Challenge 12:: Blomma dress:: intro and drafting

Keeping with the sleeveless theme... this challenge will be a dress. As with the last three challenges, this one will be made using the Basic Block 1 free pattern. 

So what is Blomma dress. This top is the inspiration: 

Abaete

I don't have a sketch right now, so just imagine this top as long as her skirt (short dress) and then add straps. Of course, this could be made into either a long dress or simply a top.

So let's start. First, copy the basic block front on a separate piece of paper. Make sure you mark the waistline. Measure 7 cm  down the midline and then 5 cm down from that point (notice I marked 6 cm on the pic below - I did originally, but then I changed it later to 5 when). So, the neck opening will be 12 cm deep.

Now, measure 12 cm from the first point (7 cm down on the midline) horizontally towards the arm opening. That will be the point where the straps will attach. Now reshape the neck and the arm opening to that point.
We are going to leave the bust dart where it is this time.

Find the hipline (usually about 21 cm from the waistline or measure).

Since this is a dress, we need to make sure there is enough ease around the hip. If you have copied and extended the midline and side seam line to the hip line, measure the width at the hipline. It should measure at least (hip)/4 + 3cm, where 'hip' is your hip measurement. In my case, I am doing this for size 38 (Burda size) which measures 94 cm around the hip. So with ease, the hipline should be 26.5 cm. Of course, you can add more ease if you wish. I was 0.5 cm short, so I redrew the sideseam.

I added 30 cm more from the hipline to the hem. Again, make it as long as you wish. Mine will be 51 cm from the waist

The side seam and the hem should meet at 90 deg angle. So, to reshape this part, draw a line straight down from the waist/sideseam to the hem. Then draw a line perpendicular to the sideseam towards the hem. Smooth the hem curve. (see pic below)

The front is finished. For the back, I copied the back right next to the front piece, such that the waistlines matched.

There is not much to the back. It is simply a straight line across from the back arm opening. I curved it slightly so that at the midline, it is about 1 cm below the horizontal line.

Draw the waistline and hipline as for the front (hipline is 21 cm below the waistline) and check the ease around the hips. The width at the hipline should be (hip)/4 + 1 cm, where  'hip' is your measurement around the hips. Again, for size 38, this comes out to be 24.5 cm. Again, I was about 0.5 cm short so I had to redraw the sideseam.

Finally fix the hem/sideseam point as for the front. See the pic below.

Front and back finished. Now onto the front/back ruffles - I am not sure what they are called, so I will go with ruffles. They are not really ruffles, not in the sense that you take a long strip of fabric and then you gather all around the hem or a seam or wherever... (like the bottom of a skirt). I do not want these "ruffles" to be very "ruffly" (oh gosh, this is getting bad), I want them to be flowy (again, not a word, at least not according to the spellchecker) and just a bit wider that the top part of the dress. So I am going to copy the top part of the dress and then add some volume to it... Maybe the pictures will be clearer...

Above, you can see I copied the top of the front pattern to get the full width of the front, because the pieces I am adding will not be symmetric. Then I drew in what I thought these pieces should look like. Below you can see the two lines going across the pattern. I am going with two additional pieces (the inspiration photo has three). Also I am only going with one back piece. 

Then I copied over the pattern and here I the two "ruffles" for the front. You can see that they are not symmetrical. The top (#1) is wider on the left, and the bottom one is wider on the right.

I also have to do the ruffle piece on the back, so I did the same with the back pattern piece. I just had to make sure that the back piece will match up with the wider sides of the front parts at the sideseam.

Now, to add volume... I tried to divide each of these "ruffles" into equal parts, so I drew lines approximately 2 in apart

Then I cut along those lines from the "hem" up to the neck/arm seam but not through. You leave just a bit so that the pieces are still connected. Then you pull those pieces apart the amount you wish (see below). The more you pull them apart the more "ruffly" the piece will be. I separated about 2 cm (measured at the hem) at each piece. Repeat for each piece.

And this is what the final patterns looks like (the only other thing you will need are the straps):

Just to give you an idea of what I am going for, I pinned the pattern pieces on the dress form. Maybe a little too "ruffly"? We'll see...

Sorry about the poor photo quality. I was loosing the light, and the laps were making awful shadows...

Next... do I have to even say it? The muslin...

Week 6:: Kioko blouse: drafting and muslin - Part 2

Hello! It's been a while. It's just been one of those weeks... unplanned meetings (waste of time, but that's a whole different post), Halloween preparations, a short out of town trip (which was very, very nice), feeling a little bit under the weather (which means a bit more resting, a little less work)... you get the picture.

