benefits of a basic block

To continue with my coat adventure, I thought I would step back a little and look more closely into the pattern development.

I usually draft for men, and the process is direct as in I draft a shirt, or a waistcoat or a jacket from scratch. Tailoring doesn't start with a basic block, but women's wear does; a basic block is drafted and all the subsequent patterns are derived from the basic block. 

So, one needs a basic block to start with. 

I have seen many instances online of people developing a skin tight block, they take courses on how to do it, but I have noticed that many people struggle through that process only to find that they don't know what to do with it once it is done. I guess it is good if you want to create a judy for your particular shape, or create a very fitted shell to squeeze a foam judy into.  Having a judy of your size and shape can be a real asset especially if you are not a standard shape or size, but it seems a challenging starting point for most people.

I think the better choice is a block pattern that is fitted but still has wearing ease in it. 

I have a block that I drafted using on older (late1960's) version of the Muller et Sohn method. Technically, it was a draft for a jacket but I think it gives me a lot of flexibility to make a closer fit as well as a looser fit depending on what I want to make from it.

It has 4.5 cm of ease on the half pattern, so 9 cm total ease around the bust. To compare, the Natalie Bray block (circa 1950's) drafts with 5 cm of ease on the half bust (or hips if the hips are bigger).

I like the Muller version, it gives a lot of flexibility in that it divides the body up into sections back, armhole and front. The sections of the body have proportional formulas to which you add ease. I think it gave me a good idea as to whether my personal measurements fit within the proportional parameters to start with. 

The other aspect that I like is that as the bust circumference increases, the proportions change to reflect that. In other words there are size break proportional changes. 

Here is the basic chart. the english translation caption I believe should read: back width, scye width and chest width. 

As with any drafting process, just following the instructions as written is not going to produce a perfectly fitting model. Drafts need to be adjusted for the reality of the shape you are drafting for. This is something I don't think people are aware of.  Measurements are not shape. If your measurements are not exactly what the draft calls for and your shape differs, then you still need to account for that in the drafting and the fitting.  

In order to draft a personal block, I think you need a few specific measurements. 

Here is my basic list:

height

neck

bust

waist

hip

nape to waist back

across back

nape to bust point

nape to waist front (going over the bust point then straight down

bust point to bust point

throat to centre front waist 

across front (upper chest)

nape to shoulder, to elbow, to wrist

shoulder width from neck.

There must be a waist tape on the body to provide a destination point for these measures and I recommend a set of photos with the waist tape on in order to double check when drafting.

I like measurements that have defined starting and ending points.  I don't like weird measures like side seam, honestly, where are you measuring? or front waist arc from side to side. Really too random for me.

Even measuring from the mid shoulder is suspect. Can you locate and apply the measurement  reliably on your pattern draft? Using your t-shirt seam as a starting point? not for me. 

That being said, I know that learning how to use a basic block for pattern development and to adjust your pattern is a steep learning curve but for some it may be a good thing. 

I think having a set of your measurements would also help the user of commercial patterns adjust them with a bit more confidence. 

If you are interested in discussions about tailoring and cutting women's wear, you might want to check out this site. click on the bespoke cutter and tailor forum link. 

Childen's wear drafting and trying to find information

     I recently needed to produce a few garments for a child, and it occured to me that I had only one drafting book to reference for children's wear.

That book is the Winnifred Aldrich's  Metric Pattern Cutting for Children's Wear and Babywear. 

I have an older edition so out of curiosity I borrowed a newer edition just in case. I found there were  some changes to some of the basic drafts which made me wonder. 

Things like the calculations for neck width used 1/5 neck minus 2mm now its 1/5 neck plus 2 mm on some drafts.Were there errors in the older drafts or just typos? Strange.

     I wanted to find a draft for a one piece snowsuit. It is not a garment covered in the Aldrich book. The child would arrive after quarantining, go for fittings, alterations would be done there, and then be on camera two days later.   They didn't want a waist seam in the snowsuit, so I had to get it right the first time. I needed to find basic torso girth measurements for children so I could have some kind of reference point. "It shouldn't be difficult" I thought to myself....... Anyway, it sent me down a rabbit hole of internet searching.

