SA ruler–coupon code

In my post from today on the muslin of my jacket, I showed that I made the seam allowances with the SA rulers from Claire.
I got the 3/8 and 5/8 ruler to review and I’m so happy with them. It made adding seam allowances to my jacket pattern pieces very, very easy. I see a lot of ways of using them. I do have French curve rulers, but these rulers combine the french curves with the ease of adding seam allowances at the same time. Also tracing a pattern from Burda or Ottobre is easy. Claire shows that in a video as well.

Below the 5/8 ruler used on a Burda sheet.
 
Not all curves/lines can be drawin in one pass, just move the ruler a bit and you have the right piece of the curve again (or a straight line).

If you’ve read my blog for a longer period, you might know I’m not a great fan of the 5/8 default seam allowances, because I miss my reference of the size of the actual pattern piece (being European and grown up with Burda and Knip Mode has to do with this I think).
This makes it a matter of seconds to add the actual seam lines.

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And I’ve used the 3/8 ruler for tracing a bra patter. The 1/4”inch line is a good seam allowance for this kind of sewing.
 
As said, I’ve received these from Claire for reviewing, but I wouldn’t be as positive as I am if I was not happy with them. She has some other nice gadgets too and is working on metric rulers.
If you would like some as well she has a discount code for my readers: use SIGRID20 (valid till July 31 2013) in her shop for a 20% discount. That’s a nice discount isn’t it?

From muslin to pattern

I realised I’ve never shown the pattern I started with. It’s a pattern from Burda magazine, January 2006. Doesn’t look like the jacket I wanted, do you think? But it had lines that could be altered. That is what I saw when I started using this.

A few questions were asked on the process. I do no longer have a dressform made to my measurements. I made one in a workshop a few years back, using brown paper packaging tape, but the body length wasn’t good. Either I didn’t stand tall when made, or it lost  a bit in drying. After a few frustrating results I stopped using it and recently threw it away. One day I want to make the dummy like Bunny has done.

I don’t have a sloper for myself. And never heard of the possibility of someone else making them professionally for you. I see that it could be useful. As would be a more professional pattern drafting class (which someone asked in an email), but there’s not enough time to do everything I want.

Pixie asked me to show how I use the muslin to make the pattern. I’ll share the main things I did in this post. I’m not using the muslin itself as a pattern, as is done in for example “The couture dress” class, but making a paper pattern, with seam allowances as I now know that the fit is quite accurate. Some details may be adapted in the fashion fabric, though not a lot to be expected.

First I marked all seams that had changed. Also noted that I wanted the lapel collar half a centimeter wider in the end.

 

On the back these were the seams that had changed.

The sleeve was altered in the muslin process and needed no further alteration. But I checked all the same:

 

On the front the part to be added to the side panes was marked, the bust point widened

 

The back was cut open and pinned flat. I made notches on the fabric and cut them apart to transfer these pieces to paper.

All pieces were transferred with the changes to make new pattern pieces. All seams checked for length on both sides of the seam.

After and during transferring them to paper I added seam allowances with a new ruler: the SA ruler 3/8 inch (= 1 centimeter) wide. Absolutely a pleasure to work with. I’ll do a separate post on it. I’ve received this from Claire for reviewing, and I’m 100% positive I’ll use them a lot!

I’m almost ready to cut into the fashion fabric, there are a few things I’m considering (using silk organza underlining?), which interfacing to use etc. before I’ll do that.  Will happen sometime this week.