A fitting question

For the next pattern drafting step I'd have to use my own sloper. Unfortunately it doesn't fit any more :(A mixture of dancing and stomach flu has caused me to slim down. I didn't actually loose weight. It's more like putting on muscles in the calf, thighs, but, lower abs .... okay everywhere. Even the bottom of my feet!

But I digress. The point is that I feel like I'm wearing this when I put on a "dress" made from my sloper. I nicked the pic from the lovely Marissa at her wonderful blog. You should really check it out if you haven't done so yet. This dress for example gets transformed into the cutest thing ever.

The really important question now: Should I draft new slopers (again!?) and make my skirt pattern from those? Or should I hope to put on weight again and make it from my old sloper?

Oh and just because I love stealing pictures I find on the Internet and sharing them with you. This is what a blogger suggested to put on clothing labels:

Not so Spirally Spiral Skirt -Drafting Part 2

This is the best resemblance of me I could find. I was down the past few days, I still don't want to eat anything. I have moved from PJs  to extremely soft jeans though. Enough whining from me and on with the tutorial!

Last time we got as far as drafting the position of the break. Today we'll shift the dart control so you don't end up with a bag that shows your undies for a skirt :P!

1. On your break line draw in the points directly underneath your dart apexes. 
2. Then draw a straight line from apexes to hem. This line should go through the dart apex and the point of the right-side neighbour on the break line (If you want the skirt to spiral in the opposite direction you can just flip the entire pattern around at the end.).
3. Shift the darts as shown in the diagrams.

I couldn't find an elegant way to pivot the shaped darts and keep the seam straight. I'm sure there is a method though. I just have to find it. For this it doesn't matter all that much. The skirt is cut on the bias. Well the non-true one anyway. I'll explain about that next time.

So much for today. I'm going to make myself another cup of tea.

Butterfly

Straight Seamed Spiral Skirt - Drafting Part 1

Illustration of a possible skirt outcome
The area where the break is is shown in blue.
The red part shows the amount of turn.

Here is the promised tutorial on how to draft and sew a skirt with gores that wrap around the wearer. I will show you how to do a skirt with 6 gores. This is the easiest thing to do, as you won't have to shift the darts around to much.

Materials:

• basic skirt sloper (pattern of a well-fitting pencil skirt)
• pattern paper (you can use newspaper, butcher paper, paper table cloths, normal paper taped together ...)
• long ruler or other straight edge
• measuring tape
• French curve or a flexible ruler or a piece of washing line

Procedure:

This is roughly what the skirt sloper
for Dolly looks like. As it is only
knee length I lengthened
it to just above the ankles.

1. Trace front and back parts of  your sloper (or of your skirt without the seam allowances).aligning the side seams. As this is an asymmetric design you'll need to trace both halves. You'll have shaped darts at the side seams and a "normal" dart in each of the pieces.
2. Measure the distance from CFW (centre front front at waist) to how long you want your skirt to be. Shorten or lengthen the centre seam accordingly. Shorten or lengthen al the other seams by the same amount and draw in the new hemline.



The red lines show where I will
add length and the green lines
show where I will take some away.





3. Measure the hip measurement (play at connecting the dots with the apexes of the darts) and divide this measurement by six. Dolly's hip measurement is precisely 14 cm. This gives me a result of 2.3333 cm. I will round this measurement up to 2.35 cm. Please remember that you should never round your measurements down.
4. Start shifting the darts and side seams by folding the pattern in one place and adding the same amount somewhere else. This works because you don't have any sharp angles in your body so you can shift the darts a little bit.



I choose to have the break in
the middle.

5. Decide on where the break should be by measuring down from your waist. Draw this line on your pattern paper. It should be the same distance from all the darts. NOTE: The break line can only be as far away from the hem as half the distance from hem to dart apexes.

So much for today. I'll have the rest for you within two days.

Butterfly