book “Altering Store Bought Patterns For Plus Size Children” – this book gives information on how to alter the chest, waist/abdomen, hips, etc for the plus sizes.

School starts here the 19th of August, so we’re either at the fabric store or at the sewing machine!  I just love it when we can let the kids help pick fabrics, and they’re at the age now that they like to help pin the pieces, then take the pins out when finished with the sewing.  By helping make the garments, they’re so proud to wear the clothes and show them off.

Happy Sewing!