Changing Necklines and a New Style With Baby Bangs : VIDEO(s)

One of the simplest changes you can make to a sewing pattern is changing the neckline, and since I do this all the time on my own patterns, I made a video showing just how I go about it! If you have a sewing pattern you like the fit of but want to change up the look a bit for next time, try a new neckline!

I recently went back to my wonderful hairdresser to get my bangs cut even shorter and more Bettie/baby bangs in style. I was afraid to go this short the first time, but wowwwww do I love them like this! I think I'll be keeping these for a while :)

Happy weekend everyone! What videos would you like to see from me in the new year?

How to Draft a Sweetheart Neckline Bodice Pattern (Pattern Drafting)

So I have been trying to explain how I draft my own patterns for the past few months, with what I would call varying success because I actually find it hard to describe pattern drafting in a way that isn't confusing! While I keep working on how exactly to translate my skills into tutorials, I thought today I would give you an example of how I take my standard bodice pattern and change it up for different designs.

I recently made a rose print dress and decided to make it with a sweetheart shaped neckline with a separate section at the shoulder with gathering. This is an easy pattern modification to make if you have a standard 2 dart bodice pattern already, so here is how I made the bodice pattern for this dress!

Of course, first you want to trace your bodice pattern onto some nice clean paper. I recommend doing all pattern drafting in pencil of course, but I'm using bright markers so you guys can see what I'm doing.

So now that you have a fresh copy of your bodice pattern, draw on the neckline shape that you would like to have. Seen in green above. Remember if you mark your standard bodice pattern with some neckline guides for how low or wide you usually like your necklines, drawing new styles later will be easier to get right. For example I know that I wan't my necklines to always be at least 3 inches above the level of the apex mark on my pattern. You can see above on my pattern the green cross mark of my apex and I marked the same level on the center front line so I could keep that in mind when drawing the neckline.

After you have the sweetheart shape neckline drawn on your pattern, you can draw a line straight from the angle of the neckline to the armscye area. This can be any angle from the neckline, but a 90 degree angle is probably the easiest to sew later. See my line in red above.

Take the time now to cut out your pattern so you can move onto the next steps!

Slice off that shoulder area piece!

And then label it a lot so you don't get confused later.

Above you can see the next step is to create the gathers along this seam line we just created. To do this, I am going to move the side dart of the bodice to the new seam we made. We do this with the slash and spread method of moving darts around. To start, draw a line from one of the side dart legs to the apex, and then from the apex to the place where you want to move the dart. See above in red.

Then cut through these lines right up to, but not totally through, the apex mark. Now you have this corner of the pattern you can swing around.

"Close" the side dart by overlapping the paper along the dart legs and taping it down. Doing this will open a new dart where you had also cut into the pattern to the apex.

Fill in that empty dart/triangle of space with some scrap paper as above.

Almost done now! Add seam allowance to both the edges where you cut off of the shouldery bit from the pattern earlier and the other side where you just moved the dart. (See above!) You are going to gather the fullness you just added to the seam (via moving the dart there) that we made at the start when you sew these pieces together later. For the back of the pattern, just make sure that you redraw the back neckline to match at the shoulder seam with the new front neckline potentially being narrower now after you changed it. That's the pattern finished! So you will just gather the excess fullness (see the wiggly red line above) to fit the other piece we cut off at the start. See the finished dress of mine at the start of this post to see how it looks when it's all sewn together!

I hope this gives a bit of insight into how I modify my standard bodice pattern for different designs and projects. Doing a pattern modification like this is super simple and because I know my standard bodice pattern fits, I don't have to worry at all that the new changed bodice won't fit. Everything drafted from a sloper or standard bodice pattern that fits you is still going to fit you even if you move a dart or make a change as long as you don't forget to add seam allowances back on or something silly like that. (Which I did all the time when I first started, no worries)

I have another bodice style to draft this weekend, so I'll try and document that process too!  I have two last summer projects to finish and wear before fall truly beings! I love fall so I can't wait to start on some more autumn inspired projects, but I have to finish these other projects first! Have a good weekend everyone!

How to Draft Neckline and Armscye Facings (Pattern Drafting)

Last time I discussed moving darts around on the bodice and drawing different necklines, so I thought today I should cover how to draft facings to finish necklines and the armscye of sleeveless bodices. Of course you have many options when it comes to finishing the raw edges of necklines and armscyes, like bias binding, bias turned under and used like a facing, bag lining the whole bodice of course encloses the edges, and then facings. Facings are super easy both to draft and to sew! Facings are a great option when you don't need to  (or want to!) add a lining into your project.

