patterndrafting – Stitch Sessions

May 1, 2023May 1, 2023

Drafting a Tiered Circle Skirt – With Styles InSeams’ Calculator

Nell, a Caucasian person, stands in front of a blue couch. They are wearing a white peasant blouse and a pink tiered circle skirt printed with small flowers. They have lifted one edge of the hem and let it drop, and it has been photographed mid-air.

Hello friends! Having now completed one skirt pattern with the pinafore I shared in the last post, I could see how pattern drafting could become addictive. I wasn’t satisfied with how the last skirt turned out and the itch to perfect the pattern and test something new had set in with a vengeance. However, I wasn’t drawn to making a pleated skirt since I found one I adore at an Op-Shop and tailored it. I also don’t tend to gravitate towards gathered skirts. These don’t feel either comfortable or flattering on me. So it was with some delight that I discovered the amazing Styles InSeams had come up with the perfect solution in designing a circle skirt that wasn’t gathered at the waist, but which had gathered tiers below it for volume and flare. Not only had they come up with this wonderful design, but they also created a calculator to make it simple for others to follow along! Content warning: this post includes mentions of weight fluctuations.

April 1, 2023

Drafting a Pinafore (Circle) Skirt

Nell, a Caucasian person, stands in front of a white wall. They are tucking a strand of hair behind their ear. They are wearing a dark blue blouse and a grey and blue plaid pinafore skirt.

What do you think about when I say pattern drafting? Some rather clever people out there start sewing without ever using commercial patterns and instead make their own! Others like me might spend quite a while using commercial patterns before moving onto drafting. However, I think we can all agree that being able to draft patterns is a very valuable skill, and one well worth spending the time and effort to learn. It can help you with fitting and sewing commercial patterns too. Imagine being able to replace missing pieces, or having a basic blueprint of yourself that you can compare any new pattern against before you even sew it!

September 15, 2020January 26, 2023

Sewing Trousers with New Look 6718

Nell, a Caucasian person, stands in front of a wooden bench and concrete wall. They are wearing a black button-up shirt and highwaisted grey wool trousers. They have one hand on their hip.

One thing I love about sewing, among the plethora of things I love, is that it is a constant process of learning new skills and refining old ones. New materials pose all kinds of challenges, from learning to handle slippery fabrics, to testing thread tension, stitches – and learning to go back and forth between machines. Although New Look 6718 is hardly my first trousers pattern, it feels as though this was the beginning of quite a lot of adventures in learning and developing new techniques and revealing weaknesses in my current sewing practices. For one thing I worked on a range of tasks between the first of this make, and the second, and I feel I came so far between them that they were an excellent snapshot of my skills at each point in time.

May 17, 2020January 26, 2023

Butterick 9779, Shorts and Pattern Hacking

Nell, a Caucasian person, stands in front of a wooden bench and concrete wall. They have their fists raised and one leg kicked back - mid dance-move. They are wearing a white and brown striped shirt and highwaisted, green corduroy shorts.

If someone had tried to tell me this time last year that I would not only be making shorts that fit perfectly, and from a vintage pattern; but that I would also be pattern hacking to make pants and overalls! Well, I don’t think I would have believed them. But despite that I have now completed some of my most successful makes to date, and it all begins with my purchase of the circa 1960s pattern, Butterick 9779. It was a somewhat risky purchase for me, being a little bit pricer and coming from an overseas seller – my last experience of which had been truly terrible. However, I worried over nothing! The seller was lovely, the pattern arrived in a brilliant condition – albeit with a slightly wonky waistband from people accidentally trimming bits off. Over the course of one virtual craft evening with a friend I very gently ironed out the pattern pieces for the medium size and got to tracing and copying the markings into more modern versions.

March 9, 2020January 25, 2023

Pattern Drafting – Peasant Blouse

Nell, a Caucasian person, sits on a wooden bench in front of a concrete wall. They are wearing a floral peasant blouse and black highwaisted pants.

As much as I love living Australia, being so far from some of the largest viable sources of secondhand fabric and patterns does mean learning to sew can get very expensive. For a lot of people I often hear that it’s prohibitively expensive, especially as very few stores allow payment plans for purchasing machines and tools. So it seemed natural to me that at some point I would need to learn how to do some pattern drafting in order to make the things that I couldn’t find a pattern for. And what better place to start than with my Holy Grail vintage item, the classic peasant blouse.