Scary Sloper Issues And Patternmaking Problems (Solved)

Last week I got a client who wanted me to start work as soon as possible.   I started checking out my size six sloper so I could grade it down to a size 4 only to discover that the front and back blocks were not drafted correctly.   They just sit well at all on the dress form,  complete with gaping around the armscye, centre bust  and lop-sided waitstline.   After having followed all the instructions I actually emailled Connie Amaden Crawford to see if she could help me figure out what went wrong.   This wasn't the first time either,  she's a wonderful help when I ask her for patternmaking advice.   She got back to me the same day and it was a Sunday!

First of all my dressform is a home sewer's dress form,  it's an okay tool,  but according to Connie because of it's imperfections ( such as having caps at the armscye position instead of being flat) it can cause problems.   Which brings me back to something I said before,  it's a good idea to try and invest in professional tools.   However this didn't bring me to the point of giving up.  the dress form is shaped like a human being,  so it's got to be some use even if there aren't any of the special aids to help me get the drape right and so on.  

Connie assured me that beginners always stretch their drape,  so this second time around,  I very carefully handled my fabric  with the gentlest touch possible,  following the steps one by one, not skipping anything and not doing a later step before it's time.  For example, in the book "Pattern Making Made Easy"  Connie states that you need to pinch the darts from the apex (the bust point) I didn't do this with my first drape.   This creates the problem of a twisted and incorrect dart where as a dart pinched from the apex will lie smoothly and be easily pivoted in the right position later on (in your paper draft) if you want to move it.

So I fixed up the drape,  traced it on 3 sheets of paper,  back block on top of the front block so that side seams would automatically match :),  nice little trick there I tell you.  Then after a bit of  tweeking and experimenting I adjusted the armscye,  got rid of the gaping,  eliminated unwanted ease and my beautiful sloper pictured above was the result:

This didn't come easy though,  this is making a terribly long story of trial and error short.   I did several failed pin fittings with paper re-visions of my slopers,  I was disheartened and tired too.  Making matters worse,  my later experimental adjustments to the sloper in CorelDraw9 were worse than the first few attempts.  I was clearly going in the wrong direction (you can do this when you're tired) so it finally dawned on me that maybe the real problem was that I was checking the paper fit and not a fabric one.  You can see those below,  they're stiff but they're still kind of neat.   Lol,  when  I sewed up my sloper in a nice hand of fabric (pictured above) it fit like a glove,  a thing of beauty.

If you'd like to check out my fashion or eco friendly fashion resources lenses here are their links, feel free to drop me a note if you like what you see/read, I'll be happy to hear from you:

Budget Online Fashion Design Schools and Resources

The Eco-Friendly Fashion Designer's Resource Page

The Benefit Of Printing Out Your Digital Patternmaking Trial

Previously,  I used an old piece of flannel to drape a bodice sloper onto my dressform,  hehehe,  nice try,  it was,  I liked it because it turned out pretty well,  or so I thought.  So I've drafted up all my basic slopers,  all of them.  Then,  more recently because my patternmaking study and hands on practice went so well in developing my understanding that I decided to take the plunge and try my hand at digital pattern drafting in CorelDraw 9 and then use Adobe Photoshop CS2 to create printable files from my CorelDraw pattern.

Well,  I had a bit of a pause in my progress from then because I've had to work on a writing assignment but last night I hurried up (at 11pm) and put together my print out jpeg files (that is divided my digital patternmaking exercise into printable size documents,  printed them and then taped them together) and put the front and back bodice patterns together.   Trued them up,  perfect of course except some adjustment to the armscye curves,  but I was expecting to have to do as much.   Any way though,  when I compared them to my manual,  original,  non-digitally drafted patterns I realized there was a problem.

Okay,  so I took my print quality paper (this white stuff is not as soft as the packaging paper) and sized it up against the dressform and discovered something very valuable... the benefit of 'fitting' a paper pattern to the dress form lies in the paper's inability to stretch.  

This was an 'ah ha' moment for me. 

Originally I was a bit frustrated with how the armscye on my original bodice sloper that I'd sewn from the first paper pattern draft,  seemed to not hang comfortabley on the dressform and the reason I think,  is that the height level of the front and back shoulders on the pattern draft ended up being just a bit shorter then they were supposed to be and at a slightly wrong angle as well.  

The reason this happened was because the fabric that I used to drape on my dress form must have stretched a bit while I was draping it.  So now I realize that a draped pattern must be tried,  sewn,  fitted than compared to a "fitted" non-stretchy digital paper pattern and not just given the "Okay" when the first fabric sloper seems to sit well.

What a relief to find that out.  So I'm going to hurry up and fix that later on today hopefully,  before my client sends some work my way.  I want my work to be perfect,  totally perfect.   So what I'm going to do,  is make the adjustments to the digital pattern,  make a set of print outs, put it together,  cut it out of some fabric,  sew it together and check it again.  I can't wait to see if the armscye issue will be corrected,  I'm thinking it will be and I'll be happier with the fit.  I think I'm going to find a better piece of fabric to work with though,  one with a tighter weave this time around.   And next time I want to post some pictures too.   My brother gave me his iPhone and the camera on it is better than the one on my cell phone (yeahhhh).

If you'd like to check out my fashion or eco friendly fashion resources lenses here are their links, feel free to drop me a note if you like what you see/read, I'll be happy to hear from you:

Budget Online Fashion Design Schools and Resources
The Eco-Friendly Fashion Designer's Resource Page