In The Sketchbook- October 2016

Welcome to In the Sketchbook, a monthly look at fashion design sketches that we are working on for ourselves. Sketching garments on a personal croquis is a great way for the individual couture enthusiast to move beyond the use of commercial patterns and into a world of personalized design! It can be intimidating at first, but with a little bit of practice it becomes something you look forward to. Join us for a look of what we have going on In the Sketchbook! Brought to you by Wendy Grossman of Couture Counsellor and Steph King from Siouxzeegirl Designs.

I worked on adding in details to my sketching this month. I took my base pencil skirt pattern and modified it for a knit pencil skirt. This got me thinking of all the ideas that I could make off of that plain knit pencil skirt.

I started by pulling fabrics from my collection. I often times let my fabrics speak to me and tell me what they want to be! This worked like a charm and I came up with 4 great designs. In these sketches you will also see a side view. This is new for me, I really wanted to capture the idea from my imagination and sketching a side view really helped that in several of these. I also find that jotting down notes also help to jog the memory on what idea


Idea #1: Knit pencil skirt with contrasting side panels. Fairly simple design and a take off of the color blocking that is very popular right now. The 2 fabrics I choose are a floral scuba knit for the main front and back and then a deep maroon rayon ponte for the side panels. I could also go with black bit I like the maroon better. Both of these fabrics have been in my collection for a while. The ponte was from an online source and I think the floral scuba is from JoAnn's from when scuba first came out and I just wanted to try it out.

Idea # 2: Knit pencil skirt with a single side front panel with an integrated pocket. The integrated pocket panel would be done with just folds in the fabric to prevent having any lumpiness from seaming. The side and side front seams above the pocket would need to be stabilized a bit to prevent any stretching out from carrying an I-phone in that pocket.

The fabric for this is a lovely scuba knit from Mood fabrics.

Idea # 3: This knit pencil skirt has an overlapping front panel ending in points and has a V like cutout at center front hemline. From the side view you can see that the hemline at the points dip down lower than the straight back. The front pieces are also asymmetrical with the right overlap going deeper than the left underlap. I will need to make sure that I have this asymmetry different enough so that it looks deliberate and not like a mistake in garment construction!
I have 2 different fabric choices pulled for this skirt. The black and white plaid is more of ponte like fabric. The plaid is actually woven in not printed on. This was from my collection and maybe from fabricmart.com. The second fabric is from Emmaonesock and is a rayon poly mix very similar to a scuba knit.

Idea #4: This knit skirt has no side view sketch since nothing special to show from the side. It has a single back piece and the front is split with a diagonal seam that finishes at the hemline with a split. I also really like the idea of using top stitching to highlight the lines of the seams. This fabric is a delicious double knit from Smugglers Fabrics. One side is a silvery grey and the other is black. I think I would use the silvery grey facing out and topstitch with black thread. I will have to do a bunch of topstitch testing to come up with a good combination that wont make the fabric ripple.

Don't forget to hop on over to see what amazing designs Wendy Grossman of Couture Counsellor has come up with this month!