commissioned work...

You may have noticed that I don't sew a lot for other people and almost never on order and for money. I've done a few things like that for friends but mostly, the bridal alterations job I used to do has cured me of any desire to try and make a living by sewing. 
And yet, the first sewing related thing I'm doing now, after coming back from holiday, is to draft slopers for a commission. It's for a lady who helped me get started with bouldering. I'll be making her some tops, mostly in jersey and maybe a dress as well. 
Knowing the pitfalls of sewing for other people, I have warned her that it will be a bit of a process, requiring several fittings. 

I took her measurements before I left and have finished the patterns today. One regular sloper for woven fabrics (which has waist darts, a shallow one at the front and two deep ones at the back, but they don't really show in the picture) and a zero ease one for jersey.
I'll sew them up tomorrow. They look quite odd to me. The client is a petite but very athletic lady and a great rock climber and boulderer. As a result, she has, among other features, big muscles in her back and shoulders. I guess those are what makes clothes shopping particularly challenging for her. It also made drafting the slopers a bit odd. Using the back width measurement (back width is notoriously difficult to measure so normally I look up the corresponding back width for each bust size in a chart. I just knew that wouldn't work in this case) made the back pieces substantially wider than the fronts and messed with a couple of other things. I think I've ironed out the real oddities but kept the width difference. I'm also pretty certain that the back width will have caused the shoulders to be way too wide.
Oh well, I warned her the first fitting would be about correcting slopers...

In the mean time, I'm thinking about styles which might flatter her. She seemed mostly concerned with getting a close and flattering fit but also mentioned halter necks, waterfall necklines and V-necks. I completely agree about the waterfall necklines and some V-necks can work well for a lady with a small bust (but certainly not all) but I think tops with twist details at chest height would also work really well and with autumn on the way, I think we should be looking at which sleeve shapes work for her. 
As far as I know, she is a rather sporty dresser but I don't know how much of that is out of choice.  
Any suggestions?

t-shirt reloaded

There is something else I made last week. I just didn't blog about it yet because the items themselves aren't exactly interesting to look at. It is interesting for me to have them though.

I re-made my knit sloper. I had been putting that off ever since I made my new slopers. After all, because jersey is stretchy, most of my old t-shirts still fit. However, some (especially those made from less stretchy varieties of jersey) are now a bit snug across the chest and others suffer from the fact that many kinds of jersey are less stretchy vertically than horizontally. Their center front pull up and, as a result, the side seams pull to the front. It's not noticeable when I wear the tops tucked in but eh... It's not how it should be.

Before showing the top, I should explain that this knit sloper, in both the old and the new version, is not designed with negative ease. It is meant as a starting point for drafting all kinds of jersey garments for normal daily wear and is derived (in a fairly arbitrary way) from my normal bodice sloper. If I'd be making a tube top or a fitted tank top, I would use the body sloper from my lingerie patterns, which is drafted with negative ease (which reminds me: I haven't re-made that one yet).

I first tried the new sloper (with its full, high neck) in some ugly old knit fabric and adjusted it to get the fit right. Then, I decided to make a simple, basic t-shirt variation to see if it really worked.

Which became this modest black V-necked number. The fabric is a bit of eco-cotton left over from an old collection of M's. As such, it contains very little lycra (2%, if any) and is a kind of faded black (it was difficult to achieve saturated dark colours with early fully eco-friendly dyes) but it's also really nice to the touch.
I think this top will be a nice simple basic, once the weather cools down.

Then, with some fabric left (but not enough for a similar top) I made another top.

This one, with its wide low boat neck. I own two tops with similar necklines, one with short sleeves and one with three quarter length ones. The first one was one my first makes in jersey (from a Burda pattern which I lost a couple of years ago), sewn on my old Toyota sewing machine which ate fabrics like that. I just used straight stitching to limit the amount of damage the machine would do. As a result, it's far from perfect but it still gets worn. The other top is even older: Bought at H&M years ago, it is one of the few RTW items I still wear.
If you've been reading my blog for a while, you've seen both of these tops more than once because I often pick them out to complement 'statement' skirts.
So, obviously, I needed a new version. This time from a pattern drafted by me, based on that new knit sloper.
So, that's what I did. I've already been wearing this top and I love it. I think I will need several more in different colours and with different sleeve lengths...   

New sloper day!

So, this week I finally sat down to re-draft my sloper. So far, I still kept using the old ones, making alterations per garment. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having slopers in the first place. Especially because I made those old ones a cup-size and a half ago…

During my wardrobe clean-out, I also ended up throwing out all the items I had made under designer-friend (and pattern making teacher) M's direct supervision. Somehow none of those ever really felt like 'me'. And I remember wondering when she took my measurements for those first slopers. I thought she measured the waist too loose and the hips to high and too tight… And I've been correcting for that more and more over the years.

