Toile Diary; Trousers

I firstly started off patterning my trousers by tracing off a simple trouser block. I used some toiled trousers that had been made for us to use and placed them on the mannequin with legs, this was very helped as I could measure and pin into place exactly how I wanted my trousers to look and fit, so that's what I did.

From my pinning and measurements, I worked out that I was going to take off a cm at the lower hips, 2cm at the knee and 3cm at the bottom off each side.

I then had to change the top of the trousers to fit my design. I adapted each side of the trouser leg to make each one angle out a lot more, I also added on the triangular waist and seams.

I then drew out my final patterns, I had the top part and bottom part of the back and front legs, and nothing was cut on the fold so a 1cm seam allowance was added onto everything all the way around.

I started off by firstly sewing in the darts, this was probably the hardest part of the trousers as I was sewing half of the dart on one piece and the other half on the other piece, so making sure the darts matched up perfectly was tough.

I then sewed the two top halves to the two bottom halves on the front and back pieces with a 1cm seam allowance and very carefully making sure I matched up all of the darts.

Then I went on to sew together the center front seams of the back and front pieces with a 1cm seam allowance.

The next thing I did was place in the zip at the side. Here I used a closed end short zip. Upon reflection of how the zip looked I'm thinking of maybe using a concealed zip on my final garment, only because I don't think the zip shows up enough or is big enough or placed where it can look like some obvious detail, so I am thinking it would look better if it was just concealed.

Then all I had to do was sew down the outside leg of the garment and then the inside leg, making sure I use a 1cm seam allowance.

This is how my final trousers look;

I am pleased with the final outcome and I am saving the hemming and facing for my final garment.

I made the trousers out of my final garments following these steps. I am leaving the facing and hemming until I have fitted the trousers onto my model, but I have prepared the facings and ironed it onto inter facing ready to attach it on.

Toile Diary; Long Skirt

Long Skirt;

The shape of my long skirt will be very tight fitted  but stretchy. I started off by tracing off a basic skirt block.

I then made only a few slight alterations, I took out all of the darts, the 2 at the back and the one at the front by measuring the length of the darts and then taking that off the length of the skirt at the top. I did this on both sides and then added about another 30 cm onto the bottom to make the length of the skirt ankle length. I didn't take any of the skirt in at the bottom yet as I am going to do that and measure it properly when I have made the skirt at the skirt is going to be very tight fitted at the bottom around the ankles.

I then made sure I used some stretchy lycra material as that is what I will be using to create my final garment, so I then cut out my 2 pieces, each front and back piece were cut on the fold and as the garment was supposed to be stretchy and very tight fitting so just the one front and back piece was all that was required, no zips or seams or splits.

I then put my 2 pieces of the skirt together.

After sewing the front and back piece together with a normal sewing machine and foot, I realized that I probably should have overlocked the two pieces together rather than sewing them together, as the lycra was that stretchy and it would have to be stretched to be put on, it might not hold with just a normal sewing line so I think on my final garment I will overlock it together just to be sure.

I then patterned for a waistband, I did this by measuring the length of the top of the front and back piece, adding them together and then deciding I want my waistband to be about 3cm, I drew an oblong the length of the front and back waist added up and at 6cm wide. I also added on a 1 cm seam allowance on each side.

I then cut it out of the fabric andfolded it over, I then overlocked the two sides together with a 1cm seam allowance so that the piece was folded over the show the 3cm band and was attached at each end to make a circle. I then pinned it onto the top of my garment, making sure that where I had sewn the waistband together  met the seam where I had sewn the skirt together.

I then overlocked the waistband onto the garment. I really liked the effect of the waistband and I will definitely use this type of finish on my final garment, although I realized after I'd sewn the waistband on that I had sewn it on inside out and the seam was showing on the right side, next time on my final garment I will make sure I don't do this.

The finish I will do at the bottom for my final garment I only managed to do on a sample piece as the machine wasn't working properly, this is the simple final I want at the bottom of my garment;

I think that this is a really nice and simple way of finishing a garment, especially a long skirt and as my material is going to be stretchy I think it will be a very simple yet effective way of finishing the bottom and compliment the material and garment very well.

CAD

This was a creative session we did on cad to try and get a feel for the different tools and what they did.

The tools we used were the black and white arrow, the transform tool, we imported a nature picture onto our work using the window-symbol library-nature method, we added a filter to the image using the filter-distort-pucker and bloat method, we added text with the type tool, changed the font to our liking, went into the character dialog box and selected the spiral tool to spiral our text and played around with layers using the layer tool.

This was a really helpful exercise as it helped us to gain some experience of using the different tools that cad had to offer, it also helped us to get some ideas for our fashion posters and how we wanted those to look.