I did finally find a study of children's measurements here, done in 1939. So I waded through all of this and got a number range for height. 

I called friends with children too! "how tall is your child? Can you take a measurement of his torso girth for me?"

What a run around for information! Oh I forgot to mention, all I received was height and a chest measurement taken by a parent. That is all I was working from. What a business! and let's not talk about the deadlines.

What else did I find? I found a snowsuit draft on a Russian website, which I downloaded for reference and I could follow along looking at the diagrams. My desktop translated the pages, except for the sizing tables!! because they are photos not text! Drat!

I was on Pinterest and I found an Italian children's cutting book. In Italian, of course. Again, I could follow along by "reading" the diagrams. But I don't think there was a one piece snowsuit draft there either. That book, by Antonio Donnanno is available here in English.

I decided to basically stick with the Aldrich using the flat overgarment blocks for jackets and the flat two piece trouser block, and melded them together so they looked right ot me.

Once I made the basic draft, one of the things I had to take into account was the thinsulate lining. My base pattern was for the lining, but the outer fabric layer needed to be bigger than the under layer. I think I read somewhere about re-calculating the draft for the amount and type of insulation being used, maybe it was on the russian drafting site, maybe on a german site....I can't remember now.

Anyway, in the end, I figured out how much bigger to make the shell and made a pattern for that too. 

It was lots of work mentally and then a lot of work just cutting and sewing them. (yes, plural! I needed to cut two of them) I think they turned out really well, The best part is that they fit. I breathed a sigh of relief. 

We did get stuck waiting for zippers to arrive, but all in all it went fairly well. 

The shutdowns have made getting supplies a bit more challenging! So many things are being shipped its a miracle everything gets to where it is going.

Bathing suit drafting and construction- 2020 projects

 Well, where are we?

Oh yes, lets look at the next bathing suit I drafted. I had one successful pattern and contruction under my belt, so I felt this next one was worth using some fabric I had purchased but didn't want to waste on a trial garment.

I had an existing tankini suit that had seen better days, and I liked the design of the top, but I felt that it never really fit me that well. You know, it was good enough but better is better, right?

The top was a halter style with ties and a ring detail at the centre front bust. The ring was in great shape, so I took the old bodice apart- which is always an interesting and informative process. You can see the order that the garment was constructed and the techniques that were used.

I had been poking around at my local fabric store and I found some lightweight power net in a pale blue colour. It was onsale too! I decided, since I am experimenting, that I would try that as a lining in this suit. I think I also bought some flat rubber elastic for this one as well. I hadn't worked with it before, so why not now?

Stuart had a tutorial on his website for this process. I have since discovered that these lessons are now under a paywall. I think if you are interested in making bathing suits, or stretch wear it is well worth the cost.

My first draft, and then the altered pattern. I basically made the same pattern alterations here as I did in the first bathing suit in the previous post. (I added length over the bust)

I started again from scratch though, partially for the practice, and also to make sure that I wasn't making changes based on fabric characteristics.  

The second photo is the altered pattern. 

At the bottom you can see the idea of the design pinned up on the stand.

We will have a more detailed look at it next...

    

Prominent chest - pattern changes

While browsing through a sewing forum, I noticed over and over the plight of adjusting a pattern for a full bust. There are many solutions offered both online and in many of the sewing books, yet many people still struggle with making sense of it all.
Here's a little sample of what I did to deal with a garment that needed more room in the chest, but fit well in the front length, armhole, neck and waist.
Whereas in women's wear, darts are an accepted way of dealing with shape, the challenge with men's costuming is often how to hide the shaping in a garment, in order to keep the traditional construction format.

I recently fit a doublet and while pinning it up the centre front, I found that it closed on the line at the neck and at the waist, but at mid chest, it would not.
It went off the line there by 1.8 cm.
The person I was fitting had a prominent pec area, and that was the cause of the gap. What often happens with a full chest is that there is a lack of length and width.

I had enough length in my pattern for the full chest so I am only correcting for width.

You can see that the pattern CF line is not straight, but it is curved already from the mid chest to the neck. This is basically a dart, which is masquerading as the CF seam. I did not wish to increase this CF "dart" by just adding the extra at the CF line and tapering it off to the waist and neck. 

