Only 6 More Pattern Blocks To Go

Well,  here's what my patternmaking progress has been the past several days,  I read the stretch knit pattern block chapter,  I've got the dressform alright,  but I really needed to have some stretch knit fabric to drape onto the form directly in order to make a proper set of blocks,  I don't have any stretch fabric to speak of.   However,  as always I couldn't just let it go at that so I adapted some of the directions for completing the pattern blocks after draping them,  here's what I did:

1.  traced the basic bodice and removed all ease

2.  removed the shoulder dart,  redrew the shoulder seam and lifted the shoulder/armscye corner to the height it would be if the dart is sewn then re-drew the armscye curves

3.  calculated the width of the waistline without the dart

4.  removed a 1/4" from the armscye/side seam corner and tapered to nothing at the side seam

5.  drew a line from the hipline measurement up to the waistline/side seam crossmark

6.   then smoothed the ugly waistline corner with a curve

And here's the result:

According the Connie's book though,  the pattern blocks for a knit garment pretty much have to be remade before for each different pattern due to fit variations and differences in the degree of stretch between one knit fabric and the next.   So technically speaking,  my little (perhaps,  sorry excuse) pattern blocks up there I would only try for a fabric with minimum stretch capacity,  because these blocks are made to measure,  there was no stretching involved in their construction as there would be with a correctly produced pair of pattern blocks that a gently stretched and smoothed over the dressform.

Needless to say,  soon as I get my hands on a bit of knit fabric those blocks are going to get made.

Aside from that little set back,  I went on (the same day) to construct all three skirt slopers for the double dart skirt,  single dart skirt and the flared skirt and they turned out perfectly.

My next patternmaking exercise was to draft a pair of pants blocks.    Unlike the skirt patterns I messed up the first attempt at drafting my pants blocks due to some bad measurement decisions and actually forgetting to use the three different length measurements for centre front back,  front and side seams.   It was a discouraging disaster.  But that evening I looked back and decided to re-work the math in my head and plan what I would do the next day.  

Like I thought,  re-drafting the pants was a breeze thanks to the planning the night before.   However,  when I was done evaluating my pants blocks,  checking if the inseams,  side seams and grain lines are parallel in both shape and distance from each other,  observation revealed that although these new pants blocks were very well done, they still needed some work because the back pants block flare slightly at the hip and waist areas.  The instructions for fixing this kind of issue aren't complete in the book so I decided to email Connie about it from her fashionpatterns.com website and she wrote me back with a set of instructions I'll be implementing over the next few days.   I'll post the results in my next blog entry :)

Hopefully I won't make anymore errors though because I down to my last little bit of paper on my roll and I don't want to get my brother to pick me up another roll till I've got my first client.   I've only got about 5 or 6 master patterns to go so I'll cross my fingers.

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