With all the computer glitches behind us now, welcome (finally) to Part 1 of our drafting series!
There have been times when, for want of big enough blank paper, I have drafted on newspaper with a ball-point pen or sharpie and laid that out and pinned that onto my fabric. I am just confessing that here so you'll be reassured that you don't need special magic drafting paper. When I am enabled to, though, this is the kind of paper I like to use for drafting:
II Drape a thin chain or string over the back of the neck
This gives two vertical lines from which you can measure the width of the neck, the distance from the side/base of neck to the shoulder point, the depth of the front neckline etc.
III Use small stickers or body/washable marker pens:
Children like them, and they make convenient markers for the important measurement points,
like the shoulder point (pink strawberry), the side/base of neck (pink heart), the depth of the front neckline (yellow circle)
When I am drafting, I usually take all the measurements in one go, and write them down. I usually have about 5 minutes to do this, before the child in question decides she's had enough and runs away. For the purpose of this tutorial, though, I will pretend that I have the luxury to take a measurement, plot it on the paper and then take the next measurement, while the child stands perfectly still. It is a gross misrepresentation of how it's done in real life, but it makes for clearer step-by-steps. OK?
One way to calculate these half- or quarter-values is to use a calculator (or mental arithmetic). Another way is to fold the measuring tape, which I know a lot of people also do. So for example, if you measured someone's shoulder width as 15 3/4 inches, and wanted to divide that by 2, you'd fold the tape like so
to get the half-value of 7 7/8":
3 Ease
Next week: The Front Sloper
This is the part in which I drone on and on about the basics without actually drafting anything. Some of you already know all this, and some don't, but I always feel it's worth boring the former into a coma so the latter can start with them on the same page. Here we go!
1 What You Might Need For Drafting:
This is an example of what I usually use when I draft:
- Big sheet of paper (butcher paper is nice)
- Color pencils (and eraser)
- Long straight ruler
- T-square or set-square or your gridded cutting mat or some other thing to help you square lines (i.e make them perpendicular to one another).
- Measuring tape
- Curved ruler, flexible ruler, french curves, if you like some aids for curve-drawing -not shown in picture because I usually sketch my curves free-hand (not as hard as it sounds).
- Narrow twill tape, ribbon or thin string
- Child
There have been times when, for want of big enough blank paper, I have drafted on newspaper with a ball-point pen or sharpie and laid that out and pinned that onto my fabric. I am just confessing that here so you'll be reassured that you don't need special magic drafting paper. When I am enabled to, though, this is the kind of paper I like to use for drafting:
It's regular thin brown kraft paper with vertical lines. Those lines help me draw parallel lines more easily. I know a person can buy special drafting paper that has a grid marked out which is probably even better, but I don't need it. I buy this paper from Ikea - it's KOTTE wrapping paper - for about $2 a (8 m long). Sadly, Ikea only has wrapping paper in stock during the Christmas season - so check back there maybe in October.
(update: The KOTTE paper is still available, but it is now called SNOVITA. At 99c a roll that's 8 m long, it's a good deal.)
2 Measuring (and Measuring Children)
(update: The KOTTE paper is still available, but it is now called SNOVITA. At 99c a roll that's 8 m long, it's a good deal.)
2 Measuring (and Measuring Children)
Children, especially small ones, are very hard to measure. They don't stand still. They have no waist. They are ticklish and shrug a lot. Candy or a movie or some other enticing thing helps. I personally prefer measuring children who are 4 years old or older, because they can be reasoned with and made to stand relatively still for measuring. Also their tummies are less round, which makes for easier measuring and therefore a better fit.
I personally feel that the most important success factor in drafting is getting accurate measurements from the start. If forced to estimate exactly how important, I'd say a good draft is
- 70% accurate measurements
- 20% drafting /drawing skills
- 10% knowing how to analyze a muslin/first fitting
When I drafted as a younger person under mum's tutelage, we did a lot of estimating of key measurement points like the base/side of the neck or the shoulder point. Skilled and experienced measurers and drafters like mum and other people in her generation can get away with it. Now that mum and I inconveniently live in different countries and I can no longer have her visually advise my measuring process, I find I need more objective methods of pin-pointing these measurement positions. Here are some methods mum and I (and other people) collectively use now:
Sometimes, if it is helpful, you might even like to tie another string around the hips, or chest. This string is a good marker of the important horizontal reference lines (waist, hip, chest) for measuring. Now this cord in the picture is not a good choice because it is thick and adds bulk to the waist measurement when you wrap the measuring tape around the waist, on top of it. But I used it for the photo for its lurid visibility.
