Trial and Error

It's been nearly a month since my last post and the reason is because I've been so busy. Work and family consumes nearly all my time and I struggle to keep up. So just as predicted the sewing has been placed on the backburner. Honestly, I don't know when I'll find the time to pick things back up where I left off. I'm still determined and I haven't given up b/c in the back of my mind I'm still searching various avenues.

Recently, I made a connection with a pattern maker b/c I feel I'm not learning the drafting techniques at a fast enough pace. We'll be meeting together here hopefully this week. Another avenue I'm attempting is draping. While watching a Project Runway repeat over the weekend I noticed the contestants using some sort of thin styling tape on their dressforms. I've been wondering for a year or so what it was but my internet searches always yeilded results on how to make a dress form using duct tape. Smh....Well today I decided to dig deeper with the search and found out the name -- graphing tape/crepe art tape. I found out where to purchase this very inexpensive product as well.

I was so excited after I purchased it today that I wanted to play with it. Well, I first had to repair my dress form. My 5 year old named her Chi-Chi and somehow broke it. My husband couldn't repair it, so I prayed and it was answered!! Hallejujah it's now Fixed! Chi-Chi is off limits to my daughter, lol! First I studied my sketch and then placed the tape. Things started to get a little confusing b/c I had to guess at how to tape the back of the dress form since I rarely sketch the back view of a garment. Maybe that'll be something I'll have to start dong. Here's the result of my taping:

I'm still not certain on how I'll go about constructing the sleeves. My intent was for them to be Kimono type sleeves, but the way I placed the tape made them more like set in sleeves. I absolutely cannot wait until I cut it out on muslin and attempt to construct it and sew. The next challenge will be grading the pieces if all goes well because my dressform is a size 8 and I will need to increase it quite a few sizes for my fit. We'll see how goes!! I think I'll see where this will be very helpful but will not exclude drafting altogether.