8-Gore Skirt and Princess Line Blouse

One of the last projects in our first quarter patternmaking class was drafting a simple gored skirt. We took measurements of the person for whom we were making the skirt, and plugged them into a sort of formula to draft the pattern.

I made mine for my girlfriend out of a basic cotton print fabric. The skirt is fully lined with cotton sateen and has an invisible zipper in the side, closing at the waistband with two small buttons.

In our second quarter construction class, we made a princess line blouse from a pattern. We got to choose the size and fabric, but there was no patternmaking involved. We did, however, have to create a spec sheet, sequence of construction, and technical sketch. Again, I made it for my girlfriend. The grey panels are Kona cotton and the black panels are cotton sateen. The side seams are French seams.

First Quarter: Knock-off Skirt

This was the first big patternmaking project we had; create a skirt pattern (from our sloper) based on a magazine tear. Everyone brought in tears, and we all voted on which one we'd like to make. This Pringle of Scotland skirt was the winner.

We all had a first crack at it on our own, and then over the next few weeks we had some help refining our patterns.

My final pattern ended up looking like this. (The original skirt has pockets, but we turned those into pleats for the sake of simplicity.)

It is fully lined, with an invisible zipper in the back. The front has a

facing at the hem because of the curve produced by the tucks.

Once the pattern was perfected (or as close to perfect as it was going to get), we sewed it up in our construction class. We tried to use similar fabric to the original (though w

e could choose any color). Many of the other students used silk dupioni. I found a great Anna Sui remnant at Pacific Fabrics in SoDo, and it was even the right colorway! The only problem was that it was plaid. Plaid matching was not something we had been taught yet, but I was allowed to use the fabric as long as I could match it perfectly.

Here are the results:

Unfortunately, the matching doesn't quite work on the side seams, since the front piece is angled and the back is not. I was able to match them for a bit near the hem, though. The hem itself is hand blind stitched in placed, and matching thread was used depending on where in the plaid pattern the stitches happen to show.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how this project turned out. I learned a lot about problem-solving in patternmaking, and I really enjoyed sewing it up. This was the first time we got to sew something in fashion fabric (rather than muslin) that we had "designed", so it was fun to see it take shape. It's interesting looking back on it and think about how much work and time I put into it, when now I could probably whip up the pattern in an afternoon.