The Couture Counsellor

Welcome to In the Sketchbook, a monthly look at fashion design sketches that we are working on for ourselves. Sketching garments on a personal croquis is a great way for the individual couture enthusiast to move beyond the use of commercial patterns and into a world of personalized design! It can be intimidating at first, but with a little bit of practice it becomes something you look forward to. Join us for a look of what we have going on In the Sketchbook! Brought to you by Wendy Grossman of Couture Counsellor and Steph King from Siouxzeegirl Designs.

If you had told me two weeks ago that I would look forward to sketching, I would have been convinced you were delusional. That was before I participated in Sarah Veblen’s six-day class, Exploring Fashion Design – Design 1. A review of that class will be the subject of a blog post coming up soon, but Steph King and I couldn’t wait to start sharing what we have in our sketchbooks.

One of my class assignments was to find a length for a cropped jacket to wear with a coordinating or matching dress. I started with my basic armscye princess seamed sheath dress on the personal croquis developed in class.

After trying out different lengths, I decided this one has the most pleasing proportions.

Next, I sketched out a few different jacket designs I might try.

Since returning from class, I’ve decided I’d really like to develop a pattern for a linen jacket dress in two shades of blue that I’ve been thinking about for years. I know I want to incorporate both fabrics in the jacket by making a double collar and contrasting cuffs on short sleeves. I’d like the collar to be a rolled collar that stops well short of center front and frames the buttons, which may or may not be covered. Here is what I’ve come up with.

I like the shape of the collar on the left better than the one on the right. If you look closely at the sketch, you can see that I’m playing with an Empire waist for the dress so I can make that two-toned as well with the lighter color on top. I haven’t come to a final decision on the shape of the dress neckline. That will take some more sketching to work out.

Getting this down on paper is so much better than trying to work it all out in my head. This is a very exciting step for me.

We would love to have this monthly feature grow into a link-up with other sewing bloggers. If you’re interested in joining in this creative adventure, please leave a comment to this post.