Notes on Mentorship- sketching and playing with small scale patterns

The first portion of my mentorship is concentrating on Tunics. I did a bunch of sketches on my iPad using Procreate app using my Body model Croquis.

I initially imported the sketch of my base pattern and used the warp function to get it to fit on my croquis. This gives me the closest representation of how the garment sketch will look on my body.

Using inspirations photos that I have collected I took some time to do a bunch of sketches. When I sketch I use layers, this allows me to play with different ideas and turn things on and off. You can take each of these and save them as images which you can see here.

When I do the sketches I make sure to keep the ones that I don’t like since these give me almost as much information as the ones that I like. I personally feel that when doing your own design process, it is just as important to identify things that you don’t like and why as well as the things that you do like. Sometimes you come up with an idea that you want to like and it is fun to take that and figure it out, break it down into its basic pieces and identify how to make it work for you.

Much of this process is all about playing and taking the time to evaluate your ideas.

Once I identified the sketches that I really liked I took the time to work in small scale patterns and do practice pattern work.

It was important to me to work in small scale on my pattern. To do this I put my pattern pieces on the floor and photographed them straight down. I printed these out on regular printer paper. Then put them on my light box and traced the seam lines so that I would have a small scale line drawing of my pattern. I then just photocopied a bunch of these!

Full size pattern piece on the floor

 

8.5 X 11 printout of photo on my lightbox

Traced seam lines and any other info you want onto plain paper

Make as many copies of this line drawing as needed!

Playing in paper this way makes it so much fun and easy to practice pattern work! It really allowed me to figure out how to go from my base master pattern to all sorts of variations and let me work these out in paper doll fashion. Which is so much easier and less wasteful than doing it in large scale! Once you get started playing it is a bit addictive and I spent an entire afternoon just practicing taking my designs from sketch to small scale pattern through flat pattern work.

The process is quite easy. When doing an asymmetric design I just tape 2 halves together to make a full front.

1) start with your sketch and blank copy of small scale pattern

2) Draw the style lines and neckline onto the small scale pattern. I make sure to mark grainline and number my pattern pieces.

 

3) Close up and transfer the darts to the new seam/design lines and cut apart the pieces.

 

4) easy to practice in this small scale and something to refer to when you go into full size pattern adjustments.

As usual, the more I did the more ideas that kept popping into my head! There really is an infinite number of variables that can be played with.

Asymmetric gathered tunic

Curvy neckline princess with a neck band

Asymmetric swooping tunic

Swooping crossing lines? Stained glass tunic? Not exactly sure what to call this!!

DO you like designing your own patterns? 

Happy Sewing!!

Missing my daily lunchtime zooms with my goofball Princess! I am glad that she is able to go back to school safely- hoping things stay that way...

 

Summertime Linen Tunic Dress

I am totally blogging things out of order! That’s my prerogative as this is my blog :)

Today I share with you a Tunic Dress that I have made using Blackbird Fabrics Lightweight Washed Linen. This linen is just so lovely and soft and has that lived in wonderful feeling of linen that has been worn and loved. 

 

The base pattern for this dress is the Style Arc Daisy Designer Tunic. Although, I must tell you that I have made MANY alterations to this pattern. There is a long story behind this and it all stems back to my now rescheduled Morocco trip and the fact that I wanted a good base woven tunic top. 

As with the rest of the world so many plans, activities and normal day to day things have drastically changed over the past 5 months that it is sometimes a bit hard to even take stock of it all! I feel like I have come to terms with the changes, for the most part anyway. And like my adjusting of life to the new normal, my sewing plans also had to adjust. Instead of planning, designing and making clothing for events and outings, I have made the slow adjustment to designing, planning and creating clothes that just make me happy and take me down a creative route that I just want to explore.

That’s where this dress comes in. It all started with me playing on the Procreate drawing app on my iPad. I have been playing around with the app and slowly working through a UDEMY course on Procreate. I decided to design a whole bunch of different styles and types of tunics. All based off the basic Daisy Designer Tunic Pattern and sketched over my croqui. I had already made the muslins and made several changes to the pattern to make it fit exactly how I wanted so I knew that now I could take that base pattern and make any changes to it that I want. 

One of those sketches that I made was for this tunic dress. I also used fabric in the sketch that I already have in my collection, this is a great way for me to play and visualize and if I really like the sketch I know I have the fabric at hand.

This is a sleeveless pull on dress with a contrasting rolled collar and hem band. It has a bit of a cocoon shape (also a design element that I have been exploring through sketching for a long time now) and of course pockets.

This was something that I knew I wanted to make immediately! I fell in love :) 

Popping on the original muslin that I made earlier this year of the pattern I did some measuring and decided on length and neckline depth. I traced off a copy of my now Master Tunic pattern and lengthened and reshaped it slightly and drafted the large rolled collar. I constructed the entire dress except for the collar. This I first made out of muslin and basted onto the dress to see how it looked. Once I was happy with it I cut it out of fashion fabric and finished up the dress.

I have been having fun adding in labels from Kylie and The Machine. I have my own labels with Siouxzeegirl Designs woven on them but the Kylie labels are just fun and make me smile when I use them.

This linen is so lovely and lightweight but the deep hem facings give the bottom just enough weight for this dress to hang properly.

The fabric and the cut make this dress a real pleasure to wear and because I designed it off a master pattern the construction was a breeze and I knew the fit would be really darn close to spot on. If this had been a fitted garment then I would have made a new muslin to test but for a wonderfully loose and cool summer dress I decided to forgo the new muslin, except for the collar as described above. 