To draft some basic facings, you will of course need your bodice front and back pieces.

Start by taking a scrap or length of paper and trace the neckline portion of your bodice pattern onto this new sheet of paper.

Use a ruler to make sure the center front and shoulder lines are traced properly. I usually make my facing pieces 2.5" wide. To do this I use the 2" width of my clear ruler to make marks along the curve  and then add an additional half an inch.

After adding these measured marks, I sketch a curve to mirror the neckline curve along these guide marks. You want the area of the curve where it meets the center front and shoulder to be close to 90 degrees.

Add the relevant details onto the facing pattern, I always mark the center front and the shoulder so I don't get confused later.

Trace the back neckline and make the facing in the same way.

When sewing you will: sew the shoulder seams of the facings (and press them open), finish the outer edge of the facing (serge, binding, zig zag over the edge), then sew the facing onto the neckline with right sides together, clip the curve (if curved or corners) on the seam allowance once sewn, add edge stitching if you are thorough, and press flat. I usually add a few stitches to tack the facing to the shoulder seam as well so it doesn't move around. I'll do a sewing tutorial on how to do all of this soon :)

For sleeveless dresses, you can make armscye facings as well to finish those raw edges. If you will be needing a neckline facing and armscye facings, you can combine them into one piece. Start again by tracing the top half of the bodice pattern and again add the 2.5" curves along the inside.

Simply draw a curve to combine the two facings into one.

Sewing these can be a bit tricky if you haven't done it before, but use this method. 

That's how easy it is to draft basic facings for your bodice patterns! Easy to draft, easy to sew, and they give a nice clean finished look to your projects. The more pattern drafting posts I do, the more I want to do sewing tutorials, so I expect those will be next ;)

How to Move Darts and Change Necklines : Slashing & Spreading (Pattern Drafting)

Alright, after the last few posts you now have got a basic 2 dart bodice block pattern (you do right?). So what can we do with that? We can use the bodice block as is, with one dart at the waist and one to the side, it works great and I myself use this basic bodice style for nearly all of my dresses. Often I use this 2 dart bodice pattern but modified to have a kimono style sleeve instead of a set in one, which is a modification I explain here. The different fabrics, necklines, sleeve styles, and other details can make this same very standard 2 dart bodice pattern look very different or work for a verity of eras.

For my white eyelet dress I used my basic 2 dart bodice pattern. The only change in the pattern for the dress above from my basic bodice block was to draw on a v-neckline, super simple!

Still, you don't have to stick with one waist dart and one side dart, you can move one or both of these darts to create some different style lines! Or perhaps instead of a dart you want to use gathers instead? Darts are used to make the fabric curve to the shape of the body, taking in fullness to create shape, but of course this fullness does not have to be controlled with a dart. You can use pleats, gathers, smocking, or darts to reign in fullness and using the slash and spread method of moving around fullness means you can move the area where fullness is controlled around too. For example the dress below is again a variation I created from my standard 2 dart bodice pattern, first I used the slash and spread method to move the side dart to the neckline and then instead of actually sewing the dart I instead used gathers to control the fullness.

The red lines here show where the darts are on the pattern, but while I sewed the waist dart as usual, I gathered the fullness of the dart at the neckline instead of actually sewing the dart.

Most if not all bodice styles are created by manipulating the excess fullness created by fitting the fabric to the body with darts or style lines. You can transform the standard darts of a pattern into a style line or princess line quite easily, but I'll be showing you that another day. Today lets simply look at how to slash and spread to move darts around.

Endless possibilities!

So the darts, and in turn fullness, radiates from the apex (bust point) on women's patterns. All darts usually point to the apex, and gathers usually radiate back to the apex as well. Different style lines or additional added fullness can go against this basic principal, but when starting with the 2 dart basic bodice block pattern, you are usually going to be moving darts around the apex.

Lets start by tracing a copy of the front basic bodice block.

How to Make a Bodice Block Pattern from Your Favorite Commercial Pattern (Pattern Drafting)

Well everyone, first I would like to apologize, because I had no idea how few useful commercial patterns there were out right now! I just searched through Simplicity, Butterick, McCalls, and Vogue patterns and I barely found a handful of patterns I think would work well as a base for making your own base block patterns/slopers. It seems like every dress from the big pattern companies has princess seams instead of darts, an empire waist seam, or is intended to be made from knits! Where have all the good basic dress bodice patterns gone?! It is so strange to me! Still, I did find a few patterns I think would be good places to start when you don't want to draft a sloper from scratch.

