WINMICHELE

Going back to school for pattern making has been challenging and the most wonderful thing I have done as a sewist. Before school I would have said I knew plenty in sewing. At least enough to make wearable clothing for myself. I learned the basics of sewing through family and home economics class but as far as sewing garments I was self taught. Blogs and Youtube videos taught me. What made me decide to go to school was I got to the point where I was curious about pattern making and wanted to make patterns. I thought it would be enough to purchase a book in pattern making and teach myself.  Learned the A, B, C’s of pattern making but I couldn’t just take any picture and confidently make a pattern for that look. I had too many questions that I couldn’t find the answers to in a book or google search. So I decided to go back to school and do something I really wanted to do.

In just a few weeks of attending school I felt like I knew very little about sewing. I realized I was doing some things wrong. The only way I can describe it was that I felt like a guppy in a huge ocean trying to find its way to the other side of the world. Because I was so hungry for knowledge I began to be obsessed over the “why’s”. I wanted to know why is done this way and not this other way. Every time I would find out the WHY it was a light bulb moment for me.

KEEP IN MIND: I want to remind you that there are no “Rules” in sewing. Everyone who sews as a hobby should enjoy the process and learn as they go. There shouldn’t be pressure that THIS has to be done in a certain way in order to accomplish a wearable garment for yourself. You can do whatever you want to the clothes YOU wear. This post is made for the purpose of me sharing things I have learned while going to school and being mentored by professionals that have improved my sewing. I feel confident that this will have a HUGE effect in your sewing.

Questions ran though my head like, does anyone else know this? Why isn’t this discussed more? Through all this learning I ended up realizing there are things we should be checking, doing, shouldn’t be skipping, and never disregard when sewing. So let me tell you the things I feel every sewist should be doing and WHY.

1. CHECKING TO SEE IF YOUR FABRIC IS “ON GRAIN”

I remember seeing this topic once in an article about how to block fabric. But thought I would only apply this in severe cases where I can visually see that the fabrics grain lines were off. NOPE  you should always check the gain lines on every fabric you sew with. BEFORE you cut your patterns out. This is mainly done with wovens but you should also be checking to see if the knit fabric you are using is in good condition.

Checking to see if your fabric is “on grain” means checking to see if the fabric’s crosswise grain is perpendicular to the lengthwise grain. If not, you correct it and you SHOULD correct it.

ANY fabric has a chance to be off grain for any reason. It doesn’t mean that its bad quality. Gravity has a major factor to this. If the fabric is stored vertically chances of it being off grain is high. Thats why you will see in big industry fabric companies store their bolts of fabric parallel to the floor to help prevent the collapse of grains.

How to check it and how to correct it can be found in my “Do you Block your fabric” blog post. I wrote a whole blog post on this subject in detail HERE

WHY SHOULD I BE CHECKING THE GRAINS OF MY FABRIC?

The reason why is because your garment will warp, stretch out, or even give a false drag line that will make you think it’s a fit issue.

Every grain line has a different behavior. Lengthwise grain is stable has little to no give. Lots of structure. Cross wise grain has slightly more give than the lengthwise grain, and will give more body to the garment. The Bias which will have the most give, will give the most stretch.

When the crossgrain is not perpendicular to the lengthwise grain this will make the cut of the garment fall on the bias. We all know what happens when a garment is cut on the bias. It stretches or collapses.

The following are probably guesses that many people will think of if they have not blocked their fabric and saw warps in their garment.

1. I have stretched it during sewing. You will assume that somehow you had stretched out the garment during sewing.
2. I have cut the wrong size in pattern. This will definitely be very obvious in the lightweight silky fabrics since any cut on the bias will stretch out so easily. Hence the reason why people say stay stitch neckline as soon as you cut.
3. I have a fit issue. Warping in the fabric after you cut can possibly give you a false drag line or false indications of a fit issue.
4. I have poor quality fabric. This is probably the most common assumption when you see something wrong on the fabric. You will assume that the fabric you chose was not good quality because within just a few wears it’s already warping.

 

Side Note:

I wanted to share this tip that was taught to me by a professional pattern maker Shilo Byrd. Her portfolio is linked here. This tip is probably not really related to this blog post. The reason why I wanted to share these pictures, is because it will show you what a difference grain line behavior has on fabric. Hopefully it can put some perspective on how important paying attention to grain line can be.

I was taught that if you have a piece of fabric where you can’t tell which is lengthwise grain and crosswise grain is (possibly because you have a scrap with no selvage), go ahead and do a  soft fold in each direction.

1.Lengthwise grain since its more structured and less give it will produce less volume.

2. Crosswise grain has a little more give which will produce more body. More volume.

Picture on the left is straight wise grain, picture on the right is the crosswise grain.

 

Thank you guys so much for reading and since there are several tips I want to share on this subject of things we should be checking in sewing. I decided to break it up into parts. Each blog post focusing on that tip. Part 2 : Measuring pattern pieces will be next!

 

Have you ever blocked your fabric before? Honestly, I didn’t before I went to school. I assumed it was only reserved for extreme cases of off grain fabrics. Like where it’s very apparent and you can see the weaves going on a slant.