Note in the next photo that the cord is horizontal because the waist is horizontal. Even if your child wears her pants with the front waistband under her tummy. Remember this photo, incidentally - it shows quite clearly that small children have those wonderful bellies that are so cute, but that you will need to take into account when you draft for them.
Try your very, very hardest to complete all your measurements before removing this waist string. If you take it off and then retie it the next day to take more measurements, it will likely not be in the same position as before, and you might end up with measurements that are inconsistent with the day before's and drive you nuts when you draft them.
Try your very, very hardest to complete all your measurements before removing this waist string. If you take it off and then retie it the next day to take more measurements, it will likely not be in the same position as before, and you might end up with measurements that are inconsistent with the day before's and drive you nuts when you draft them.
II Drape a thin chain or string over the back of the neck
This gives two vertical lines from which you can measure the width of the neck, the distance from the side/base of neck to the shoulder point, the depth of the front neckline etc.
III Use small stickers or body/washable marker pens:
Children like them, and they make convenient markers for the important measurement points,
like the shoulder point (pink strawberry), the side/base of neck (pink heart), the depth of the front neckline (yellow circle)
and the back of the neck.
If the child shrugs off the chain (always happens), the stickers /body marking ink will still remain.
If the child shrugs off the chain (always happens), the stickers /body marking ink will still remain.
We'll be taking many more measurements to make a sloper than if were adapting a commercial pattern to fit your particular child. In other words, we're going beyond height, waist, chest, hip, length of skirt. Remember - we're making ours from scratch, so we need more numbers to shape things the right way from the start.
When I am drafting, I usually take all the measurements in one go, and write them down. I usually have about 5 minutes to do this, before the child in question decides she's had enough and runs away. For the purpose of this tutorial, though, I will pretend that I have the luxury to take a measurement, plot it on the paper and then take the next measurement, while the child stands perfectly still. It is a gross misrepresentation of how it's done in real life, but it makes for clearer step-by-steps. OK?
I have included a measuring table at the end of this post, which you can print out and begin to fill up. The key will explain what the different colors and text mean. We will be drafting the front sloper first, and it will be half of the full front piece, just like commercial patterns. This is important to remember because some of the measurements we take will be subsequently divided by 2 or 4 before being plotted.
One way to calculate these half- or quarter-values is to use a calculator (or mental arithmetic). Another way is to fold the measuring tape, which I know a lot of people also do. So for example, if you measured someone's shoulder width as 15 3/4 inches, and wanted to divide that by 2, you'd fold the tape like so
to get the half-value of 7 7/8":
3 Ease
Let's talk a little about ease. Ease is the allowance given in measuring beyond the exact fit. There are two main kinds of ease that we might mention throughout our series.
The first is design ease, which is the allowance added according to a particular style of garment to make it a certain shape, like an A-line skirt. We are drafting a sloper (i.e. exact fit) so there will be no design ease in the measurements.
The second is fitting ease, which is the small allowance to enable the model to feel comfortable in a close-fitting garment like a sloper. Whenever a measurement is taken around the entire circumference of the body e.g. the waist, it is tricky to decide how snug to keep the measuring tape.
How much fitting ease to add, where and how are very common questions. Everyone does it a different way, and to a different extent - there are rules of thumb, and industry standards and all that, but it is also dependent on the drafter's personal preference. If you have read drafting books, you will probably have noticed both similarities and differences in the way the various authors include ease in their measurements.
Let's answer those questions now:
Q1 Where is ease added?
The short answer is: wherever there is movement of the body, like in sitting, breathing and well, moving. When I make a sloper, I add ease only in the waist, hip, chest and armscye - these are the areas that tend to expand or stretch in the course of the wearer's normal movement. I do not add ease in the shoulder width, the neck, or any of the vertical dimensions because these do not change in the course of the wearer's normal movement.
Q2 How is ease added?
Usually I take measurements when the model is dressed in whatever she will be wearing under the garment I'm making. For a sloper, this means just underwear. However, thin, close-fitting clothes (like a snug Tshirt, bodysuit, leggings) are also OK because they don't add significant bulk. Having established that, do you measure the exact, snug value and then mentally add some fitting ease before recording it? Or do you hold the measuring tape more loosely to allow for the ease in the actual measurement? Both work, and it is a personal preference either way.
Q3 How much ease is added?
The amount of ease to add is also a personal preference. Some folks like very snug slopers, and some like more comfortable ones. Some figures are more toned and have more defined curves, and can handle less ease, while others have less defined/demarcated areas of fullness and might be more flattered with an extra bit of ease in their slopers.