What we are looking for to work with is a basic two dart style bodice. Apparently these are rarer than I had at first imagined in most commercial pattern lines these days, but some of you may already have an older pattern in your stash that fits the bill.

The Goal:

Below I have drawn a dress bodice over the "goal" basic bodice block from above in gold so that you can see what a regular 2 dart dress pattern might look like laid over the basic bodice block. Also I say 2 darts because each side of the front has two darts, (you may have noticed the basic sloper we drafted originally had only one huge waist dart) even though total that makes for 4 darts on the front. A dress pattern with a style already will have a different neckline perhaps, or may be sleeveless and have straps instead of a full shoulder area. Our goal today is to turn a commercial pattern you may already have lying around (hopefully one you have used before and know you like the general fit of) into a basic bodice block.

Like I have said before, it's easier and less daunting to start with something and then fix it to fit you and your needs and to start with nothing but a list of measurments. Staring at blank paper and a bunch of numbers that are supposed to add up to a sloper can easily be just too much of a hassle for some, and I understand that point of view, so I wanted to note today that you can just modify an existing pattern to get a basic bodice block if that sounds more your speed.

For example, lets say I had no sloper but I did have Vogue V1137 laying around. Well as we can see below, it has the 2 dart style front bodice and 1 dart in the back so it is a good pattern to draft a basic bodice block from.

Start by cutting out the tissue paper pattern and tracing it (or just tracing it without cutting it out if you'd like) onto a larger sheet of paper. Now remember, this traced pattern already has seam allowance included as commercial patterns always include the 5/8" seam allowance, so don't add more seam allowance on later as it's already there!

Because this dress pattern has straps that sit right at the edge of the shoulder, I don't need to extend the shoulder line out past the shoulder tip, but I do need to extend it inwards towards the neckline. So line your ruler up to the short little strap shoulder line and extend that line towards the neck as above.

After that make sure you have the center front extended upwards too until it meets the line from the shoulder as seen above.

Now we need to draw in a new high neckline, so measure out 2.5" from the point where the lines meet along the shoulder line and mark that spot. Do the same 3" down from the point along the center front. Now sketch in a curve connecting these two dashes to form a new ultra high neckline. This neckline may be too tight, or perhaps it could be too open and not high enough, but that's something you will discover when you make the mock up and move onto fixing such issues. We want out basic bodice block to have the highest possible comfortable neckline so that you can use this high neck pattern for adding collars onto if and when you'd like. Most of the time we'll be drawing in a lower neckline for whatever style of dress you'll be making but we want this high neckline as a starting point each time.

Now how does this commercial pattern with its raised neckline compare to my self-drafted base bodice pattern that I actually use? Well as you can see above V1137 is smaller than my pattern, but to be fair that's only really because I just had a size 14 in the vogue pattern and I probably would need a size 16 if I actually were to use that pattern, so imagine if the vogue pattern was one size bigger and they would actually line up rather well! I haven't used a commercial pattern in so long that all of the ones still hidden away in my sewing room wouldn't even fit me anymore since I bought them at age 16!

If you look closely you can see that the side dart on my pattern is much larger than the little dart on the V1137 pattern (V1137 in red there, my dart in black) and that the armholes are different shapes. These differences are mostly due to my needing a FBA (full bust adjustment) on most commercial patterns as they are just not designed with a DD in mind. So were I to make V1137, I would have to do an FBA on the pattern and make a few mock ups to get it right. Which is why I don't use commercial patterns at all anymore when I can just use my own patterns that I know already fit!

What about the back? Same procedure. After you do this initial round of fixing making the commercial pattern look more like a sloper then make a muslin like we did last time and get to fixing the fit and proceed in fixing and fitting until you have a 2 dart bodice block just as you would if you had drafted a sloper first.

If you don't have a 2 dart bodice in your stash of patterns, or have one but you don't like the fit enough to use it to start fitting your basic bodice block, here are four patterns I found in the commercial market that I think are good starting points for making yourself a set of basic block patterns with which to use moving forward.