I also made a matching face mask. I think it is really important for the safety of everyone to be responsible and wear a face mask when outside of the home. It has been proven to be effective and it is such a small inconvenience to help keep everyone safe. It only takes a few minutes to make them so adding matching ones for my garments is easy and fun. I always get lots of thumbs up and fun compliments from strangers when I wear matching masks to my garments.

I still have more ideas sketched out for other garments to make based off this new master pattern. This is actually my third… I haven’t blogged the other 2 yet but you may have seen them on my IG account.

It sure has been fun exploring different ideas and taking my sewing in a different direction that’s what I normally do.

Has the pandemic changed how you sew?

Happy Sewing!!

What I made and wore for 2 weeks in Paris!

This past November I spent 2 full weeks in Paris. (Much of this was documented on my Instagram feed- @siouxzeegirl)

 

One of my favorite parts about travel is planning my wardrobe. Once my destination is selected, dates nailed down and flights purchased I immediately start to think of my wardrobe. Paris was such a fun trip to plan for and I am glad that I started early since I knew that I wanted to make as much of the wardrobe that I could.

I selected a color palette of blue, red and white. A slightly different palette from my normal clothes. This gives me an opportunity to play with other colors AND come out with a great capsule wardrobe in the end.

 

Wardrobe sewing planning

With the color palette selected I started pulling all the fabrics from my fabric collection that fit into this palette. I don’t really think about what I will make with them at this point, I just pull the fabric and put it all on my couch, table and floor, wherever it all fits so that I can see all of it. With all of the fabric spread out it is easy to ‘see’ and you can quickly start removing fabrics that just don’t go. This can be because the color is a little off. For instance, I ended up going with deeper and true reds versus orangey reds. I removed many of the very dark navy blues and went with a brighter blue and brighter navy’s. After doing this first culling, which usually removes about half of the pulled fabrics, I start to look at the fabrics left against my list of clothes that I want to make. This then helps me to put the fabrics into 4 groups. Tops, bottoms, dresses and outerwear. 

 

I have a couple rules that I follow when creating a travel wardrobe.

1. All separates, bottoms (skirts and pants) and tops (knit and woven) need to go with multiple other items. For example, if I bring 3 bottoms then each top I made must go with at least 2 of the 3 bottoms. Ideally all 3! And vice versa. Each bottom needs to go with multiple tops.
2. Each dress needs to worn at least twice. Unless traveling for a special occasion like a wedding, I NEVER bring an item that will only get worm once.
3. I try to stick to 3 pairs of shoes. And NEVER bring new, untested shoes.
4. I always have a travel outfit that gets worn on plane to and from and then usually one other day on the trip that I consider a down day. (Crucial for longer trips)
5. Only bring undergarments that can be rinsed/hand washed and dry overnight. 
6. I almost never travel with jeans. They are heavy and if they get wet take forever to dry. (Unless I am staying in a ABNB with a dryer)

These rules help me to make sure that my wardrobe creation and packing for a longer trip are very thoughtful and deliberate. These are the rules that work for me and they may certainly not be what works for someone else! I guess my biggest thing is that if I am deliberate beforehand with my creating and selecting my wardrobe then when I am on my trip I don’t really have to think about it too much and just really enjoy my travels!

 

Yes, your eyes are correct... I packed a suitcase inside a bigger suitcase on the way there, so that I would have plenty of room on the way home for the FABRIC purchases!! It worked out perfectly!

For my Paris trip, I knew that I wanted to bring 3 or 4 bottoms, 5 or 6 tops and 2 dresses. Plus, outerwear.

 

What I made and what I bought.

Things I made:

Dresses: 2 blue floral matelassé corner dress from 2 coordinating fabrics and Chanel tweed dress with tucked knit sleeves and tweed cuffs.

Bottoms:3 (1 skirt & 2 pants) one midi length red corduroy straight skirt, one blue tweed lined slim ankle pants and one full length wool crepe lined pants with pleated hem. 

Tops: (6) red wool knit top, blue wool knit top (only item from my existing wardrobe) rayon/spandex knit tunic, blue floral ruched knit top and a woven Japanese cotton top. Plus one French style jacket and shell. 

 

I Only 4 purchased items that came with me! Both my outer wear pieces and my travel tunic and leggings. I just ran out of time and thought why not! Everything else I made :) Such a great feeling to travel with wonderful me made wardrobe.

I purchased both items of outerwear that I brought with me. A tunic length navy puffer vest and a burgundy London fog hooded rain/trench coat.

Shoes: I broke my rule and actually brought 5 pairs of shoes. 2 red shoes and 2 blue shoes and a pair of pool flip flops. All shoes were flats and every pair got worn. PLUS…. I purchased 2 more pairs of shoes while in Paris. I mean really, how could I not buy shoes in Paris!!

Day 1 (travel day)

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10 (with a very bad selfie!)

Day 11

Day 12 (forgot to take a selfie on the trip!)

Day 13

Day 14

Day 15

 The last day, DAY 16, was our travel day home and I wore the exact same outfit as I wore traveling to Paris.

The page in the travel journal where I recorded how many times I wore each item.

 

For this trip, I knew I wanted to do a detailed trip journal. (On past trips I have done small journaling but I really wanted to do more and a bigger journal with everything that can be in one place once the trip is over) So, in this journal I made a list of each item of clothing that I brought plus the shoes and I marked them each time I wore them. Plus, I preplanned a daily 2-page spread in the journal that included one page for notes and another page for a sketch of my daily outfit. I loved doing this!! I also left open pages in the journal for sketching and note taking and for pasting in tickets and other memorabilia once I got home.

The croquis that I used were from My Body Model and I really enjoyed having them!

 

How do you plan your travel wardrobes?