Today I would like to show you how I'm making clothes patterns for my dolls.
This is the first part and here I will tell you how to make a pattern basis.
You will need:
1) food film
2) scotch tape
3) scissors
4) doll
First you need to slice a food film on narrow strips (figure a). After you have finished the body wrapping, including shoulders and hips, take a scotch tape.
In the same way wrap the body with narrow strips of the scotch tape above the food film (figure b). Do not leave the food film not covered by the scotch tape. This is important!
When you finish with the scotch tape and you don't see uncovered space take a permanent marker. Be very carefull with the marker. Try to draw lines on the tape surface, do not draw on the doll plastic.
* If you accidentally spoiled the doll to remove the marks try melanine sponge or nail polish remover.
First draw a main lines of the middle of front, back and side seam.
1)front middle line
2)back middle line
3)side seam line
Then we draw a chest circumference line. Draw a line around the body through the chest extending points (figure d).
Draw the waist circumference line (line 1) and hips line (line 2) (figure e).
Make an armholes line with a small indentation downward the armpit (line 1). Draw a neck line and shoulder seam (line 2). Draw a breast recess line from the cross point of the shoulder seam line with the neck line to the breast extending point (line 3, figure f).
Scetch a recess at the front and back (line 1 and line 2). Now we have a basis (figure g).
At the next part I will show you how to make one particular pattern from the dress scetch and how to move it to the paper.
---------------------------------------
You will need:
1) the doll with the basic pattern drown.
2) permanent marker
3) nail scissors
4) board strip
5) the future dress scetch
Before we start drawing the construction lines on the pattern basis we need to do one more step. You see that our dress has sleeves, scetch them roughly on it (figure a). Stick a piece of scotch tape to fix.
Draw construction lines right on the pattern basis (figure b). I used a red marker to highlight this.
You can draw red lines throughout the pattern but I did this only on the half of it, the other side I left blank for our lesson.
To take off the result pattern we are using the nail scissors and cardboard strip (figure c).
Slice the pattern along the middle-back line and the middle-front line (figure d). Now we have two halves of the pattern: dress pattern and the basis pattern.
In this part of the lesson lets transfer the basic pattern to paper.
Slice the tape pattern along the side seam line (figure f). We are having two parts: front and back.
Take the front part (figure g).
1) Along the breast tuck line cut it till the intersection with the line of the chest.
2) Bend it half part of the waist make an incision on the darts.
3) Cut the waist tuck.
4) The finished front part with the opened chest and waist tucks.
Open the back part chest and waist tucks in the same way.
I recomend to use checkered paper when transfering the pattern.
Spread the front detail and mark the points: the neck basis, through the chest, waist and hips (figure h).
Put the pattern at the hips line and outline it (figure i).
Then we need to transfer the chest tuck (figure j). For this pattern is applied to the middle of the front line on paper combining the chest lines. Outlines the neck and one side of the tuck. Attach the rest of the chest tuck pattern, outline the armhole and the shoulder line. Align the chest tucks using the line.
Transfer the front waist tuck (figure k). Match the middle front line with the waist line and the chest line. Outline the first side of the waist tuck and then outline the other one.
Spread the back part of the pattern in the same way (figure l).
1) Match the middle back lines on the paper along the chest line, waist line and hips line; draw a middle back line.
2) Outline the neck line of the back, shoulder and armhole.
3) Transfer the hips width from the pattern.
Align the back middle line outline the one side of the tuck (figure m).
Spread the pattern in the way to align the pits of the hips. Outline the second side of the waist tuck. After that transfer the side seam line.
Go back to the front pattern (figure n). Match the waist tuck and draw the point of the front side seam along the waist line (see arrow). Match the front tuck line and waist line point and outline the side seam line till the waist line. Connect the waist line point with the side line and outline the rest of the side seam.
You may see that the doll has non standard body with the big breast and the narrow hips; as a result the side seam line went to the front part. You may fix this by matching the hips width of the front and back parts. (figure o)
The basic pattern is almost ready.
You may see that when we were transferring the side seam of the front part we got the lower corner moved away. I added the lost part to the pattern manually (see arrow). Outline then. The basic pattern is ready.
----------------------------------
At the third part of the lesson we will build the pattern according to the sketch.
We are having now the basis and prepared dress layout (figures a and b).
First we need to transfer the front of the dress to paper.
Match the middle of the basis and the middle of front of the dress layout transferring the top edge (figure c).
The calyx parts are matched with the line transfered from the part 1, outline it (figure d).
Transfering the relief line from the part 1 (figure e).
The part 2 is aligned by the waist, hips and side seam, transfering the upper edge line with the relief on the basis (figure f).
Do the same steps with the back details of the layout (figures g and h).
Now we are having all the dress layout details are transfered on the basis (figure i).
Now the only part which is need to be done is to build a sleave (figure j). Outline the part of the sleave layout. But it is not the only step. We need to have the sleeve curve. In order to get it we need the layouts of front bust and back.
1) Match the bust front edge with the sleeve curve. Outline them.
2) Match the bust back edge with the sleeve curve. Outline them.
The sleeve is ready.
Our dress has a waist silhouette belled to the bottom in the sketch.
Measure the dress length. In this case the length is measured from the waist line (figure k).
The value of bottom extension is 4cm. Measure this 4cm from the relief line and smoothly connect the waist edge line with point of extension (figure l).
Do the relief edges, side edges and back middle line in the same way (figure m).
Figure n:
1) Transfer all the parts to the paper.
2, 3) Cut the parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 and stick them to the paper. We need it to make a bottom line.
4) Draw a bottom of the dress as a circle.
5) Cut the parts we have made.
Making the bust front. Shrink the length of chest edge and depth of the undercut up to 2-3mm from the extending brest point (see arrow). Make the size of pucker by reducing the size of undercut (figure o).
Make a sleeve. Our dress has a fairy sleeve containing two parts. The sleeve's bottom will have just a pucker; the top os the sleeve will have pucker and be filled up (figure p).
Devide the part 1 on 5 even parts along the length.
Devide the part 2 on 10 even parts along the length and width as on the picture.
Cut the parts.
Spread the prepared parts horizontally on 0,5cm saving the sleeve form to make a bottom sleeve part.
For the top sleeve part spread the parts horizontally and vertically on the even distance; then outline them along the outer edge.
With the paper line of 0,75cm width outline the parts. This is overmeasure (figure r).
Make a bigger overmeasure at the bottom of 1,0cm.
In order to make a right overmeasure for the chest undercut cut the part with the overmeasure of 0,75cm. Assembly the undercut right on the paper by matching the undercut edges. Cut off the extra material along the undercut line. The result angle will give the right overmeasure (figure q).
Now we are having the dress pattern with the ready prepared overmeasure.
We may start cutting (figure s).
I made this dress with that pattern.