Pattern Drafting: Fitting Your New Bodice Sloper

So after last week's incredibly fun foray into math...because, sure, math is fun, now we must focus on making the new sloper pattern we have drafted fit properly. It is very doubtful your new sloper will fit perfectly right after you plot it out, or if like me you resorted the the standardized measurement chart it is almost certain that the resulting pattern won't fit you perfectly! Never fear, we aren't looking for perfect, at least not yet! Time to start fixing and fitting!

So you have your shiny new front and back sloper patterns. Before we try testing out said patterns in a muslin mock up, we have a few more adjustments to make. First we must switch from one giant dart on the front bodice to two moderately size darts.

To do this first we draw a line from the side into the apex (point K from last time, I will refer to this point as the apex from now on). Measure down 2 1/2 inches from the armhole/top of the side and draw a straight line in to the apex. See above. Next cut along this line right up to the apex point.

Cut along one of the dart legs up to the same apex point but not through it. Now the corner should be sort of hinged and free to move around.

Now with this corner loose we can close the waist dart halfway like you see above. This opens up a new dart in the side seam. This technique is called slashing and spreading by the way, and later we will come back to it and learn more about moving darts around using this method. Tape down the new shape of the waist dart and tape a piece of paper into the new side dart.

Pattern Drafting: Drafting the Basic (Bodice) Sloper

Whew! This is going to be difficult you guys, because frankly I want to give you the exact directions from the pattern drafting book I use which feels quite...icky? I mean, I highly recommend you all invest in the book, Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph-Armstrong, as I continue to use my copy all the time, despite buying it ages ago originally as a textbook my first year of college. This is Joseph-Armstrong's method, and walking you through it feels very close to plagiarism. The question is if you can plagiarize text, which is obviously a thing, can you also plagiarizer methods and techniques? I dunno, but all I'm going to say before continuing is--- please go buy the book so I feel less bad.

Then again, perhaps my directions will be so confusing you will literally have to buy the book ;)

You all have your measurements from last time right? Great, though I have some bad news, if you start drafting your pattern and you notice things are just not working, it may be because your measurements are off (like- you think the end of the shoulder is one spot, and really it is off by an inch or something). This quickly happened to me, and so I turned to plan B, which in this case was to look at a measurement chart and find a "size" with measurements where most of the numbers matched mine as much as possible. The book I use to draft patterns has such a chart in the front, and the listed size 16 measurements matched over 50% of my own. The listed "size 16" (whatever that means?) had a 40 1/2" bust, a 32" waist, and a 42" hip, and my own measurements are 40 1/2" bust, 30" waist, and 44" hips. So they were a bit off there, but at we won't be using the hip measurement to draft the bodice sloper I knew that number wouldn't matter, and taking in the waist in the end would be easy since there are going to have to be adjustments to the final sloper anyway.

What's that? Adjustments? Why yes, my dear intrepid patternmaking folk, the odds of this first sloper pattern fitting you perfectly are slim to none (yes, even though you may be using your "exact" measurements). So sorry again, but them's the facts. I mentioned before that my own method of pattern drafting has all the real work upfront, once you have created your perfect bodice pattern, you will then be able to draft almost any style of dress from it, but you have to make that base bodice pattern first, and to do that there is going to be a lot of adjusting, mock-ups/muslins, and fitting involved. My guiding principal is this: it is always going to be much easier to fix something imperfect than to create a perfect thing from scratch. 

To that point I must mention again that you can buy sloper patterns, they are a thing you can purchase and skip this whole step. You will still have to adjust them to fit you, but hey you can skip the following mess if you'd like. I personally have the double quality of being impatient and cheap when it comes to patterns, I don't want to wait to acquire them (via ordering online or whatever) and I don't want to pay for them when I know it is possible to draft them myself for free. So if any of you are still with me, lets make a simple sloper so we have something to work with eh?

Three further disclaimers: firstly, I wish to formally apologize to metric users...so sorry bout that, and second the name of the measurement used for each line below will be in bold text. Finally, the letters in the instructions below correspond to Joseph-Armstrong's order of her directions, and while my directions may be in a different order, I have kept the letters the same (so we wont necessarily be using the letters in alphabetical order, but that doesn't actually matter). Mmkay ;)

Grab some paper, a long ruler (I needed my regular clear 18" ruler as well as a longer 24" ruler), a french curve will come in major handy and they are pretty cheap so get one of those, a pencil and a big eraser and we'll get going...

(don't say I didn't warn you)