So when we were preparing our muslin for draping in class (currently enrolled in draping classes for pattern making) our instructor explained how to block our fabric and why it’s so important. This was so eye-opening! I now can see why it’s so important to pay a little more attention to your fabric before you sew. I am only going to talk about woven fabrics in this blog post since knits is something I do need to study more about and soon will learn about later on in the semester.

Lets back up and talk about what is “blocking” your fabric?

Blocking fabric is when you are manipulating the yarns of the fabric so the crosswise grain and the lengthwise grain run into each other at a perfect right angle.

Why would you need to do this?

Having the grains off on a fabric will have an impact on your garment. Each grain on the fabric has a different behavior. So lets say if you cut a pattern piece out on the lengthwise grain but didn’t know it had a slight bias cut in it (because the grain was off to start with) your fabric will stretch over time. You can expect some waviness.

(Here is an example of a piece of muslin where you can see the grain is off. The selvage is straight on the wooden ruler and the bottom edge is not completely touching the bottom plastic ruler to form a 90 degree angle at the bottom right corner)

Here is a link to learn more about how a woven fabric is weaved to have a better understanding.

Why are grain lines so important and what does it mean? 

Like I mentioned before each grain line will behave differently.

*Lengthwise grain (warp) is the strongest, most stable, this runs parallel to the selvage.

*Crosswise grain (weft) perpendicular to the selvage is weaker than the lengthwise grain. Usually will have a slight stretch compared to the lengthwise grain.

*Bias and True Bias grains is the diagonal line across the weave (true bias is exactly on a 45 degree angle) and will have some stretch as the grains can possible give you. If garments is cut on the bias it will drape more than the other grains.

*** This is why listening to the patterns grain lines are so important. The pattern maker is telling you which grain line the pattern is suited for. You should also pay attention to grain lines on interfacing pattern pieces as well. ***

How can you tell if the grain lines are off?

1. The quickest way but not always the most reliable is when you fold the fabric lengthwise (selvage meeting selvage) and cut lines are met. There will be wrinkles on the folded side. When you try folding it again to remove the wrinkles, then the cut edges and selvages will not meet up exactly.

2. Remove a crosswise thread. This will allow you to see better if the crosswise grain is perpendicular to the lengthwise grain. If it’s not then your grain is off

3. In school we were taught to clip the muslin fabric into the selvage and rip it all the way across the cross grain. The rip will follow the weft yarn and show the true crosswise grain. When you take a look at your fabric you see if the crosswise grain meets the lengthwise grain at a right angle on all four corners.

Example pictured here on the piece of muslin.

How do you correct this problem?

It seems like there might be more than one way to do this, but I’m going to only talk about what I have learned to do. Take the corners of which you want to adjust. Tug on it along the bias. Give some good tugs all up and down the bias until the corners are now at a right angle. Crosswise grain should now be perpendicular to selvage. To double-check, take a L-Square ruler and place it on all corners to see if all corners are at a right angle.

(Red line represents the bias) This is the same fabric piece shown above .

Now you can see the fabric’s crosswise grain is now perpendicular to the selvage.

(Revised and added after publishing this post. The following information given to me by a professional in the fashion industry)

Why would grains be off on woven fabrics in the first place?

This was explained to me by Shilo Byrd her Instagram here. The reason why grains would be off or collapse is not because they are badly woven or because it’s bad quality. They collapse because of how the fabric is stored. Time and gravity will make this grain line fall and distort. When a fabric is woven it is woven horizontally to the floor and rolled on tubes. Those tubes are then stored horizontally on shelves. So sometimes when fabric is shipped or sold to another seller they have a tendency to store the bolts vertically. Which then makes the crosswise grain collapse.

Hope you learned a little something along my journey. Follow me on Instagram here where I share some more behind the scenes.

 

 

 

Currently I’m in enrolled at my local college for pattern drafting. Through my college there is a fashion department and within that program you have the ability to gain a certificate for pattern drafting. Enrolling in these courses is what I strongly felt was the right thing to do last year. I was trying to teach myself pattern drafting but kept having questions along the way that I couldn’t get the answers to, online or through textbooks.

After discussing the plan for which courses to take with the director of the department, my first class of the year was Pattern Drafting for Fashion Design 1. The course’s assigned textbook was Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph-Armstrong 5th edition. In this course we would learn the fundamentals of pattern making, learn how to draft all major styles, identify fitting issues, and design our own patterns. Final exam consisted of an actual test on paper asking some pattern making questions. Along with the grade we had to submit our own designed patterns. Garment sewn up and modeled.

I share my experiences on Instagram often and really share a lot about what I learn at school on InstaStories. But there are somethings I didn’t share because there was so much information I didn’t want to info overload you. So let me tell you them here.

1. Slopers

These are the foundation of pattern drafting. This is the 2nd skin shell that tells the pattern maker how to big to make the pattern they are making. All textbooks about drafting patterns usually start off with giving you instructions on how to draft a custom sloper. In my class we discussed a little about this, but we took a different approach to making our slopers. In a way, we draped them on ourselves using the help of the instructor to aid in fit. This meant using our own measurements to find a shell close to our measurements as possible, cut it out on muslin, then sew it up.

