A drafting experiment

The dress I made was cut on the bias and as a result I had a bit of fabric left. It inspired me to sew this top as experiment for rotating darts out to the neckline and create tucks. It’s a style I don’t use as in commercial patterns there is usually so much ease around the bust added that I I feel it makes me look huge. Still I wanted to try this. The result is better than I hoped because no extra ease is added at bust height. Not the very best style on me but wearable.

I made the shoulder seam with the instructions from Sara Alm’s Craftsy class Facings and linings. Very neat method. Definitely a good alternative to the way I used before.

For those interested the pattern drafting phases. The shoulder, armhole and bust dart are rotated out, creating space at the new tuck lines.

In the end I did not sew the waist dart.

To conclude a first picture of my next project. Pattern pieces cut and block-fused. It’s a souvenir fabric I bought a few years ago in New York. At the time I thought I would make a Chanel-style jacket of it, but I’m not really wanting one any more. It will be a short coat. More on that later.

A self-drafted dress

This week I started and finished the dress I drafted. I made a few changes to the pattern, based on the muslin and comments and am quite happy with the result.

Let’s start with some pictures of the dress as is and some of how I’ll wear this.

My intention from the start was to wear it with a belt.

A combination for the coming season. The weather here is not for sleeveless dresses.

And finally some pictures from the inside. I used a lining fabric with some stretch. It’s basically my sloper pattern with a straigh skirt. The facing for the back is a separate layer over the lining fabric, a method I use often.

The construction of the dress is the same as I showed last year for a sleeveless top. In this dress I added a zipper in the left side seam, to make it easier to get it over my head.

Rotating darts out, creating a smooth curve

For the skirt of my dress I wanted an A-line. This means that the dart is rotated so that  the side seam will be wider. The picture below shows the bottom part of my sloper. When the dart is cut and the dotted line below you can fold the dart lines together, creating the A-line shape.

There is one disadvantage though when you have a large difference in your hip/waist measurements. The dart on the sloper is wide, which makes for a rather steep angle when you fold the dart out. Making it to a nice curve will shorten the waistline quite a bit.

The solution is using two darts. On top is the original sloper as above, below the same part of the sloper, but the darts are changed in two smaller darts.

After the darts are rotated out, the curve of the one with two darts is much smoother. Below I’ve added a red line indicating the one-dart version.

Removing or adding darts is always a design decision and (for me at least) there’s no right or wrong. There will be other ways to do it but this is how I do it.

The dress is coming along nicely. hope to show results soon.

Dress muslin

The muslin of the upper part of the dress was easily made. I only cut seam allowances to the shoulder, side and center back seam. Then I marked with carbon tracing paper and stitched it together.
The result was definitely in the right direction, but a few changes were necessary.
I cut this on the bias, as I intend to do on with the fashion fabric too.

The back: I did not sew  the back darts and therefor took some extra space from center back and removed a bit of the side seam. It’s too wide and the back armhole is gaping a bit.

The back with a bit more taken from the side seam and just a little bit taken from the armhole, tapering to nothing in the back neck.

The front doesn’t look bad, no gaping at the armhole, cowl depth is fine. It could be a little less wide at the side seams too.
I haven’t made a dress from this sloper with a waist seam. Seeing these pictures and the line marking the waist, I think my waistline is too low. I’d like to hear your opion on that.

This is the front after the side seams are taken in a bit. Could be a bit less?

Before and after of the armhole. The armhole on the sloper is fine for a garment with sleeves. You need a bit more room for movement of your arms. On a sleeveless dress this is not an issue and I took out about 1 cm.


Any thoughts on improving the fit are welcome and appreciated.

I’m in dress mode

When I bought the navy/black fabric I made the Burda dress from, I bought some other fabric too. This is a woven and a bit more expensive. I was not sure about what style I wanted to make with it. It’s just enough for a sleeveless dress that I can wear as it is or with a cardigan or jacket.

I contemplated making a simple dress with a cowl neck and draped the fabric on my dressform and yes, that’s what I want to make. I drafted a cowl neck top from my sloper some time ago and the result was a rather deep cowl neck. This time I wanted it higher. As I don’t have any fabric to play with, I decided on making a muslin first to prevent disappointment.

Like last year I’ll write a few posts about the process, not exactly knowing where it will end (do I have enough fabric for example?)

This is my starting point, my sloper for front and back.

