De-Mystifying Fit: Using the moulage to adjust commercial patterns

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had purchased the CD book - De-Mystifying Fit: Using the moulage to adjust commercial patterns by Lynda Maynard. I heard about this book on Patternreview. It cost US$27.95 (less for members of PR). $8 international postage.

The CD book comes just in a CD case without any pretty cover or printed notes. It is a PDF file that you can print out. I printed mine out on my home laser printer - all 282 pages of it.

It has an introduction, notes on the photos and how the book is set out, and then the process of using the moulage to adjust the commercial patterns. You don't need Kenneth King's moulage to be able to make use of this book. Any sloper that fits you will work. The examples in the book show mainly a sloper with wearing ease.

The book contains 9 case studies and covers just about everything including bust adjustments, petite adjustments, sloped shoulders, large hip etc etc.

I used my sloper made from my saran wrap. I used this method of fitting for my party frock and now am putting it to test on Burda 09-2007-109.

109 comes in sizes 36 to 44. I need a 34 in the shoulder and chest area. I could have graded down the 36 but decided to start with the 36 and compare to my sloper. This pattern is called a blouse jacket and is more of a blouse really. I won't be wearing anything under it except maybe a cami or t-shirt. And it does not have shoulder pads. So I can use my sloper as it. I don't need to adjust the sloper as I would for a tailored jacket.

(click on the photos to see the pencil lines of the pattern. The black lines are my sloper on plastic)

This picture shows me putting my sloper over the back and side back pieces. I match up the waist and check my neck shoulder point with the pattern. I need to shorten my back by 2cms.
Once I have done that I check for shoulder slope(adjustment needed here too). The back is also too wide - see the armhole? The next photo shows the changes made so far in red. I have adjusted the armhole halfway between the pattern and my sloper. I am hoping that this will work - bringing it down to about size 34 but also leaving a bit more ease.

You can see my new cutting lines in red. I have adjusted the shoulder according to my sloper - taken it out and down a bit. I am not sure whether I should adjust the neckline as well. I have just drawn a dotted line where my sloper goes. I can check this when I get to the muslin stage. Also I am not sure about my curved back. Do I add a back seam to fix that? Or adjust the side back seams? So much to learn..... Hopefully the muslin will also tell me something there. I am sure I will have more than enough ease and I can take the seams in to fit where I need.

Also you can see my sloper has a back dart but the pattern has princess lines. My dart is larger than the dart created by the princess line so again another reason to think that this pattern will need to be taken in in the seams.

Next post I will show the my front adjustments.

Saran wrap

Thank you all so much for the birthday wishes (yes it was the big 50..ick). And for all the lovely comments on my dress. You guys really appreciate the effort that has been put into fit and then the extra details. No one at the party seemed to "get" how excited I was about the dress, except perhaps my two gorgeous daughters.

With the success of the dress I feel now that I can blog about the saran wrap process, my sloper comparison to pattern et al! I have also received the fitting DVDs from Mary Beth and have watched them so will do a review later this week on those too. I have to say I really enjoyed watching them and learnt a trick or two.

So now to the saran wrap. I learnt about this from Liana and Kathleen Fasanella. Liana recently did a post on her experience with the process and also has links to Kathleen's tutorial. Here is also a link to the tutorial.

This was a very easy thing to do and I only needed the help of two teenage daughters. Really one would have done but the more the merrier! So some photos:

We used small pieces of saran/glad/cling/sandwich wrap. At first it did not seem to want to stick to my body but as we put more and more layers on it stuck together quite well. We marked main body points - apex of bust, apex of shoulder blades, armscyes, neckline, waist. We used sticky tape to tape the lines on the side, back and front before cutting those lines so that they would not distort.

After cutting the wrap off it still has the shape of my body. We need to turn it into a flat pattern. I decided to just do the waist up. But have kept the hip area for later use. I may one day redo the exercise and have a complete sloper, I'll see how well this works first. But either way it is not a big exercise to do. Maybe half an hour?

From here I cut darts to flatten the wrap, copied it onto paper, rotated some darts and added some ease. Details on rotating darts can be found in Fit for Real People and also in many other books (and probably somewhere on the internet).

I have now copied the sloper onto plastic to make it see through. This will make pattern adjusting easier. I didn't have this when I adjusted the green party frock pattern but this will just make future pattern adjustments easier.

I have documented the process on my Flickr album here. Hopefully the process is clear enough.

Next post I will talk about the Linda Maynard CD book that I purchased that shows how to adjust patterns using your personal sloper.

Party frock!

It was my birthday last Thursday and last night we had a bit of a party. So a girl needs a party frock...

I used Burda 1/2007 106. I put a lot of fitting skills to making this dress which I will post about separately.

Cheryl (DS) and me in the frock!

The dress cost me less than $20! The main fabric was a remnant purchase of 95cm X 138cm wide rayon/poly/nylon from Cleggs in Melbourne called Star Shimmer Fern. The county of origin was India. Don't you love the dockets that give all that info? And it cost all of $4.75!!I lined with some remnant green lining I had left over in the stash from another project. I also beaded the zip and neckline with glass seed beads from Spotlight.

I was inspired to try a hand picked zip after seeing Laura's version.

I was also inspired by Summerset's beading and had a go at beading around the neckline following Summerset's instructions on Jan 02 2008 (sorry I can't seem to get a link to work to go directly there).

Blogger is misbehaving and won't play fair (I can't upload anymore photos), so I will finish off now, but you can see more in my album or over at Patternreview.

Excellent Blog award.

Gwen of After the Dress has nominated me with the "excellent blog" award. Thanks Gwen!! I very humbly accept. My acceptance speech needs to include another 10 blogs to be nominated....there are so many fab blogs out there sharing advice, creativity and friendship. To spread the love around I will try and not double up on any blogs that have already been nominated.

Gwen has nominated her 10

Summerset has nominated her 10

Shannon is updating her blog list

and I nominate:

Sigrid

Allison

Laura

Birgitte

Tearsa

Princess Poochie (not sewing but Shoes!!)

Claudine (doesn't post often but makes gorgeous garments)

Mimi - Domestichaven

Erica

Angela

Ok, that was hard! Too many to choose from. Keep blogging ladies - when we don't feel the energy to sew, reading about it is ALWAYS good!!