well-suited blog - Creative Design and Pattern Making.

Pattern Puzzle - Gil Brandao, Conjunto Pratico

Monday, February 16, 2015

Gil Brandao's patterns have a seductive quality in their simplicity and clarity. Often with pattern making instructions, simplicity is no more than an absence of information that can be finally very frustrating. Not so for Gil. His diagrams have all the required information. So much so that my inability to read Portuguese does not present a problem.

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Pattern Puzzle - Drape Back Dress

Monday, February 09, 2015

The simplest of shapes have a tendency to be the most difficult to solve in the pattern puzzle. When there are no recognisable pattern parts (armholes, necklines, etc.), a huge amount of creativity is needed to make sense of the pattern shape. Each week our fans excel in their ability to work their way through the information, ask the best questions and eventually win the day. :) They are the best! If you don't fancy making your own pattern this design is now available as a PDF sewing pattern to download and sew for your self at home. Click through to see my very first PDF patterns online!

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Pattern Puzzle - Vintage Booty Dress

Monday, January 19, 2015

It was a demanding Pattern Puzzle this week that ran live across all time zones and gave everyone a chance to join in. You can see by the pattern shapes below that the final move of adding the front side panel to the backside panel was just enough to make it a very challenging game. Huge thanks to all fans and friends for dropping by and making it a great day.

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Pattern Puzzle - Gil Brandao Wrap Blouse

Monday, January 12, 2015

I finally had a chance to use some of the wonderful work in the Gil Brandao book. In particular this pattern hooked me from the beginning as it doesn't seem to make any sense. To start with the thing that looks like a dart is really an armhole? And that thing that looks like a sleeve is in fact a waist tie. As you can imagine I was looking forward to an interesting fitting.

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Pattern Puzzle - Vintage Bodice

Monday, December 29, 2014

Once again I have been seduced by a Vintage Fashion Illustration promising so much in fit and style. Add to that the fact that this bodice promised to be one of those fascinating one-piece patterns. They were so thoroughly investigated in the first half of the 20th century when manufacturers were looking for a reduction of machine processes for the mass manufacture of fashion. This blog now has a great number (5) of these style of blog posts which I plan to develop into a more detailed post in the future.

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Pattern Puzzle - Erte Inspired Design

Monday, December 22, 2014

This weeks #PatternPuzzle was about targeting another of my favourite Erte designs and bringing this inspiration up-to-date. As it turns out this is a truly challenging style. I know I made at least two mistakes in putting these pattern making instructions together. So please forgive any other errors you may find. And because of it's complexity, I imagine I would have to produce at least 2-3 toiles/muslins to really get the design and fit to work well before attempting in final cloth.
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Pattern Puzzle - Green Velvet Drape

Monday, December 01, 2014

Green Velvet Drape - A homage to Ceil Chapman 1950

Over a year ago I found the image of this amazing vintage dress on Pinterest, compliments of Mill Street Vintage. Unfortunately (for us) it has been sold and is no longer in their shop. So I made up the back view to hopefully balance with the wonderful design detail on the front.

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Pattern Puzzle - The Cowl Tube Top

Monday, November 10, 2014

It's a mean thing to present the fans with a rectangle as a #PatternPuzzle and expect them to describe the garment. In my defence I did include a couple of very small notches as a clue. In the end Mioara was able to produce an almost exact image of the idea in knit fabric. I think we may have been reading the same pattern making books. :) I found this image on pinterest but have had no luck finding the original source material. If anyone knows the origin of this piece I would love to be able to include the correct information here.

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Pattern Puzzles - Balenciaga Blouse

Monday, October 27, 2014

The inspiration behind this weeks #PatternPuzzle post is this divinely simple vintage blouse by Balenciaga (circa. 1958-60) found in the MetMuseum online collections. It has been sitting in my stash of great ideas for #PatternPuzzles for over a year.

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Pattern Puzzle - The Erté Jacket

Monday, October 06, 2014

My first introduction to Erté was the year after leaving fashion college when my Dad gave me a copy of this book for christmas. Such a pattern making novice at the time, I had no idea how I would ever achieve such challenging designs.