Now, I split the pattern vertically through the mid chest, and separate the pieces half the amount of the gap. I need this much more at the mid chest level but in splitting the pattern I have made the neckline  larger and have increased the length of the side front seam. I don't want that, and so I need to modify the pattern further. I need to close the gap!

So, here you can see that I have made two cuts in order to further modify the pattern. One is at the chest level, and the other one is cut diagonally from the side front seam to the mid chest. 

I can now bring the neck back to the way it was and also close the gap in the seam. What happens though is the CF opens up and gains some length, and the side front seam also had a small increase.

Depending on your fabric and method of construction, you may be able to ease in those small increases. 

Here is another option. This time only the horizontal cut at the chest level is allowed to open up as the neckline and seam line openings are closed. The increase in width at the chest is maintained, the neck and waist are kept as they were. 

I am making doublets backed on cotton duck so easing is not easily accomplished, so I opted for this method in the under structure of duck, and used the previous method for the fashion fabric layer. 

The horizontal dart is cut out completely and the raw edges are butted edge to edge and zigged closed with a strip of fusible tape to reinforce the join. The outer fashion fabric is applied over the shaped duck, carefully maintaining the shape you have created as you do so.

prom dress part four - drafting

 I feel like the month of May is trying to rush by, and I have been slogging it out doing overtime at work. This means that I feel quite behind on the prom dress project but I managed to squeeze a bodice draft into my week-end.
When I was first training as a cutter, I used Dress Pattern Designing by Natalie Bray as a text, so since I am familiar with it, it seemed the best choice to use for this block.
Some of my colleagues use it or use it as a jumping off point.  Just like the men's drafts, you cannot expect it to be 100% right off the page. With practice, of course, you begin to see the shapes being created on paper and can recognize areas that you can tweak or modify right away for a better fit, but a toile or mock-up is always a good idea.

One thing I did was to reduce the amount of ease in the basic block. There is usually 2 inches on the half in this draft, but I want a close fit, so I reduced it to 1 inch on the half.  This should be close to what I need.

I didn't take all the ease out beacause I wanted some ease in order to be able to fit it properly.
Too tight is always more difficult to deal with. It is so much easier to be able to pin the excess out, and see that your alterations are not causing other problems. If your garment is too tight, it can be difficult to determine how best to fix it. Too tight at the waist for instance can cause bodices to ride up, distorting the position of darts as well as affecting the armholes and even neckline and shoulders. You can end up in a guessing game that entails multiple changes when really all you may have needed is more fitting ease.

I marked out the style lines on the basic pattern, front and back, then I traced them to a clean sheet of paper using a needle point tracing wheel. I will keep the original block intact so that I can go back and manipulate it as needed. For instance,  even though I measured her myself, I think the bust point to bust point measurement seems narrow, so I could go back and easily make the front panel wider, and the side front panel narrower, without throwing anything off.

Once that was done, I trued up all the seam and style lines, and cut out my pattern.

Then I cut out a mock-up, leaving an inch of seam allowance both below the "waistline" as well as above the upper edge of the bodice. All the lines on this pattern are "nett" so I can choose how much seam allowance I want in specific areas.

Next will be the skirt and then a fitting. 

Upcoming work, drafting jeans and the weather

So this is what has thwarted my plans today.
I was at the train station bright and early and waited for two hours, and then decided by the time the train came in another two hours, it would be time to turn around and come home.
So I shovelled instead. Nevermind.








On the work front, I have some interesting projects both modern 1930's, (one of my favourites) and some Elizabethan costuming in the next few months.

One of the shows requires me to make jeans! How much fun is that? We are going to reproduce a vintage style of jeans, higher waisted, in non-stretch 10 or 12 oz denim, that can be danced in.

I spent part of last week making up a draft for them. Now I don't know if you have ever reverse engineered something but it is an interesting process. I mean I know what a typical jean pattern of this style should look like, but when I went a searching through my books, I couldn't find one that really fit the bill. I wondered if those drafts are so extremely proprietary that nothing similar is in a book....hmmm. I didn't have a pair of vintage jeans to take apart and examine, so I just have to work with the information I have.