For the muslin I used only the top part. Unlike last time I did this, I did not rotate the waist dart out to make sure my cowl is not too deep. I took 1/4 inch from the shoulder seam at the side of the arm and drafted a 3 inch wide shoulder from which point a line is drafted for the cowl in a 90 degree angle to the center front. This results in a 21 cm line for the cowl (I know I’m completely mixing inches and centimeters, depending on the ruler I’m using, doesn’t bother me).

The length of this line is important, as it defines the depth of the cowl. This is not something what is mentioned in the drafting class from Suzy Furrer (from which I used the technique). As I’m full busted and have wide darts, this means a long line/deep cowl when all darts are rotated out. This won’t be so much of a problem for someone with a small cup size.

I measured on myself, but for the idea this is what I checked.

The back has the same changes in the shoulder area. I ignored the shoulder dart (hence crossed) and did the same with the waist dart.

I’ve already sewn the muslin. A matter of half an hour or so. Too dark to take photos now so will do that tomorrow.

Linen dress

If you’ve seen this post before without text: I clicked the wrong button and uploaded the post accidentally that only contained pictures.

This fabric spoke to me (loudly!) when I was at a fabric market this spring. I passed the stall once, but when I passed it a second time I could  not resist and bought it. It’s a 100% linen fabric, which I love to wear in summer. I lined it with a viscose (rayon) good quality lining and it’s ever so comfortable.

The pattern is self drafted based on the sloper from the Suzy Furrer class and boat neck instructions from her class as well. As instructed I used the lower point for rotating the darts (for those interested/having experience with her method). Next time I would reposition the bust dart again and have it at the higher point. In this rather busy print it’s not that obvious, but I think it’s a bit low.

This photo reminds me of the fact that I still have to sew the lining to the slit in the back (and no, I’m not that addicted to my phone , it’s my remote for my camera)

The shoulder dart is kept for shape and has to remain in the facing too. As I do usually I made the facing a top layer of the lining and did not make a separate lining pattern. I just sew the seams of the lining giving a bit more space, this way there won’t be any stress on the garment. It sounds strange, but the lining is slightly larger in circumference than the actual dress.

New book

I pre-ordered this book a few weeks ago and when I came home tonight it was in the mailbox. I had been looking forward to it. There was no way to know whether it was what I was looking for. A few pages on Amazon looked ok so I just took my chances. After a quick look through it I think it's great as I was looking for the next step on drafting, especially coats and there is not much around on that subject. 

Would you like to know more? Then I'll do a proper review soon. 

The finished jacket

Exactly two weeks after I bought the fabric for the jacket, it’s finished. Probably a record for me. It was sort of typical story buying the fabric too. I went to a plant/gardening market with a friend, we both had seen a stall where we wanted to buy something for our respective gardens. In the same village, even the same street, where the market was, is also a fabric store. What does a sewing girl do? Of course, visit the fabric store (the friend is a non sewing friend, she remained outside. The shop is one of those very rare shops that don’t accept payment by card, only cash. I confess paying mostly by card, so my cash was limited and I had just enough to buy this fabric. The cash points at the bank were empty too, probably because of the market, so much more people than normally in that village. I ended the day with fabric and not the garden ornament I was planning to buy, as the stall owner also only accepted cash. Well, what’s more important? A picture that a friend sent last week says it all (she found it on Instagram, I don’t know the origin):

 

 

To conclude the posts on this jacket a few pictures on cutting the lining. I did not make seperate pattern pieces for the lining, but made a few adaptions. This is a way of working that is explained in many books. The book High fashion sewing secrets by Claire Shaeffer describes this very well.

The lining is cut the same length as the jacket without seam allowance. Quite a bit of space is added to center back, to create a pleat that will give you moving space.

A little extra is added at the upper part of the side seam and the bottom of the armhole. Also the sleeves get a little extra at the bottom. Do you notice the pins sticking out? That’s to alert myself that I must not cut at the edge of the pattern piece.

I removed the area of the back facing from the lining after tracing the line.
Because I added shoulder pads I removed a bit (half the shoulder pad height) from the shoulder seam, I folded that away, tapering to nothing Of course it would be good to make separate pattern pieces, but for a jacket that’s just for me and I’m making it this works.

I bagged the lining (completely stitched in by machine) and left an opening center back to be able to turn the jacket. After I found this method  when I returned to sewing for myself about 10 years ago I was surprised how easy that method is. I might take photos of that process next time.

That’s it for this jacket, quite a few steps, a lot of photos to share. Thank you for reading, the kind comments and have a very nice weekend.