Draft-along update

Last weekend was extremely busy, I've had no time to even get near the computer, let alone post anything here. And I had planned to get started on the slopers...

Well, time for a quick update I guess. I've adressed a couple of the design issues and there are a couple of sketches in the Flickr pool now. I have to say I feel a bit humbled by the sketching skills of both ladies. Other than that, it's great to see how other people think about designing their dresses. I'd love to see more there and I will be adding more of my own. I would also like to emphasize that you can use the Flickr group as a testing ground for your designs. Please don't feel like you have to come up with a perfectly executed sketch of your final design. It's great if you do, but, especially if it's your first time doing this, it may work better to do some rough sketches of different styles, post all those you kind of like and use the comments you get to make your final decision.

Of course, designs should be considered in relation to body shape, as I've pointed out before. Overflowingstash had a great suggestion about that: she wrote that you could trace a picture of yourself, to make a custom croqui, thus both showing your shape and preserving your modesty. In the Flickr group, there's a great example of just that by Barbarain. If you don't have the drawing skills of either of these ladies, you could just settle for tracing the contours of your body in the picture, creating a silhouette.

Obviously, we will still be talking about designing our dress this week but it's also time to start being practical about it. Step 1: making and fitting a sloper.

Several of you have your own slopers already. Of course you can use those, especially if you know it's quirks.

For those of you who don't, this is the link to the JJ sloper on Burdastyle.

(thanks to Claire(aka Seemane) for discovering it despite the fact that it was re-named when Burdastyle changed the site to its present look)

I will be making and fitting this one myself (unless I get the impression no-one will be using it, that is) and show the process.

You can also try this one, found by Sewing Princess. In her comment, she described it as a drafting instruction, but the link she included leads me to a downloadable, and editable sloper in size 10. I'm not familiar with it myself but it looks like any standard sloper.

Overflowingstash also commented with this link and this one which are for making plastic wrap and duct tape dummies respectively. The plastic wrap method will allow you to create a zero-ease sloper. Again, I have no personal experience with this method and, taking her word for it, I'd advice caution.

All comments with these links can be found here.