What are the requirements of these jeans? They need to sit just below the natural waist- not on the hip, not hanging off the butt with the pockets at the back of the thigh with only magic holding them up.

      I have seen guys wearing jeans so low that I am tempted to follow them around the grocery store so I can see the inevitable wardrobe malfunction, but so far I have refrained. I wonder if future costumers will puzzle over how to get those jeans they wore in 2010 to look like that?

The jeans need to sit high into the crotch, let a dancer do the splits, squat, or kick his leg up above his head without splitting or limiting motion. They need to be slim in the thigh, but not tight. Many dancers have a 7 to 9 inch difference between their waist and hip measurements which isn't typical of the average person or the jeans they wear.

So the process starts with identifying how the jean fit is different from a regular trouser, and modifying the draft that I normally use. Slimmer in the thigh and leg, shorter rise, and most importantly a modified crotch curve. The first fit sample I made was ok, but I made the thighs a bit too snug and didn't get enough fabric over the cheeks so the CB seam had tension on it in the wrong area.
So a bit of analysis is in order, and this is the interesting part of the job- mulling things over.

 When you squat down in tight jeans, the expansion of the seat muscles require extra fabric length and width. If the thighs are not tight, it allows the body to move within the cloth. If the thighs are tight, it restricts that movement of fabric, and has to be compensated somehow.
The shape of the back fork and centre back seam run/angle are important aspects in allowing this movement.

So I will try my modified pattern out on a dancer next week, see if the modifications I have made work,  and then try to quantify those modifications, creating my own "jeans" draft, that I can reproduce in a variety of sizes.
When I get back to work next week I will try to remember to photograph my pattern for you to see.

In the meantime, stay warm!

Drafting Tools and trouser draft

The materials and tools you will need to draft a pair of trousers are:

Paper: brown or white kraft paper about 2.5- 3m in length

Pencils: mechanical or regular (nice and sharp)

Eraser

Yardstick or metre stick

Tailor's square (also known as designer L square) they come in imperial and metric

if you don't have one, you will need a calculator and either a t-square or something that you can draw a right angle with

C-Thru quilters ruler is useful

I personally don't use the curved rulers I am going to list below.

I freehand the curves by eye with a piece of graphite chalk which seems to be unavailable nowadays, so you will either have to use the rulers or freehand draw with a pencil, which isn't easy. You can view the rulers here. Fairgate seems to make the most popular ones so you can search for Fairgate pattern drafting rulers for a selection of websites. Ace is just the one that I randomly chose.

Hip curve ruler/ also known as a vary form ruler (F12-124)

French curve/vary form ruler (F12-112R)

Paper scissors

Needle point tracing wheel

Measuring tape

Magic tape

I think that's it........

Last but not least, a trouser draft.

I decided on this one. It is mid 20th century, flat fronted, high waisted, with grown-on waistband, fish tail back, and plain bottoms. It is from The Pocket CPG (Cutter's Practical Guide) by F.R. Morris.

Thanks to the Cutter and Tailor forum for the source material.

I am just going to draft as directed, and this is not a draft I have used before either, so have a look and then we'll get started.

tailcoat

In our upcoming show, two of the costumes that I am building will be for footmen.
The footman will wear formal wear consisting of trousers, waistcoat and tailcoat. The designer had a photograph from the 1950's and I found what I think is the technical draft reference of the "Footman's Coatee" in the c.1917 "Climax" System for Cutting Gentlemen's garments by W.E. Leggat and T.W. Hodgkinson. I don't think the design of these coats changed much between 1920 and 1950, so it is a good place to start.
I like that they sign themselves "Faithfully Yours" in the endpapers.

I am going to use this text as a guideline. I am not going to try to reproduce the draft as written. I find these drafts very interesting and I have drafted them up in the past for the sake of trying them out and to see what the accepted style and shapes of the era were, but I have to do this under the time and budget pressure of work and so I will use my own method of drafting tailcoats and I will use the information in the original drafts to guide my eye.
I thought that this would also be an opportunity to document and share both the pattern making and the construction methods that we will use to make theses coats.
I am trying to get my scanner working so until then I will have to just photograph the book for you to see.
My apologies for the lack of quality photos!