Every pattern is drafted for a height
The size chart is only half the assumption. Each company also drafts to a standard height, and it is usually published alongside the measurements. The Big 4 Misses chart is drafted for roughly 5 ft 5 in to 5 ft 6 in. Cashmerette and Closet Core both draft for 5 ft 6 in. Merchant & Mills works from 167 cm. Sew House Seven is the unusual one: its Standard range grades height along with girth, so the drafted height rises a quarter inch per size across the range, while its Curvy range holds one height flat.
If you are not that height, every horizontal line on the pattern — the bust line, the waist, the hip, the armhole depth, the hem — is in the wrong place by some amount. The question is which amount goes where.
Height is not distributed evenly
This is the whole point. Two people of the same height can have entirely different torso and leg proportions, and a person four inches shorter than the drafted height is almost never four inches shorter in every segment.
The segments worth thinking about separately:
- Nape to waist — the back waist length. This decides where the waist seam, the darts and the shaping land.
- Shoulder to bust apex — where the fullest part of the bust sits, which decides whether darts point at the right place.
- Armhole depth — how far the underarm sits below the shoulder.
- Waist to hip — the hip depth, which decides where a skirt's widest point falls.
- Waist to knee, and knee to floor — two separate leg segments that often differ from each other.
- Crotch depth and crotch length — the rise, which is its own adjustment and is not solved by leg length.
Measure yourself for the first and fourth of those at minimum. The Big 4 chart is the only one on this site that publishes a back-waist-length column, which means for those patterns the bodice length adjustment can be taken from your own measurement instead of estimated from your height. For every other brand it is an estimate, and a muslin decides.
Use the printed lines
Most patterns carry lengthen and shorten lines: a pair of parallel lines across the piece, placed where the designer knows the shape can be altered without distorting anything. Use them. They exist precisely because cutting length off the hem changes the shape of the garment as well as its length.
The mechanics are the same in both directions. To shorten, fold out a tuck of half the amount (a one-inch fold removes two inches of length), then true the cutting lines and seam lines across the fold so the edges run smoothly. To lengthen, cut along the line, spread the pieces by the amount required, tape paper behind, and true the edges the same way.
Whatever you do to one piece, do to every piece it joins. A shortened bodice front needs a shortened bodice back, and both facings, and the interfacing.
Why not just cut it off at the hem
On a straight-sided piece with no shaping — a plain tunic, a straight sleeve — the hem is fine. Everywhere else it is not.
Take three inches off the hem of an A-line skirt and you have not merely shortened it; you have removed the widest part of the sweep and made it narrower as well as shorter. Take it off a tapered trouser leg and you change the leg opening. Take it off a bodice and the waist seam does not move at all, so the darts still point where they pointed and the shaping still sits where a taller body's waist would be.
The rule that covers most cases: change length above the feature you want to keep in place, not below it.
Sleeves have two lines for a reason
A well-drafted sleeve carries a shorten line above the elbow and another below it. Shortening the whole amount below the elbow drags the elbow ease — and on a fitted sleeve the elbow dart — to the wrong place. Split the change between the two, weighted toward wherever your own arm actually differs.
The sleeve cap is not a length adjustment. If the armhole depth is wrong the fix is at the armhole, and the sleeve cap must then be re-matched to it — which is a more involved job and worth a muslin before you touch good fabric.
The adjustments that are not length at all
A short or tall frame frequently comes with two problems that reading as "petite" or "tall" will not fix:
- Shoulder width. Narrow or broad shoulders shift the whole armhole and are adjusted at the shoulder seam and armscye, independently of height.
- Shoulder slope. A sloped or square shoulder produces diagonal drag lines from the neck, and no amount of shortening the bodice will remove them.
If you have shortened the bodice correctly and the fit is still wrong across the upper chest, these are usually where to look next.
Order of work
Length changes and the full bust adjustment interact, because an FBA adds length to the centre front and to the front side seam. Sewists genuinely differ on which to do first, and both orders work if you check the result.
The practical route: make the length changes at the printed lines first, so you are working on a pattern that matches your torso; then make the FBA; then compare the front and back side seam lengths and true them. Then blend for waist and hip last, since that is a cutting-line change rather than a structural one.
Trace the pattern rather than cutting the original, and write the changes on the tracing. The second garment from the same pattern is where this pays for itself.
General guidance following standard home-sewing alteration practice. Drafted heights cited are each pattern company's own published figures, reproduced in this site's calculator and linked to their source. Individual proportions vary and a muslin decides. Not professional fitting advice.