City and Guilds Fashion Level 1 – Week 9 & 10

This blog post is horrendously overdue…

During week 9 and 10 of our course, we worked on our patterns, toiles and adjustments.  You can see most of what I was doing by reading my post on how to make your own pattern for an A-line skirt.  Once I’d got my pattern right, that was when I had to start thinking about my design and how I would actually do it.  Remember this?

The inspiration for my final design

Originally, I had planned to appliqué the nautical stars onto the red and navy square patches, and then sew these on top of the main skirt fabric.  However, I want to make the skirt using a light cotton, and I began to think that it might all get a little heavy around the bottom of the skirt with all these layers.  The other problem I could envisage was that due to the curve of the hem, my ‘square’ patches could not remain square, because if they did they wouldn’t match up.

To solve both problems, I decided to incorporate the ‘squares’ into the skirt pattern, sewing them in rather than on.  I divided up my pattern pieces as shown below, with two and half ‘squares’ on each, so that my finished garment will have five squares at the front and back.

'Squares'...but they're not actually squares. They're trapeziums!

I now need to cut out the pattern pieces and add the seam allowance on.  Ultimately this will mean a lot of seam sewing, but the result should be a flatter, neater, lighter finish (I hope!).

We’ve broken up for Christmas now, so there’ll be no more about my course until January.  I hope our readers have found the course information helpful and interesting so far!