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.

This month, I’ve been playing with pleats. I like the idea of pleats in only part of a garment as an accent. In sketching on my croquis I’ve discovered that ideas that seem good in my head would look terrible on my body. Here’s an example:

It’s so nice to be able to see what a mistake a design would be without investing more than a couple of minutes to sketch it out.

Here’s the back of a jacket that I think has some potential. The pleats would be stitched down with topstitching above the belt detail.

I tried out several different skirt designs to go with the jacket and erased them all. Then I tried out these  for the back of the skirt only.

I need to let this percolate through my brain some more before deciding about the skirt.

I added other skirts that have nothing to do with the jacket design.

I think I’d like to try one of these:

I’d love to hear what you think about these and about what you’re sketching. Be sure to check out what’s in Steph’s sketchbook at 10 Sewing Machines & a Serger.