Height Width Proportions Not working

[defaulta5cb6uniov9z]

Hi,

I am digitizing dress patterns so I place the picture of the pattern piece into illustrator and then I trace the image.  According to a tutorial I watched, you then measure one portion (I usually measure any line that is straight) of the pattern and then resize the tracing to fit the whatever line I measured for resizing.

When I do this, the areas that I measure and resize are great then when I print it out, one area is really off.  With this piece, I measured the bottom straight line and then resized.  The two straight lines were great, the areas I didn't measure are really off.  It looks as though I'm having issues with keeping proportions but I hold the shift key when I resize so I know it's not that.  I've read a few posts that seemed similar but none addressed my particular issue.

Help!

[kglad]

<moved from cc desktop>

[Monika Gause]

And what are you doing to resize it? Please describe step by step.

[defaulta5cb6uniov9z]

I take a picture of the pattern piece and then place it into a new document.  I trace it and do minor fixes etc.  I measure one edge from the piece, whichever is a straight line.  The image shows what edge I measured.  Once I've done that, I create a line that is the exact measurement of the edge I measured. In this example, my measurement was 9.5625 inches so I created a horizontal line measuring 9.5625.  Once I have the line, I use the edge I measured to resize the tracing.  I enlarge or reduce the size of the tracing until that edge is 9.5625.  Supposedly everything is all proportioned correctly, but it's not.  So I don't know what to do.  As was told in the video tutorial, I trace, measure one edge of the pattern piece and then resize the entire tracing so the one edge matches the measurement of the original piece.

I'm very new to Illustrator so I'm kind of limited as to what I know how to do.

Thank you so much for your help with things.  I hope all this makes sense because I really need this to work 🙂

[Jacob Bugge]

defaulta,

Based on your second image with the arraow image, and regardless of the actual angle of your (bottom) straight line, and with Smart Guides being your friends, you can let Illy (job description Adobe Illustrator, she is always very helpful) make the calculation to establish the right uniform scaling:

1) Select the traced image, then with the Line Segment Tool ClickDrag from one end to the other of the straight line;

2) Click with the Line Tool on an empty spot on the Artboard, then copy the Length;

3) Select the traced image, then in Object>Transform>Scale insert the measured length multiplied by 100 (change from 9.5625 to 956.25 in the sample), then insert a / to divide and then paste the number from 1), then press Enter.

This ought to scale up the traced image as desired.

Concerning tutorials, the truth is out there, maybe.