In the Sketchbook- July 2018

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.


Sketching has really helped me in designing and sewing a small capsule wardrobe for work. I was getting tired of wearing the same couple of items for work. For my job, I could probably keep on wearing the same few items and no one would ever know! I travel for work and visit customers and potential customers and work with a slew of sales people. So it can be weeks or even months before I see the same person again. However, I was getting bored and I have 2 large trade shows  each year to attend and having a new capsule wardrobe would be nice!

For this project I started with the fabric as the inspiration and then moved onto sketching designs and organically going back and forth until I had a plan,
Some of the ideas have come to fruition and some are still only sketches and a wish.

 I started with this princess seam sheath dress.

Then added a cool jacket with a shaped hem and pleated details using the dress fabric.

 This then led to also making a skirt to go with the jacket and presto a suit.

I then decided I needed a black silk shell top to go with the suit and thought ohhhhh, pants too!

 Which then led to - why not a neat pencil skirt as well.

 Which went down the rabbit hole to also needing another top.

 And a fun jacket to go with that top that goes over that pencil skirt or pants.

And then it just keeps going and going and before I knew it I had about 20 garments sketched and good portion of my fabric collection strewn all over my living room to see how well each fabric coordinates with the others. Sort of like a fabric/garment version of 6 degrees to Kevin Bacon! 

What fun things have you been sketching?

Make sure to stop by Wendy Grossman of Couture Counsellor to see what lovely sketches and ideas she is working on. Please feel free to share your sketches and ideas with us.

Happy Sketching!!