Pattern Drafting and Muslin Making

The skirt mentioned in the previous post is now lined, the zipper properly attached, and the waistline band sewn on. All I need to do is add the button and button hole at the waist and hem both the skirt and the liner.

And I've completely lost steam on this project. Plus I need help doing the hem, so I can't even finish it right now anyways.

So I've started sewing one of the tops from my new plan for the wardrobe contest.


You can see the white skirt on there, mocking me with it's cuteness. I truly hate doing the finishing touches on my sewing projects. The top I'm working on is a self-drafted pattern inspired by the shirt shown below from over at ModCloths.



I love the back of this top.

One of the reasons I'm attempting this is that I've acquired a helper to assist me with drafting my own top patterns!


Isn't she beautiful? Her name is Mabe, and I still need to add some padding and cover her in fabric. I found her at a hole-in-the-wall fabric store in Toronto for $30! She looked so lonely in the window, I had to bring her home.

She's already been amazingly helpful. It's so much easier to drape and structure fabric pieces when you have something to hang it on, other than yourself!

The first thing I did was sketch a quick drawing based on the top from ModCloth. I may add pleats instead of gathers. The good fabric planned for this top is a little stiffer, and small pleats would look much neater than messy gathers.


It's pretty obvious that I'm not an artist, but trust me, this is one of the better sketches! Using myself and Mabe, I figured out the dimensions needed for the front and back yoke, and used loose-leaf paper (I'm a student, give me a break, loose-leaf paper is cheap) to created the pattern pieces. I cut them out from the other half of the sheet I used to make the muslin for the pants I also mentioned in the previous post.


By positioning the front and back yoke on Mab, I was able to easily figure where the shoulder seam should go, which was handy because the back yoke edge was wonky at the shoulder seam.

I'm still working out how to do the body of the top, but so far I've just cut out rectangle pieces of fabric for the front and back body, with width equaling the widest part of my bust. I gathered the top part of the front body and sewed it to the yoke.



Tomorrow I'll attach the back piece, then putz around with the sides and figure out how to deal with them. I like the straight line along the side from the yoke to under the arm, and will try to maintain this. I may also need to flair the waist at the hips.

All and all, this muslin is coming along nicely, and if it works, I'll be sewing it in the fabric below. I think it'll be a charming little top!


I have to say, drafting your own pattern like this is much more fun than sewing from a company pattern! Hopefully it works out. :)