Which made me think, to 'rethink' the idea of week challenges. With the designs getting a more difficult to draft and more complicated to sew, weekly challenges, could be just a bit too... challenging. Thinking I could do them in a week might have been a bit too optimistic. I will still do the challenges, but instead of trying to kill myself and complete them in a week, I will give myself two weeks. I will have to change the titles too... work in progress, right.

But let's not waste any more time and go back to this top... In this post I will show you the minor changes I made to the pattern I made last week and all the other modifications I made to finish the design...

Step 1: Shorten sleeves. First things first. I thought the sleeves were a bit too long, so I shortened them by 2.5 cm. Make sure you draw a line parallel to the sleeve opening (the front is not a straight line). I did not throw these away - I will reuse them later for a pattern for a band around the arm opening.

Step 2: Tighten neckline. The neck was gaping a bit - because it was so deep. So, to tighten it and make it lie flat against the chest, measure 8 cm from the bottom of the V-neck (I measured that on the dress form) and then draw a line from BP to the neckline at that point. That will be the "bottom" leg of the dart we are drawing. The "top" leg is about 0.5 cm from the "bottom" measured at the neckline. Now we need to close that dart and move it to the waist. Therefore, cut that little dart we just drew. And cut from BP (but not through BP) down to the waistline. Close and tape the neck dart and open the waist dart (I put some paper under the pattern and taped it). Also, don't forget to smooth the neckline.

Step 3: The yoke. I decided to do a yoke, after I decided to do the shoulder gathers. I just thought gathers would not look so good coming from the shoulder seam - too high. OK, so, put the front and back together at the shoulder (tape together) and then draw the back yokeline about 7.5 cm down from the back neck, parallel to the hem (or waistline). The front yokeline should be parallel to the shoulder seam, 3 cm down. One more thing to do here... as I was learning about kimono and french sleeves, I noticed than in all of the variations of those, the shoulder seam is lowered a bit away from the neck. I am guessing to remove the bulk at the shoulder. The sleeve is wide enough, no need for the extra fabric. Well, I couldn't do that at the shoulder seam because of the yoke, but I can do it at the yokeline. See the second pic above. Measure 2 cm down from the yokeline at the arm opening and smooth the seam down from the original arm opening from the sloper (see the red lines). Do not cut the yoke out yet.

Step 4: Shorthen arm band. If you are not going to be doing bands on the arm openings, you can skip this step. Otherwise, we have to shorten the bands by the same amount we took at the yokeline in the previous step. Tape the bands together at the shoulder, and put them against the font and back patterns from the last step. Draw the lines on the bands at yokelines and the new lowered seams. Fold the bands at these lines and tape.

Step 5: Prepare for moving waist dart into shoulder seam. In first picture above you can see I outlined the waist dart (ignore the red lines inside). The waist dart was created in previous steps when we moved the bust dart and later the neck dart. This will now be moved into the shoulder (actually yokline). Mark point 1 at the midpoint of the sloper shoulder and points 2 and 3, 2.0 cm on each side of 1. Draw lines from BP to points 1, 2 and 3.

One more thing... mark the gather points (the stars in the pic above) about 1.0 cm from points 2 and 3. Then, match the gather points at the yoke.

Step 6: Move the dart. Cut out the waist dart, close and tape. Cut along the three lines from yokeline to BP. Spread them equally and tape on paper (see second pic above). Smooth the yokeline.

Step 7: Draw the high waist line on front. This one is going to go from the tip of the V-neck, under the bust and to the sideseam at the notch we drew in in the previous post (it's 10.5 cm down the sideseam from underarm). I did this without measuring. The point under BP I choose (eyeballed) to be 7.5 cm under BP. Then I connected the three points with straight lines. No need for curves, I hoped.

Step 8: Add length. Use extra paper and add length to the front and back patterns. I wanted this fairly long so I added 27 cm from the waistline. Since we will be adding some flair too, divide the width of the front and back in 4 pieces. Draw the lines from the high waist to the hem. Cut along the high waist line.

Step 9: Add flare. Do this for both back and front (pictured for front only). Cut along the three lines from hem to the top (but not through). Spread to add flare as you wish. I added 2 cm at each line - 6 cm in all. 

That's it. I forgot to picture all the pattern pieces together, but you will have: the yoke, back and front top, back and front bottom, and arm band. You will also need facing at the neckline.

Here is muslin (don't let the pattern distract you! also, excuse the flare, it was so bright, I had to photograph in shade but against the sun).I did not cut the armbands.