We would put it on. Then in front of a mirror the instructor and the student would fit adjust the muslin. She would explain how certain areas would need to look like and where certain markings would need to go. She would adjust accordingly and mark. Once everything was fitted and marked the student then needed to transfer that corrected muslin onto paper to make the sloper.

I was a little surprised by this because I assumed that all pattern makers drafted slopers from measurements . Which they do… so I asked the instructor why we were doing it this way. She explain that anyone can draft a sloper by measurements. It’s easy. You will have to fit it and make adjustments and fit it again. That would take some time. Doing it this way would help create a sloper faster (majority of the drafting done), then we can identify fit issues, and resolve them.

(My bodice slopers)

2. Seam allowances

As a self-taught sewist I learned most of my sewing from the commercial pattern companies (the big 4 chains). I thought early on that all seam allowances in clothing construction was 5/8″. And that Indie sewing companies just picked a seam allowances based on fabric type HAHA! I was wrong. We are were taught at school that all woven fabrics would have 1/2″ seam allowances because they were mainly sewn on sewing machines. Knit garments are sewn at a 3/8″ seam allowances because in the industry knits are sewn on sergers or overlockers. So basically if you are going to use a serger to make the garment you use a 3/8″ seam allowance. If you plan to use mainly a sewing machine to construct the garment you would use a 1/2″ seam allowance. Trim down certain seam allowances. For example lets say a collar, you would trim down the seam allowance to 1/4″ and down to 1/8″ on the corners.

3. Curved hems

Anytime you design a curve on a hem or alter a pattern which then changes the straight hem to a curve … just make a hem facing. Trying to do a fold over hem on a curve will give you lots folds and puckers. If you don’t want that just make a hem facing pattern piece.

4. Grainline of a Sleeve

On a sloper the sleeve is the only piece that has a grainline. This is debatable. (But I’m going to talk about what I learned at my school for this blog post only.)  When doing a muslin the sleeve should have some markings on it to help aid fit. This is the grainline and the bicep line.  If the pattern piece has an elbow dart or an elbow marking transfer that as well. Draw a line from one corner end of the cap (stitching line) to the other. This is your bicep line. Measure that line and mark the center. Draw a perpendicular line through the bicep at the center mark. Extend that line all the way to the top of the cap and all the way down to the wrist. That is your grainline. Key things to look for with those lines. Bicep line should be parallel to the floor . If it drooping or pulling high up then you need to alter the pattern. The grainline of the sleeve should be centered with the side seam when looking at the person from the side.

(My sleeve sloper)

5. Measuring pattern pieces and learning ease

Early on in the semester we were given the task of mearsuring pattern pieces and told to fix all fit issues by just measuring. That also meant to adjust the pattern. WOW what a big task for beginner pattern makers right?! Luckily this was something I learned and implemented in my sewing before school. So doing this was a breeze but really understanding why you do it is what opened my eyes and appreciate this tedious task. We also briefly talked about how much ease is ideally wanted with every fit catagory. Here are the reasons why its a good idea to measure your patterns:

1. Being comfortable with measuring. Some people don’t measure their pattern pieces , but doing so will allow you to correct most fit issues on paper before making muslins.
2. It teaches you know where to properly mearsure on a pattern. Learn the location of major fit points. (ex: bust, waist, hips, biceps etc.) Most indie patterns don’t have these labeled on their patterns. So knowing where to measure will make fitting so much easier.
3. Learning about how much ease is in each fit category will help you guage what to look for when sewing up a garment.

Example : If the bodice pattern (woven) is intended to be fitted,  then around 2″ of ease is needed in the bust for the bodice to be fitted. It can not be your exact measurements because that is like your 2nd skin and there is no room for movement. I take my bust circumference (36″) add 2″ of ease = 38″ is what I’m going for (roughly) to have this garment fitted.

 

I’m sure there are plenty more little tidbits I can share but these are the things that came to mind one day when thinking about school. There is so much information that I learned going to school than I ever did on my own.

(My final design project for the semester) Lightweight poly button up top.

There is someone in the sewing community who I think is such a sweetheart and that I love following. Her name is Faith from @faithstjules . She announced that she would like to have a challenge where in the month of January we would repurpose any old clothing we no longer want. This was perfect because there has been a project I have been procrastinating for quite some time.

There is a picture I found on Pinterest that was from Alexander McQueen. Its a frayed edge jean dress with some rhinestone appliqués. I fell in love. I was thinking that the pattern pieces seemed small enough to be able to repurpose some old jeans for the dress. I also thought since I’m learning more in school for pattern drafting that I could possibly draft something like that. So here I go!

(YOU CAN CATCH CLIPS OF ME DRAFTING THE DRESS ON MY INSTAGRAM HIGHLIGHTS LABEL MCQUEEN)

On a side note I did purchase some appliqués but they were from a seller on Etsy outside the US. So I did not receive them in time for the challenge due date. Oh well, the dress I think is pretty cool by itself.

(Patterns I drafted)

(Muslin)

 Now for the dress…