Moving house

I'm rather frantic right now... today is my last day in Quebec City before moving for a three month stay to Toronto, as part of my sabbatical leave. I've almost got everything done, today is for tidying up a whole slew of small loose ends. Over the weekend I packed away my clothes and tried to keep my list of what to take updated. Tonight, I'm going to be packing up my sewing supplies and machines... Of course I'm taking my sewing machine and serger with me, I couldn't survive now without them! I sorted my fabrics on the weekend and picked out a subsample to take with me - things I hope I will make, although I probably have too much. I'm going to need a box to store all my thread and accessories into as well. It is amazing how much space my sewing life takes up, not just in my life, but also in my house!

I spent some time on the weekend constructing a new bodice sloper, using Aldrich's book on metric pattern cutting. I've been using one that I scaled up from another book, but I'm ready to start making garments in standard sizes, and Aldrich's book provides clear instructions to making the pattern "blocks". It is an interesting process following her drafting instructions to come up with the blocks, which aren't really yet a sloper, they are like a precursor to a sloper. So now I have a pattern block for the bodice in a standard size 14, ready for the next stage. I am planning to make up two women's shirts using some very bold fabric I have, as the beginning of a collection. Something for my weekends while in Toronto.

I can't wait to make the rounds of the fabric stores there, too. The last two times I was there this year, I found some fabulous fabrics, unfindable here in Quebec City. I just have to be careful not to go overboard on buying them!

Brocade Blouse Project (#1)

My first learning project was to design and create a blouse made from some lovely English brocade fabric I found at one of the local sewing stores (see photo on the right). My model for this project was Marie Louise Bourbeau, who is my business partner and primary collaborator in my professional life, as well as a good friend. Marie Louise loves good clothes and is herself highly creative - she has encouraged me in my "learning to design clothes" project. In fact, she was the one who suggested that if I could make virtual clothes for virtual worlds, I should also be able to make real clothes for the real world :)

I began the project by making a "duct tape dress form" of Marie Louise. This was a bit of an adventure in itself. I downloaded instructions from the web. These indicated that the duct tape should be placed in a "loose fit". However, when it came to stuffing the finished form, the final product ended up being a 38 bust instead of a 36 bust - I overstuffed it, but a looser stuffing wasn't easy to achieve.

After working for a couple of weeks with this dress form, I started on another project involving a different set of measurements. The first dress form couldn't be used for this second project. I finally decided to purchase a commercial dress form as these can be adjusted for a range of measurement sizes. In the photo at right, the dress form is shown along with my currently still chaotic organization of fabric.

The next step consisted of generating a sloper and modifying its pattern to make something more interesting. As this was my very first pattern-based project, the only changes I made were to the neckline. I made a sleeveless blouse with a slightly dropped neckline. The difficulties encountered were numerous:

- I had trouble making my first darts (and they ended up being too long). It wasn't until I read the Margolis book that the use of dressmaker's darts rather than design darts was made clear to me ;
- I had a lot of trouble sewing the front part to the back part at the shoulders. The problem was the facings - I had put on the facings separately on the front part (button strip and neckline) and the back neckline, and had difficulty sewing them together ;
- I had trouble finishing the sleeves. I tried using bias tape (too cludgy and bulky) before I ended up turning the seams over to form a "clean finish" ;
- The fit to Marie Louise wasn't great either. I had too much ease at the front at the level of the arms, and too little ease at the waist.

Nevertheless, in my favor, I was able to complete the blouse and have it fit more or less, and the result looked reasonably good, despite the fitting difficulties.

Learning to Sew and Manipulate Patterns - Basics

Once I had decided that I need to learn to sew, I made the rounds of the fabric/sewing stores in town and purchased a sewing machine. I bought a Brother XL-3500, a basic machine, for about 150$. I didn't want a more sophisticate sewing machine - I used to have one and found it difficult to learn to use. In those days I was less motivated to learn to sew, but still, I decided to go for a basic machine and upgrade eventually if I needed to. Overall, however, I'm very happy with the machine. It does what it needs to do.

Next, I looked around on the internet for "how to" sites on sewing and on pattern manipulation. I also looked at Amazon for books on pattern cutting. I took a chance on the Hollen and Kundal book, which was clearly a textbook. When the book first arrived I was a little daunted by the complex looking figures and diagrams, but I've found that although they look complex, they are well done and extremely useful when one is actually working on patterns and clothes. The book has been a very useful guide. I've recently acquired some additional books on pattern cutting, including "Metric Pattern Cutting" by Winifred Aldrich and "Make Your Own Dress Patterns" by Adele Margolis, both excellent books that were recommended to me. I find all three books to be complementary references - there is some overlap, but a lot of the material in each book is substantially different from the others.



I found two extremely useful websites. The first of these is a collection of video tutorials made available by the Brigham Young University Family Life programme. These exceptional videos present a whole range of sewing and draping tutorials, some of them quite long (the one for the two part collar is an hour and forty-five minutes in length). These tutorials, made with video closeups on the sewing machine itself and the hands as they manipulate the fabric and the patterns, are chock full of tips, information about traps, and careful step-by-step advice on doing jobs that are often considered to be difficult (such as sewing in a zipper or button holes, sewing a collar, manipulating darts, etc.).

The second website, very different in style to the first, is the BurdaStyle site. Promoted as the first "Open Source Sewing" website, it offers a community of sewers from all over the world who are sharing ideas, techniques, problem-solving, expertise and, of course, patterns. In addition, the site is managed and supported by staff from Burda, the pattern manufacturer. This means that no one is left "hanging" for long before an answer is forthcoming, and some of the best advice around on the web can be found through the site. The site includes a wikipedia-style glossary of terms, community-uploading of patterns, how-tos, and photographs of creations, an extensive set of forums and a blog updated on a nearly daily basis. Notice that although the site has been open only since the spring of 2007, as of this moment it already incorporates 100 000 members!

Equipped with a collection of "how-to" video tutorials, access to a community-based web site for additional advice, a book on flat pattern cutting, a commercial dress form and a sewing machine, I set about making one of each of the basic garment types - a blouse, a skirt, a dress, a shirt and a pair of pants. For each project, I began with a basic "sloper" (the name given to a basic pattern) and a set of ambitions. I wasn't particularly interested in making "demo clothes" - I wanted to make, even at this stage, real clothes that would be worn. So I identified a recipient for each effort, measured them and adapted the patterns and adjusted the fit as a consequence.