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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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