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Dress forms and Draping


Guest bassclarinets

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Guest bassclarinets

Draping and Dress forms -

 

designing your own pattern -

 

here is the trick - go out to the discount store that starts with a Wal and ends with a Mart and get a bolt of $1/yd fabric and start draping it - (i go with the $1/yd stuff to do my basic pattern making and draping) - *edit - i buy the whole darn bolt because i will sometimes make cuts that i later hate and just want to start over, so for a dress, i just get a WHOLE bunch of fabric out and go with that, for $1/yd, you can basically spend what you would on a "real" pattern and still have leftover fabric *

 

I have a dress form, and have my laptop open with LOTS of reference pictures at the same time (usually sitting on the table near the barstool that i sit on to drape) - look at the pictures, use about a million pins, and pin the fabric on the form so it looks like the outfit that i am trying to make -

 

Then i take a sharpie, highlighter, or whatever else i have laying on the table and mark all of the folds (draw lines where the pins are like forming darts, pleats, etc) -

 

From that point, then i take about a million pictures, label ALL of my pieces - i usually use numbers and start at the center front with 1 and work my way around the outfit with numbers - so i can reconstruct the correct way -

 

THEN i take the pins all out, lay out the fabric on the floor and figure out the cuts and stuff, try to lay it out on my REAL fabric and cut it out - (i have a GREAT big cutting mat that i lay out on the floor so my large pieces can hang over the edge of the mat without distorting or stretching the fabric)

 

right now what i am working on is a snape robe - we used a base graduation robe pattern that we cut out with $1/yd fabric - now we are going to pin it onto the form and make it fit - (as this is not for me but for my male roommate, we will be using my dress form, but adjusting it to fit him a bit better - then we will do more final fitting on him directly (as having a bust is not something the typical male has! :))

 

I will try to take some pictures as i do this and will post them in the sewing section, but in the meantime - here are a few links on draping and duct tape doubles -

 

there was an AWESOME article series in Threads magazine in the past few months about plus sized draping (which is applicable TO ANYONE who wishes to drape) - look at your fabric store to see if they have these few back issues are they are AWESOME!!

 

http://www.taunton.com/threads/pages/th ... armcon.asp (this has INCREDIBLE sewing articles)

 

slopers - http://www.taunton.com/threads/pages/t00036.asp

 

muslin for better pattern fitting - http://www.taunton.com/threads/pages/tvt020.asp (VIDEO!)

 

Duct Tape forms - from THREADS (also paper tape forms and other types of forms that you can make yourself at home - http://www.taunton.com/threads/pages/t00002.asp

 

Duct tape forms -

http://www.alleycatscratch.com/lotr/mak ... tDummy.htm

 

Draping -

http://www.esotericcreations.com/index. ... e=16&mn=tm

 

 

honestly - if you plan on sewing a lot, or if you start to work on complex garments or costumes, some form of body double will be invaluable in making it fit correctly from the start - i still have to make minor adjustments to my garments, but its a LOT better than it was before -

 

more to follow...

 

jen

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Guest bassclarinets

I know that this is NOT the snape robe that i promised earlier - but the pieces for that garment are folded up on top of my table right now, and i wanted to get something up now -

 

This is the red Amidala Invasion gown that i am working on - I took that light colored muslin and used that to fit the dress - I did not take any pictures on the initial steps but the gown itself has MANY seams, all piped -

 

What i initially did was drape out a REALLY BIG dress on my form, and then i sliced up each panel of the gown into many panels so i had the correct number of panels with some seam allowance (no real math here on my part, i just guestimated it out - it got a bit tight in the back, so i pulled down those pieces and recut them larger so i could have a seam allowance) -

 

Here is the initial draping - notice the numbers on each panel so i can reconstruct the garment once i pull it all off of the form - also notice that i used a TON of pins and pinned the WHOLE thing like it was baste stitched (really wide stitch) to hold it together - I HATE ripping out stitches, so i would rather just use a TON of pins -

IMG_0055.jpg

 

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Next i cut out the garment in the REAL fabric and pinned it on the form to make sure that nothing shifted between the muslin mock/pattern and the real fabric -

 

IMG_0056.jpg

 

Then i began putting the gown together - putting in the piping and pinning it back on the form piece by piece, just to make sure that everything would fit and that there was no wierdness that i would not see until i tried on the gown itself -

IMG_0057.jpg

 

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Next, once I finished all of the piping, i put it on the form (still open in the back) - I then finalized the fit with the back seam, pinned in the zipper and then put in the zipper

 

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So, I have closed up the back of the gown and added in the bottom trim -

 

I went with an invisible zipper and hid it with piping - with the realities of trooping, people will ACTUALLY see the back of the gown and I wanted it to look nice.

 

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Here is the full view - :)

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I am STILL working on this gown, its been about a month, although my serger died so the gown has been put away to work on other projects for now, I will be picking this one back up in a few weeks again..

 

jen

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Guest bassclarinets

well - i am looking at more of the snape references and the top of the robe/cloak where it attaches to the yolk is smoothly pleated, so now i will use the pattern pieces that we have cut as it gives the correct amount of fabric and look more smooth on the front -

 

i am thinking (at least instantly) to box pleat (or just a normal, smoother appearing pleat) on the front, on the back - i'm not so sure yet, i will be playing with this in the next few nights :)

 

jen

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Guest bassclarinets

ok - so i FINIALLY got a serger (since i killed my previous one, it had a bad part which was IMPOSSIBLE to find and well... so i upgraded!) :)

 

Here we used the muslin mock to cut out the real fabric and pinned onto the form for the robe -

 

IMG_0183.jpg

 

We gathered the back panel right away (to gather, baste stitch and then pull on the top thread to bunch it up) - the back panel was about the size of a king size flat sheet when we began, it is REALLY gathered heavily) after gathering, i stitched over the gathered area with a normal stitch to make it hold better (2x)

 

IMG_0184.jpg

 

as you can see, the front panel has pleats - these i just pinned into the fabric (eyeballed the width) as i put it onto the form and made sure they looked about even :)

 

IMG_0272.jpg

 

IMG_0185.jpg

 

IMG_0271.jpg

 

I will get a back shot of the costume once its on the real person - since its on the form inverted right now in order to really sew the buttons on..

 

jen

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Guest Anonymous

I made a duct tape dummy over the past two days and now i'm excited to start draping on him. I've always wanted to know how to drape, so now I get to experiment :) .

 

The tips here are really helpful.

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