Here's what I usually do:
I start with a snug (exact) measurement. A good rule of thumb is to keep the measuring tape snug enough so it does not move up and down but just loose enough so it can shift about horizontally if you move it. For instance, if you are measuring the waist and the measuring tape is unable to stay at the waist level but keeps falling down to the hips, it is too loose. Having established this snug measurement, I then loosen the measuring tape a quarter inch at a time until I think I've found a comfortable fit. I sometimes have the child breathe in so her chest/waist expands, and take that final measurement. Often - and you might be surprised by this - you only need a very little bit of ease, like 1/2" in the total waist measurement for a sloper.
Then I make a muslin from the sloper and let that tell me if more ease is needed or not. I prefer being conservative with adding fitting ease, because it is often much easier to observe fit issues in a too-tight sloper than one with so much ease that the wearer is swimming in it. In a too-tight sloper, you might say, "Oh, I need to let out the the waist by another 1/2 inch", but if the sloper is huge all over, the only conclusion is "What the......! I've made a sack! I can't even begin to tell where to take it in and where!" A common mistake thereafter with a very loose sloper is to desperately take in all the ease in just one area, like the waist, instead of distributing it between the different seams to get a more accurate fit. But more on that later!
4 Reference Lines
Throughout the tutorials, you will find yourself drawing some vertical and horizontal reference lines. Pick a different color pencil for these reference lines so you won't mix them up with the actual seam lines of the sloper. This will make more sense later in the actual tutorials.
5 Miscellaneous Stuff:
In spite of all its rules and methods, drafting is very personal. Different people have different drafting styles. Also, different people like different fits. This is why drafting using the approach in Book A will yield quite a different fit of the same resulting garment than if you'd used Book B's. Some like a lot of ease in their sleeve caps. Some use different formulae for drafting different parts of the sloper. Some swear by measuring additional points on the body to draft certain curves, while others do it free-hand.
Please remember that this is a sloper, not a pattern. So this series will NOT address questions like,
Here is the revised measurement table you can print out. The more time I spent on it, the more I added to it, so it has more changes to it than I originally intended. But it flows with the sloper tutorial instructions better now!
Drafting a sloper for a grown adult (like a woman) is similar in technique to that of a child. But you will be quite disappointed if you use this tutorial to make a sloper for yourself (assuming you, the reader, are older than 10 years old and have reached puberty, I mean). Two reasons: one, there are many, many more measurements needed of a mature female body that we have left out for a child, like the bust. Two, there are darts to include to fit that bust, which change the shape of the final sloper dramatically. Just the question of where to position the bust dart is worth a whole series of tutorials. Someday maybe I'll get around to doing the adult sloper. Like when I get a personal chef. But not today.
Please remember that this is a sloper, not a pattern. So this series will NOT address questions like,
- "so what style of dress will this be?" or
- "How tall is your 5-year old? I want to know if this pattern (ptoooi!) will fit my 5-year old."
It WILL, however, address questions like,
- "So now that I have a sloper, how can I adapt it to make patterns?" and
- "So how can I use it with my commercial patterns?"
For my attempt to explain the differences between a sloper and a pattern, see here.
In the following tutorials, I will use some real measurements but I will not reveal the age of the child from which they were taken. This is to help you resist the temptation to copy all my numbers and recreate my sloper and subsequently be still unable to draft one for your own child/niece/unsuspecting young model you bribed into practising on.
And finally, when all is said, drafted and done, make a muslin/mockup and try it on your model! Straight away, you will get a visual, 3-D idea of what you did right, and what you did not-so-right. Often it takes two fittings, maybe more, to refine all the funny bits. And usually you will be making small alterations - 1/2" to 1" changes. If you find yourself taking in something like 3" in the hip, you're probably adding way to much ease and forgetting that this is a sloper, not a pattern. It's OK to start over! And now that you've seen the effect of your drafting on the actual model, you might be surprised at how much better and faster the second time around is.Here is the revised measurement table you can print out. The more time I spent on it, the more I added to it, so it has more changes to it than I originally intended. But it flows with the sloper tutorial instructions better now!
Next week: The Front Sloper
P.S. I've deliberately changed my post feed setup to "short" for this series so you'll have to come back here to read the full post. One main reason: there is so much information to be packed in to each drafting post that I am quite certain to overlook something/write stuff I'll want to change 2 seconds after publishing it. This is my control-freak way of dynamically editing and updating these posts whenever something comes to mind. I'll be posting full feeds for all the other non-drafting posts. Thank you for understanding!