In the Sketchbook- December 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.

The month of December was a pretty crazy one for me! I'm pretty sure it was a crazy one for most of us :) Besides the craziness of the holidays we also were finishing up on the remodel of our house. All new exterior doors were installed and the wood floors and stairs were refinished. I also had some additional medical tests done and have been working through getting dosage on several new medications worked out. Fingers crossed that we have a handle on the pancreas issues for now!

For the most part my sketches this month were based on separates. I went through my closet earlier this month and realized that I had to cull a bunch more clothes just due to them being too big on me. This got me thinking about day to day clothes that I would like to make.

This first sketch is a simple pencil skirt and a sheer overblouse with a cami underneath. I had several of these types of shirts in my wardrobe but they are just swimming on me, time to make some new ones.

This outfit is based of a shirt version of the Appleton dress, I have seen a couple pattern hacks for this and I think I will try it out. It will look great with a pair of boot leg jeans.

I am eager to try out this idea. It is based off a knit tunic that I draped in the Sarah Veblen draping workshop that I took in november. It is a knit tunic with the shaoping done by a series of tucks cascading along the waistline. To accompany this a pair of ponte skinny pants with knee tucks. I think I have a vogue pattern somewhere that shows how to do this.

If you have followed my blog I did a post about a bunch of Jennifer STern The Tee shirts that I made over the summer. I had made them loose and comfortable, After my last hospital foray in October these loose and comfortable shirts turned into falling off me, way too big shirts. Buggers! I am planning to re-fit the pattern and make some new ones.

I had a work meeting to attend in Milwaukee and quickly realized that most of my winter work wear is too big. UGG!! Lots of clothes going to the donation pile. I really liked the idea of this funky asymmetrical skirt and jacket both with different lengths. along with a funky rolled collar on the jacket. I was thinking this would be great to be made out of a traditional menswear suiting and maybe use some different fabrics thrown in. Lots of fun potential here!

This one was an idea that I picked up on the project runway finale. I believe it was Roberi that had some sheer overlays over short skirts. I'm not sure how this would look on me but I thought it was fun look. In my drawing I have the sheer fabric as a skirt overlay as well as on the sleeves of the top.

I purchased this book, on fashion design and drawing, and a set of nice markers from Dick Blick.
I thought it would be fun to try and take my sketches to a more polished look... We shall see! Drawing is not my strong point but I have surprised myself with this exercise of sketching out design ideas every month. So who knows!!

Make sure to stop by  Wendy Grossman of Couture Counsellor to see what lovely ideas she is working on! As always, If you want to share your creations leave either of us a message or just link back to one of our posts.

Happy New Years!