Overall, it was good. The sleeves look good, the drape is fine, from front, side and back.

The neck fits very well, no gaping. And the gathers look fine too.

The only problem was that it looked too wide under the bust, at the high waist seamline. But I couldn't take in any more, because this is supposed to go over head. So I decided to go with some elastic in the seam. 

So no pattern modifications... we'll see how it turns out.

Previous Week 6 posts:
Week 6:: Kioko blouse
Week 6:: Kioko blouse: drafting and muslin - Part 1

Week 4:: basic sleeveless top: drafting front Version 2.1

Why Version 2.1. Because, the finished pattern explained here will be the same as Version 2, just constructed differently.

This steps assumes that your sloper has two waist darts - one that starts at the BP, and the one about halfway between that one and the side seam.

Step 1: So.... lets start with the sloper again. Trace it to a separate piece of paper, but this time copy the middle waist dart, the one that starts at the dart. Also, draw the new neckline and points E and E1 (see Step 7 here to see how to draw in E and E1; remember, this is only for deep necklines, they need to be tightened so they lay flat; if your neckline is not as deep, you can  skip this).

Step 2: Cut this pattern out, cut the waist dart you traced and close it (tape the two pieces together, will be easier to trace around). Draw a new dart position 6 cm down from the top of side seam (line A - BP). Also draw a line straight down from BP to waistline. Draw another side seam 1 cm in from the original one (this is to take in some width).

Trace from E1 along the neckline and down the midline, to waistline and then along the waistline to the dashed line down from BP.

Step 3: Cut along the dashed line from hem to BP, also cut out the little "dart" from BP to E to E1. We will move this "dart" (as in Version 1) into the waist. Rotate the shoulder part until E meets E1. Tape it. Trace up from E/E1 along the neckline, shoulder and down the arm opening to the start of the bust dart.

Step 4: Cut out the dart; cut along the A - BP line - the position of the new dart. Close the old dart (make sure you are not moving the midline, and the neckline) and open the new one. 

Step 5: now we need to make the new dart a little smaller. Move the lower left part of the pattern (the one with the arrow, below) to close the dart a bit - this will open the waist dart some more. Make sure you don't move other parts of the pattern. Trace all around...

Step 6: smooth the neckline, draw in the new arm opening (see Version 1 for details), finish drawing the dart (see Version 1 for details). Cut out.

In the next picture, I compare Version 2 and Version 2.1 patterns. As you can see, you cannot see the difference. I didn't expect they would match so well, and it might not work for all sizes, or different slopers, but at least I proved to myself that there are different ways of getting to the same final pattern. 

I think that's it for this pattern. Before muslin though, I need to make the back...

Previous posts:

Week 4:: basic sleeveless top

Week 4:: basic sleeveless top: drafting front Version 1

Week 4:: basic sleeveless top: drafting front Version 2

Week 4:: basic sleeveless top: drafting front Version 2

As I mentioned yesterday, I was a little surprised to see that my finished pattern, namely the bust dart, did not match the design I was looking for. I actually traced the BurdaStyle Pattern and here are the patterns side to side (white one is from Burda).

My final pattern had a wider dart, which resulted in a more "spikey" bust. I wanted a more "flat" look (I don't know if you can see the difference in the pic below?).

But here you can see the difference...

So now onto making the dart smaller... Remember this picture from the previous post? I conveniently had this same piece of paper, but if you do not have it, you can either take a look at the previous post, or you can use the pattern above (the one you created in previous post) slash a line parallel to midline, from hemline to BP. Also cut out the dart and then "open" along the cut line, closing the dart a little bit to make it "smaller" (sorry, I guess I forgot to take a picture of this step).

Trace around the pattern pieces, draw the dart again (see Step 9 in previous post), and cut out. This is the pattern you end up with.

So what happened there? We moved a part of the dart into the waistline, adding fullness. Thus, the final pattern has more of an A-line, and is wider than the Version 1 pattern at the hemline:

Since I don't want this to be so wide at the hem, I need to take the extra volume out... Trace lightly the side seam from Version 1 pattern onto the new pattern (the pic above), then close the dart on the new pattern and draw the new side seam (pic below).

Here are Version 1 (wider dart) and Version 2 side by side. Can you tell which is which?

Version 1 is on the right.

This works for me, and I am happy with Version 2, which I will be sewing up. However... I  wanted to see if I can use another method, different set of bodice manipulations to get the same pattern. This is me overthinking again. So, Version 2.1 next...

Previous posts:

Week 4:: basic sleeveless top

Week 4:: basic sleeveless top: drafting front Version 1