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.

I thought it might be a nice change to take a look at some garments that are actually in development. I’ve been working on pattern adjustments for the Appleton Dress by Cashmerette Patterns. This is a classic wrap dress designed for curvy figures. I think ITY (interlock twist yarn) knit is perfect for this dress, but I had trouble finding what I was looking for. I knew all the ITY knits in my fiber archive are cut in quantities that are only sufficient for a top so I searched to see whether I had anything in rayon that isn’t too clingy. One of the “discoveries” I made was a charcoal gray knit that has been tucked away for a very long time. I thought it would be just right, so I set it aside to prewash. Then I was looking for lace for the project we’re going to talk about in a minute and I cam across this lace mesh from MarcyTilton.com and had one of those aha moments.

The lace looks a bit lighter in the picture than it does in person, but I think you get the idea. To me, knit and lace is an unexpected combination, especially a knit that’s not at all dressy like this one. I immediately thought it would look great on the neck bands and ties of the Appleton dress.

I’ll see if I can make it work on the sleeves, but I suspect I’ll need the stretch of the knit there. I thought about putting it on the edge of the overlap piece all the way to the hem, but I think it would be too much with the tie in that area. This is why sketching out ideas helps. You see issues you didn’t think of when the design is all in your head.

While I was noodling over the Appleton Dress, I wondered what it would look like with a collar.

I like it. Maybe with contrasting fabric, maybe not.

Another project that occupied a chunk of my time this month involves lace combined with tweed. I have this fabulous salt-and-pepper tweed made of cotton(!) that I ordered from SawyerBrook.com a couple of years ago. It’s very soft and should be in an unstructured garment, so I thought about using the design for my Spoonflower dress and adding ¾ length sleeves.

In contemplating collars, I wondered whether it might look nice with a collar made of lace. That started a whole quest that made me feel like Goldilocks. One lace was too much of a stark white, black did nothing for the fabric, various laces in ivory were too dense, and on and on. I kept coming back to a lace neck piece I acquired at an ASG fabric exchange several years ago. It’s the wrong shape and it doesn’t lend itself to sitting under a collar made from the fashion fabric (the sketches look like a dog with a beard), but the color and density are perfect.

  In a mentoring session, Sarah Veblen agreed that this is the lace I should use. She advised me to draft the neckline around it and forget about making a collar. I told her I was thinking about cutting out the flower at each of the points so the piece is not quite so wide and she agreed that’s a good idea. She suggested using the flowers somewhere else, maybe even at the top to balance out the width. I need to play around with them once I get them cut. I’m going to follow Pamela Legget’s advice for cutting out the motifs: sharp scissors, good lighting, no wine.

Here’s the sketch for the dress. I think it looks like it has measles and is wearing a bib. I definitely need to work on my sketching ability in the new year.

Finally, I want to show you a sketch of a dress that I haven’t chosen fabric for yet. I sketched it using a cool new toy – um, tool – that I treated myself to. It’s the Apple Pencil, which I used with the iPad app, Paper 53. I want to use the silhouette of my Leaf Dress in a 3-season dress with sleeves. I think this will be a lot of fun to make and to wear.

That’s it for now. Be sure to check out what fabulous designs my dear friend Steph King of Siouxzeegirl Designs is showing at 10 Sewing Machines & a Serger and wish her a happy birthday while you’re over there. And, we’d love to see and hear about what you’re sketching, too.