design observed :: clarification

Oh, I am liking the brown and green together!  I'll post the first part of the sewing process later today.  But first, I need to clarify a couple of things from day 6. 

There was a little confusion about drafting the collar.  Let me get my colored pencils out here...

Okay.  We decided to do a continuous bound placket.  If you've done one before, or you look at the continuous bound placket tutorial, you'll see that the placket needs a 1/4" seam allowance on either side of the center back.  (That's drawn in orange in the drawing above.)  So that when we draft our collar, we can't start AT the center back, but we'll have to start 1/4" away.  To allow space for the placket. 

Also there was confusion about drafting the pleated panel. 

When we want to add width to any pattern piece, such as this sleeve here:

We cut it apart where we want the width, and tape it to a larger piece of paper.  The width of the gap is how much width we're adding to the sleeve.

Now, when we cut the space for our pleated panel out of the bodice front, we technically could have done that. Like this.

If we take the original panel (blue) and cut it where we want each pleat and tape it to larger paper (orange), each strip a pleat-width apart, then we get something like the diagram above.  But if it's a rectangular panel, it seems a little silly to do this, since we could just measure the original panel cutout and add the width we want for pleats. 

A pleat takes three times the fabric of a finished pleat panel.  We'll do a thorough discussion of pleats another time.  For now, though, you can see that in order to get the measurements for our pleated panel, we'd just cut a rectangle that's the same height as our original panel, and three times the width.  Remember to add seam and hem allowances.

If that doesn't clarify enough, or if anybody's still confused about anything, do let me know, won't you?

~Erin~

Comments

[Heather]

Wow. I am learning so much. I have referenced your work already several time while trying to make some Thanksgiving dresses for my girls. And my oldest needs a new school skirt - can't wait to try the pleats.

[Kerri]

Ok that makes sense to me now. Thank you for taking the time to explain it. :)