I have been making clothes for the upcoming vacation.
Much of my sewing is of the “By Guess and By God” sort. I know how to make a tiered broomstick skirt that flows well. I can put pockets in such skirts. I have figured out how to make an amazing skirt out of old silk neckties, too.
Every once in a while, I am reduced to using a pattern to make something. Anyone who has done any sewing will know what I am talking about when I state that you really have no idea what the garment is going to actually look like based on the drawing that the fasion designer has made of the concept.
Don’t even go into the realms of the Vogue pattern unless you have figure like the models in Vogue. Even if Vogue says the pattern is designed to fit a woman with a 39″ bustline, that is absolutely not true and if you cut the piece out of silk first without trying it on muslin you are going to have a whole lot of very ruined silk, and a dress that might fit if you bind your breasts to your chest firmly. Oh, don’t get me started. My wedding dress was a Vogue pattern, but by the time I made it I was wise to them and did not ruin my silk.
But to return to the present rant. Not surprisingly, a person who is drawing a garment can make the fabric flow any way they want. The pleats are always perfect, the fabric falls in beautiful folds away from the flared seams. The stripes always match (of course). In fact, in some drawings the fabric patterns match across seam lines in ways that are actually impossible to have in real life unless you make your garment out of plain white fabric and paint it after it is finished.
I understand all this, having been sewing since I was 10 years old, which makes it darn near half a century now.
But I still have a pet peeve. Why can’t the designers draw their garments based on models that have at least some basis in reality? I append for your delectation an actual drawing from an actual pattern which I used to make a skirt similar to the one pictured.
My problem is, this skirt is graceful enough when constructed. But it does not hang the way the designer thinks it will.
And of course, it doesn’t look anything like the picture when hanging on my rather dumpily average body. Unlike the girl in the painting, I actually have hips that the skirt must fall over, and a butt too. The presence of those items tends to disrupt the flow of the fabric.
Also. If I was proportioned like that girl, I would have legs that are approximately a foot longer than they are, and distance from my waist to my head would be cut back by that same foot. I already have a very short waist as it is, much to my distress. To make matters worse, if I was proportioned like that girl and I was still my five and half foot tall self, I would have a 17 inch waist. Last time I had a 17 inch waist was when I was in about 4th grade and before I achieved puberty.
Quick, bring me my corset! Oh, never mind.
Don’t they say that if Barbie was a real woman, she wouldn’t be able to stand up?
You know HMH … I bet you’d make a fortune if you designed some clothes for normal, average women. None of this low rise, no hips, tiny boob stuff.
Hmmm… I tried that and didn’t make a fortune, Jenny. Didn’t make anything at all.
I had to measure that lovely young thing, and she is about 8 heads tall. The average real human is 7 to 7.5 heads tall. So she’s way out of whack, notwithstanding the lack of hips, buttocks, etc.
I’ve had the opposite problem with patterns, that they come out way too large. I’m just too impatient to use them normally anyway, but that just seals the deal! (And said impatience is why my stuff doesn’t come out nearly as nice as your things apparently do.)
It isn’t just with drawings, henitsirk. It’s well known that most photos we see of models in magazines, etc have been digitally ’stretched’ to look longer and thinner than they actually are.
A couple of years a go Kate Winslet publicly complained about her cover photo on GQ Magazine, saying that the image they used wasn’t at all what she really looked like.
And that ain’t all! They airbrush away hips and waist, they digitally smooth complexions, they do all sorts of things. I watched a documentary a couple of years ago that showed the actual fashion shoot, the pictures that resulted and the process they go through to produce the actual cover shot.
No wonder Ms. Winslett complained.
As I’ve been learning to knit, I’ve just found a great book that goes into all the reasons not to trust photos/pictures of knitted garments unless models are posed in such a way that they don’t hide things like shoulders, collars, cuffs, etc. So much to learn! I think I’ll leave sewing up to those of you who’ve been doing it since the age of ten.
Emily, I have done both activities, and I find that sewing is actually simpler than knitting, plus there is a lot quicker gratification with it. But if you have never addressed a sewing machine or read a pattern, it can be extremely confusing. Especially since some sewing directions don’t seem to make much sense unless you have read them before.
I admire anyone who can follow any kind of pattern – sewing or knitting – or cooking recipe for that matter. And as for adapting and improving upon them, well I’m just in awe!