Centimeters instead of age

Based mainly on my own experiences while working with children’s clothing for over six years, this post is about sizing on my patterns for children: why do I use height instead of age?

Since children grow with absolutely no logic and definitely not after any average sizing standards, I use the height for sizing. That is the common way of marking clothing sizes for children here in Finland. – It is quite ridiculous to mark sizes by age since it’s impossible for all the children to have reached an average height by a certain age. It’s really rare that a child would fit the average size tables. Especially here in Finland it’s more of a rule than an exception that the children are much taller than on the average size tables. E.g. I’ve met 130 cm tall 6 year old children who should according to size tables be about 8-9 years old by their height!

I’ve made my own size table for my children’s patterns where you can find the vital measurements and what is considered to be the average age of a particular size. The table can be found here.