Notes on Mentorship- Developing an idea into a garment- Raised neckline with radiating darts

Tunic drawing with raised neckline and radiating neckline darts

The second design idea that I wanted to try working from sketch to garment is what I am calling Raised Neckline with Radiating Darts.

1.   Just a quick recap of how I got here.

•   Started with a well fitting master pattern of my tunic.
•    Used a sketch done in Procreate on my iPad to create design I really liked.

For this raised neckline tunic I had to break it down into 2 major steps to start with. First step is to develop the raised neckline and then the second step is rotating the bust darts to the neckline.

Luckily, several weeks ago I took an online zoom class with Sarah Veblen that was about raised necklines where she showed many examples and then walked the group through the pattern work. With this fresh in my mind, and the recording to refer back to, I started my pattern work.

Because I am working on neckline, I am just working off a partial pattern front and back that goes to just below the bust darts.

I traced off a cleaned cropped version of my front and back master tunic and then worked on the steps to raise the neckline.

Version 1:

·        Front and Back- I moved the neckline in at the shoulder by a 1/2inch

·        Picked a part along the shoulder where I wanted the ‘swoop’ up to start and drew a curved line.

·        Back only- rotated the shoulder dart to the neckline and extended.

·        Trued up the dart as a straight dart

I achieved some height and but not quite what I wanted. Still too wide.

First try... way too wide!

Version 2:

·        Front and back- Moved the neckline in another inch closer to the neck and used the same swoop curve.

This version came closer, I opened the back neck darts and re-pinned to give a better shape. Added shaping at the center back. Added fabric to the front with pins and then drew/pinned where I thought the finished edge should be.

Version two- messy but getting better

so many pins!

Transferred all those changes to version 3

Version 3:

·        OMG- in LOVE with this neckline.

·        Loved it so much that I transferred it to a clean full pattern to be used in the future.

Amazing look and love the shape BUT not what I need to get to the final design that I want.

LOVE version three!! But... not the shape needed for this project.

Version 4:

·        Used the height and shape of version 3 for the back neck and shoulder area. Re-shaped the front neckline into a soft V

Super happy with this raised neckline and front soft V-neck shape.

Pic 14

Oh dear... ignore the face! LOL!! This version is perfect shape that I was going for!

With step one of the project done I moved onto designing how I wanted to design and transfer the parallel bust darts into radiating ‘darts’ at the neckline. Not all of the style lines that I have drawn will actually be darts. Some of them will just be sewn as very narrow pin tucks.

Here is version four with the design lines for the radiating neckline darts drawn on. I made a slight change from the original sketch and don't have a center front straight line. It just did not go so I eliminated it and added these two curved lines that are much nicer!

The first thing I did at this step was to draw in where I wanted the ‘darts’ to be. I used a Frixion heat erase pen in this step so that I could re-do as many times as I wanted. I ended up with these curved lines that come out from the neckline in regular intervals. Interestingly enough they are all the exact same length and drawn with the same curve of a French curve.

With these drawn on the Version 4 mock-up I then worked on the flat pattern.

I started by tracing a clean version of the pattern. Still not going to full tunic length but going to just about or above my waist. This would let me evaluate the overall fit with the darts better.

The first thing I did was use the French curve to draw the design lines on.

Front pattern with CF on fold. you can see the swoop at the shoulder creating the raised neckline. The 5 lines are drawn evenly at every 2.5 inches along the neckline. You can also see the parallel bust darts that need to be closed and transferred into the neckline.

With those drawn on I had to think about how I wanted the parallel bust darts to be transferred. Considerations into which design line and how much into each design line and how.

The new front pattern with the darts now transferred to the neckline.

Back pattern- you can see the upper neck dart and shaping at the CB raised neckline.

After thinking a bit about it and talking with my mentor, Sarah, I decided to start with one to one transfers into the 2 closest radiating darts. The upper bust dart went into design line number 3 fully and the lower bust dart went into design line number 2. However, line number 2 went past the full bust point. My decision here was to transfer the dart at the bust point and then when sewing the dart continue past the point as a pin tuck to the end of the line.

Mock-up made with reverse pin tucks and darts sewn in. There are pins in the back neckline to refine the height of the finished look.

Of course to make all of this more difficult is that these are curved darts. So pretty but harder to true up!

All the other design lines would be sewn as very narrow reverse pin tucks.

I did my best to true up the neck line and moved forward with my first version of the radiating darts raised neckline.

Version 5:

·        I was quite pleased with this mock-up

·        Small changes made to the height/shape of the back neckline

·        Small changes to the shape of the front neckline

To make these changes I actually drew on the finished seams with a red marker and then unpicked all the seams and darts ironed it out. Then laid it out and put the pattern on top, lined it all up and drew the changes onto the pattern.

Here is the mock up version 5 on me. It looks quite nice!

To true the neckline darts into the smooth curved soft V, I very carefully walked the curved darts and pinned at the neckline. With this done I was able to use my fashion ruler to create a smooth curve and add seam allowance to the best of my abilities. It looks correct….

Next step will be to make one more mock up and check the overall fit and final neckline shape.

Hopefully after that mockup I can move into fashion fabric. I have a nice green 100% cotton textured fabric that has a nice crisp body. Should hold up the neckline and show off the radiating ‘darts’’ quite well.

Happy Sewing!!

This picture of Princess Victoria sums up how I feel about everything in the real world right now!! Chicago Coronavirus rates skyrocketing, seems to be happening everywhere.