Now, I started drafting to newly taken measurements and armed with several years of pattern making experience. I used the same basic set-up as before: the Dutch pattern making book Grondvormen.
Interestingly, my new measurements look much more in proportion when converted to a pattern… And when I made muslins today (of bodice and trouser block. I already re-did the skirt one a while ago) I was pleasantly surprised. The bodice only required a tiny tweak to get rid of gaping at the back of the neck. I think the supposedly fitted sleeve is a bit wide but that will in fact work well for most garments, so I'll leave it that way and narrow it if I want a truly fitted sleeve. I know it doesn't look that great in the picture but that's down to the very stiff fabric and my posing while taking the picture in the mirror…
For the trousers, I expected to have to do a fairly substantial flat-butt adjustment, like before. However, only a very small one was required (and not because of changes to my body in that area… I still have enough trousers based on the old sloper to be able to tell that). 
I'm happy with the new slopers and I look forward to using them.  

On slopers

This afternoon, I planned on taking a picture of myself wearing my usual sloper and, if possible, a version of the JJ sloper. However, last weekend was the end of daylight saving and with the clock back to winter time, there wasn't enough daylight left when I got home. I'll try again tomorrow but I may not succeed until Thursday...

Well, at least we can discuss slopers, don't you think?

As you will probably know already, a sloper is a basic pattern which (in our use. we're not talking about the garment industry blocks here, which are just slopers for RTW clothes) is fitted to the individual and used to make actual garment patterns. Your typical sloper is either very close fitting or has a 'small' to 'moderate' amount of ease and is shaped with darts. Some people prefer a 'no ease' sloper in order to have everything under control but in fact, almost every garment you'll ever make (in experience with the sole exception of a corset-style strapless top) will need ease, so a bit of ease in a sloper is not necessarily a bad thing.

If you are drafting your sloper from a set of instructions, those will often have you include some ease straight away, usually by adding to certain measurements. If you are using a ready-made sloper pattern (like the JJ sloper, which you can find here), you will have to fit it to you like any other pattern.

According to JJ's notes, her sloper includes wearing ease suitable for a fitted shirt, top or dress, so that should be perfect for drafting your dress. It is graded to Burda's bust and waist sizes, with instructions for a small bust alteration included on the pattern pieces. All sizes are, and this is important, drafted with one back length, 41 cm.

Why am I repeating JJ's excellent notes? Well, I want to make sure everyone reads and understands them. Because all of this does not mean you can just make it up in whatever size you usually make Burda patterns in and expect it to be perfect. The Burda empire uses it's own blocks as a base for all its patterns. Blocks intended for wearers with the sizes mentioned in their sizing table.

JJ took those sizes from the sizing table and drafted a set of slopers based on them. Because the sizing table only includes bust, waist and hip measurements, she must have had to guestimate certain other important bits of sizing information.

So, to get the best result from her sloper, you have to take your measurements, check them against Burda's sizing table and pick your size. If you know you have either a small or a large bust your could make a small or large bust alteration straight away, again based on the measurements. The same goes for back length. Personally, I know my back length (the measurement from the base of the neck to the waist, measured at center back) is 39,5 cm, so I would start by shortening this sloper by 1,5 cm.

Be prepared for more alterations though, no sizing table or pattern making method can reliably predict individual differences in things like bust height or shoulder shape and width.

I will post both my usual sloper and my progress on the JJ one here and in the Flickr group no later than this Thursday.

If you have a sloper completed, feel free to post it in the Flickr group as well. Just to show it off, or if you want help with your analysis of it.

weekly outfit nr.2

Not a very exciting entry for this week. Black trousers and a blue top. But things which don't look very special can be very exciting creations for other reasons.

I made the trousers over a year ago. The pattern was based on my personal sloper, which ensures a great fit. They've been worn a lot since then. I often have to pull them off drying line. Actually, I should really make myself another pair.

The top is one of just two things I managed to 'sew' without sewing machine. This one could be made entirely on the serger. And, in fact, this unasuming item of clothing represents a small personal victory to me, a little chunk of progress in my development as a (dare I write it) designer...

Untill this point all tops I made my own patterns for have been fitted to the waist. Flared trousers? Fine! Big skirts? Of course! A-line jackets? Sometimes. But tops? ...

This one is only fitted at the hip, has raglan sleeves and a loose cowl. It's not very wide but there's a reason for that too. I've tried the 'fitted at the hip, big kimono/batwing sleeves on top'-thing, and I can tell you this: if there's one style which really requires a good set of boobs, it's that. My straight and flat frame just seems to be erased by that particular style. So, I made this top in and effort to find a middle road between that and skinny fit T-shirt.

Yeah!! to making your own basics!

Tomorrow, I can finally pick up my sewing machine. I'm really looking forward to it. So many refashion and creation ideas are lined up for that occasion...