Sunday, January 10, 2010

The Clone


If you ignore the fact that I was having fun with Husband (and not standing up straight) when the first pic was taken and he'd pissed me off by the second picture, you can see that I was quite successful in cloning my original blouse. Yea! I put the pin up too high on the muslin so that the necklines look different, but they aren't. I didn't copy the sleeves because I don't like them. I plan on using the puffed sleeves that I used on my whimsey blouse. In the mirror this blouse is much more flattering.

There are a few alterations I need to do including doing a petite adjustment at the waist, do a high round back alteration and add some ease over my butt, and more ease all around. I plan on sewing it up in fabric that will look better on me than white eyelet or muslin.

So, do you want to know how I did it without destroying the original blouse?


It kind of reminds me of Burda WOF patterns that you have to trace. And, that's exactly what I did! First thing you do is draw or thread trace your grain lines on the original. If it is striped or plaid, all the better. Then if you can't see the seam lines through the silk organza, you need to thread trace them as well. Draw a line parallel to the selvege down the middle of your organza and also make a cross mark. Then you just pin your line to the grain line on the garment, Pin along all seam lines, and start tracing with colored pencils. After that, trace it onto pattern paper, add seam allowances and you have a pattern. Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that, but you'll need to take the class if you want all the instructions.

Now, a few of you asked how I liked the class. I really liked it. When the class begins, you are given the lessons in pdf files. These become sort of like your textbook. KK didn't give any lectures, however. He had a chat so that we could ask him all sorts of questions about what we read. That was a very fast hour. Then we spent a few days following the instructions to make our pattern pieces. Then there was another chat. That chat was tonight. There is supposed to be another chat next Thursday night. The transcripts for tonight's chat should be available for the students to read tomorrow. I won't have any further questions for him on Thursday, but I'm sure there'll be questions by others in the class. KK's pdf instructions were very complete and I only really needed his help on how to handle the gathers. His instructions only covered darts and pleats. He told me to handle the gathers like a dart, which is what I guessed I was supposed to do. I hope he is available even after the class when I try to clone another garment.

If you've got RTW that fits reasonably well, I highly recommend taking this class if it is offered again. It's a method that really works! Can you tell I'm impressed?

6 comments:

  1. You have done an amazing job of copying. Glad to know you enjoyed the class. I took an online class from DonMcCunn in pattern-making. It was a good class, but very fast-paced.

    I have a couple of books on copying garments. One is a small book called, of al thigs, "Copy It" by Mary McCarthy. Both books I've seen used TruGrid to copy to. Using silk organze is interesting. I wonder if it plies itself to the garment better than pattern making paper?

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  2. Great job!!! YOu really do look good.

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  3. I wish I had time to take an online class. Your blouse clone looks terrific!

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  4. Very impressive duplicate! This will be really cute in "real" fabric.

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  5. Well seeing how well this worked for you I'll have to keep an eye out for this class next time. Great job!

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