Please stay safe everyone!!

 

Notes on Mentorship- Developing an idea into a garment- Asymmetric Gathered Tunic

After looking at all the sketches that I did I decided that I wanted to first work on what I am calling the Asymmetric Gathered tunic. 

1.   Just a quick recap of how I got here.

2.   Started with a well fitting master pattern of my tunic.

3.   Used a sketch done in Procreate on my iPad to create design I really liked.

4.   Used an approx. ¼ scale pattern to practice the flat pattern work to be done to original pattern to get to new design.

For the Asymmetric Gathered Tunic, I started by taking my base muslin and with it on my dressform I used red narrow tape to plot I my approximate design lines using my sketch as a basis to work off of.

With my design taped off I moved into flat pattern work. I started by tracing off my master pattern onto clean pattern paper. My master pattern is on cardstock with no seam allowances making it very easy for me to trace and make changes to.

With the clean pattern and the front cut as a full pattern, I started with my flat pattern changes to get to my new design.

This is what I did:

Front Pattern (most changes)

• 1.   Moved the neck line in at the shoulders by a ½ inch
• 2.   Changed neckline to a soft V
• 3.   Cut pattern in half along the diagonal line
• 4.   Closed the bust darts on the left side and transferred them into the diagonal seam line.
• 5.   Closed the bust darts on the right and transferred them into the gathers going into the seam line that runs under the right breast. This is a starting point and is then fine-tuned through muslins.

Steps 1,2 and 3

Step 4

Step 5

Back Pattern (minimal to accommodate front neckline changes)

    6.   Move neckline in by ½ inch

Sleeve pattern (changed hem shape- different from sketch)

    7.   Added a shaped hem

The shaped sleeve hem

Once I had these changes made on the pattern paper. I once again pulled out the tracing paper and traced these onto a clean pattern paper and added seam allowances.

Final pattern with seam allowances and the change indicated below to gathered area.

Then I moved into making a muslin. For my muslin I knew I needed to use a test fabric that would mimic the type of fabric that I wanted to use in the final garment. Luckily I had some poly silky from a fabric swap that I took to use for making test garments. The biggest unknown here was the gathered area along the diagonal seam line. I had several decisions to be made. The amount of gathers and if I needed/wanted to add additional gathers, the size of the area to gather into, the placement along the seam line to put these gathers. I did my best guesstimate by playing with the fabric in my hands and seeing how much gathers looked good. I started with a 4:1 ratio. SO I knew I wanted my gathered area to be across 4 inches so I slashed and spread to get to a total of 12 inches of fabric to be gathered.

The important part to remember here is that I knew this was just going to be a starting point and that I would end up making several versions and several muslins to come up with the final design. I also knew that there was a possibility that it would never go to garment stage and I was OK with that!

Version one was so bad and looked so frumpy that I just laughed!!! Basically the gathered area was in the wrong place and too poufy! It was in-between my breasts, not a good luck! The muslin/test fabric I used was not conducive to pics, it was all I had so I used it.

I unpicked the seam and redistributed the gathers to a better placement. This helped a lot and I felt like I was on the right track. In the photo below you can see the progression of the placement and amount of gathers. Red was first try, green second and blue final success!

 

I still had to move the gathered area further down the seam line as well as removing some of the fullness and reduced the size of the gathered area down to about 3 inches. To reduce the amount of the gathers I did a closed wedge so reversed my slash and spread to a slash and close to the amount of fabric that I had pinched out.

I made another muslin and realized that I still had too much poufiness in the area. I was starting to think that maybe this was not going to work for me. Then I decided to unpick the seam line and see where the fabric in the upper area relaxed too. Basically I let it fall under the seam and pinned it. This worked!! I realized that when I first converted the darts to the gathers that I had too much length. Not so easy to true up this area.

The fabric underneath was what I originally had and was causing poufiness. You can see how much "length" I removed to clean up the fit!

With that change to the flat pattern made I then made 2 more muslins in 2 different fabrics to check the fit. SO MUCH BETTER!!!

One of things that I really like about this design is how the drape of the fabric is also affected asymmetrically. It has a super pretty drape coming off of the left breast and down the side front of the garment. SO soft and lovely.

With the final muslins looking good I decided to make it up in real fabric.

I am trying to NOT buy any fabric, I have so much already. I used a rayon challis William Morris print. It makes the detail of the gathers and seam line a little hard to see but I was okay with that. The fabric is so soft and lovely. Feels so great to wear!

In using the patterned rayon challis, I had some considerations I had to make when cutting it out. I wanted the right and left backs to mirror each other so I carefully cut them on single layer. Very happy with how this worked out! I also wanted the outer sleeve seam to mirror each other. I was less successful in this. However, I am okay with how they turned out.

Center back seam lines up so nicely!! Made me very happy!

On the front I wanted to make sure that Center front remained along the same line in the print down both upper and lower pieces to maintain continuity where it could be maintained. On the side seams I just made sure that the horizontal lines or bands of print were maintained.

I am very happy with the outcome of the print placement on this design! The neckline is also perfectly placed on me, no wardrobe malfunctions. This is definitely a benefit to designing your own clothes!

Now to find a solid-ish fabric in the collection to make this in to really show off those design details!

The pics of me in this tunic are not the best. We have been having lots of rain and grey cloudy skies- not the best for taking pictures but these will have to do! Does anyone else take all sort of strange pictures of themselves in garments?

Happy Sewing!!

I caught this smirk of a smile on the princess the other day :) She is getting do big!