Comment by MezzoDelCammin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MezzoDelCammin | Hacker News Reader

For everyone struggling with clothes sizing and having a hacker mindset, I can't recommend enough buying a sewing machine (~100EUR on a used market, ~150 new gets you a reasonable starter one you won't outgrow any time soon) and giving clothes alterations a try.

Finding a tailor that understands you / you agree with is an option too, if time is a hard limit (though I'm not sure it's altogrther that much quicker).

In my case, I started with tailors, but kept running into small misunderstandings. Also, my taste keeps evolving.

Start small with simple stuff, ideally old / second hand cheap clothes. Shirts, T-Shirts and bodice waistlines / "darts" are almost trivial once you can follow a straight line. First one will take a while, second will be much quicker, by third / fourth it's almost a routine and you can start iterating on your own preferences. They likely "will" evolve as you keep wearing the altered clothes.

Depending on how much help you can get in the beginning, with maybe a 2-3h intro on how to use a sewing machine done by a friend who has sewing as a hobby, I'm pretty sure most people should be able to get their first alterations done within 4-5h. By second or third attempt, this time should be down to around 1h per item, including some setup (pinning - trying - ironing). At that point the DIY option is probably quicker than going to a tailor.

I also fixed clothing sizes for my family using a hacker mindset, but in a different way:

Did you know that most professional sewing charts are just DXF files?

And did you know that DXF is the most common file format for laser cutters?

;)

=> just let the machine cut out precisely the clothing shapes that you need

After a few tries, I also started to add small sideways cuts to the outlines as alignment markers. And then you just need to connect the pieces where you marked them while always leaving roughly 0.5 cm of gap to the laser cut line. I went with 0.5 because my sewing machine has a hardware alignment guide with that offset. And at that point, it takes a skilled tailor only mere minutes to finish a shirt, which means in exchange for their 1x hourly rate they will be willing to finish off 5x proto t-shirts for you.

Oh, I'm not claiming sewing machine is the "only" option :-)

There's plenty of hacking that can be done on the subject of sewing and I admit that laser cutter is a cool one.

I'm still pretty partial to that sewing machine route (or needle and thread, if handiwork is prefferable). Simply because it lets you quickly iterate and build the taste, preferences and heuristic of how to get there. Personally, I still can't read a pattern propetly. But I'm more than happy to put a few pins into a shirt and prototype in front of a mirror.

Also, it gives me a good estimate of what I'm OK doing myself and what I will outsource to an actual tailor because it's either beyond my level, or I simply don't have time to do it.

I wonder how many layers of fabric a cutter could get through in one pass (without setting it on fire).

I have never tried that because it finishes a single piece of clothing so quickly that it never seemed like it would make any sense to take risks of lower fabric layers being uneven/wrinkled in exchange for increasing throughput. Catching fire never seemed to be an issue with the CO2 laser that I used. Most fabrics will kind of melt before they start to burn. And the vacuum table sucking air through the fabric will also cool it down.

You can go all in and get a fabric saw

https://www.amazon.com/VEVOR-High-Speed-Industrial-Automatic...

I keep coming cross these videos on youtube from Cornelius Quiring, and it's been making me think about trying it out. If anyone is looking for videos about drafting patterns for clothing, I think he's stuff seems pretty approachable!

https://www.youtube.com/corneliusquiring

Is overlock a necessity?

TLDR : "nice to have, but not a necessity"

For some basic jerseys (think T-shirts) a basic zigzag is fine to begin with. That 100EUR sewing machine will have some fancier stretch stitch options that are slow, but "good enough" to look like an overlock (but can't do the cut of course).

If you have the space / money, overlock is definitely what I'd get as a second / third machine. It's much quicker / cleaner if you're working on jerseys or shirts.

But I still keep wearing the T-shirts I did when I was starting. On my list the first thing to do is to understand how to alter something to fit you. It can be done by hand (needle and thread), but to be reasonably efficient, the BOM would be "sewing machine, box of pins, scissors, piece of chalk / ruler and something to press / iron".

My local library has an overlock machine, so it may be possible to use one occasionally at a local lab somewhere rather than buying one, too.

Adult clothing no. But for kids clothing you kind of need it, because without the cutting function attaching rubber bands to neck, wrist, and belly seams is very difficult.

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