Toile Diary; Inverted Darts Long Dress

Inverted Darts Long Dress;


I started off by firstly tracing out the front and back of a basic dress block. I then had to look at my dress design and decide where the main adaptions were taking place, this was the shoulder and neckline area of the front and back.

I started by adapting the front of the dress. I had to make the neckline angled and straight, rather than smooth, and totally take out the shoulder altogether.

Here I have blocked off the part I will be cutting out with white paper. I closed the top dart and reopened one just under the arm which is where I wanted the dress to fit into the body slightly more. On the right I have angled the neckline to make it straight rather than rounded, and then on the left is the shoulder and underarm hole which here I have taken away the shoulder and drawn a straight line from the top of the shoulder seam to straight under the arm, taking out the shoulder completely and making the seam angled and straight like the new neckline.

This is the back piece, I have taken out the small dart at the top by taking off the same amount as the dart measured which was just over a center meter off the right side. Then, i kept the back neckline rounded and the same height as on the pattern but changed the direction of the back piece totally so that each point of the neckline on top of each shoulder was meeting in the middle of the back and then spreading out to the underarm seams, this totally took out the shoulder again. 

I then had to add the length onto the bottom of the pattern to make it just sweep ankle length. I found someone at an average height in my class and then measured them from the knee to the ankle, as the pattern stopped at the knee and I wanted to make it ankle length. I then took my measurement of about 35-36 cm and added it onto the bottom of the front and back pattern.

As I was having inverted darts on the front of my front piece, I had to work out where and how many I was going to use. The dart on the front of the front piece I decided to take out and re work into the front evenly by measuring the original dart and then dividing it up by however many darts i wanted in the front of my dress, I opted for 5. So then I measured the original dart and split it into 5 equal parts and spread them out evenly making sure the middle one was going to be exactly in the center front.

The next part of my patterning was the add the crystal shaped panels onto each side. I decided with advice from my tutor to do the panels so their was a seam in between them, so 4 pieces were cut out rather than 2 to see what effect this gave. I drew on the panel shape starting from just above the knee point and going all the way down to the bottom, to get the same shape on both the front and back piece i traced the exact same panel shape onto each. 

Then I had to cut out my patterns. I firstly decided to cut out the panels and I did this by tracing them onto a separate piece of paper and then adding a 1cm seam allowance all the way around each one. Now I had traced out the panels and I had the correct patterns with seam allowances, I could rub out the panels on my main patterns so they didn't confuse me or get in the way when I was putting on the seam allowance. The back pattern wasn't cut on the fold as it has a zip in the back, this patter had a seam allowance all the way around, the front pattern was cut on the fold, so the center front line didn't need a seam allowance but everywhere else did.

BACK PIECE

FRONT PIECE

PANELS

Now I could place my patterns onto my calico and cut them out, there was 4 panels, two back pieces and one front piece. I firstly started the manufacture of my dress by adding in the inverted darts to my front piece. I did the exact same thing I would usually do when placing in darts, although this time instead of putting right side to right side together and sewing in the dart on the wrong side, I did the total opposite and placed wrong side to wrong side and sewed the darts in on the right side to give this effect;

I was really happy with the effect of the darts on the front of my dress. There were also some normal darts, one on each side of the front under the armhole, and one on each side of the back at the middle top. 

Next I started on the panels, as I thought it would be best to get those sewn in before I started on putting my main dress together. I made sure I had the right panels for the back and for the front, and pinned them in one by one and sewed them in with a 1cm seam allowance. 

They fit really well and I was pleased by how they had turned out. 

I did notice hear as seen in the above picture, that the two panels sewn onto the front piece were significantly shorted than the length of the dress, after speaking with my tutors I decided this could be corrected by the hem which was planned to be at about 3cm. 

I then decided to insert the invisible zip into the back piece.

Now I just had the 2 pieces, the front and the back. I then sewed the 2 side seams together with a 1cm seam allowance.

I was really pleased with how the dress went together, especially the panels, I thought they fit in really well and looked very symmetrical. 

I then sewed the shoulders at the top together and my dress was properly put together. As I looked at it on the mannequin though I decided I wanted to make some changes. Mostly to the neckline and shape at the back, the darts and panels and length of dress was fine. I drew on the toile where I would like the changes to take place.

I also wanted to take the dress in slightly by making the dart under the armhole a bit bigger.

I then drew the changes onto my pattern and re-cut the pattern out.

So now when I come to make my final garment, I know that the front and back will be just how I want it. I also made my interfacing pieces as I am going to interface the neckline and top of the back piece. I did this by tracing off the top of the back and front piece and making sure they were the same height and went down to the same part so that they fit together.

I will cut these out of the interfacing and attach them to my final dress.