Take your fashion design education to the next level in this follow-up to Patternmaking Basics: The Skirt Sloper. With Apparel Arts founder Suzy Furrer, you'll create a moulage, or a precise fabric blueprint of the upper body. Learn to draft both your front and back moulage based on accurate measurements, cut your muslin and assemble it. Then you'll go step-by-step through refining the fit. With your moulage patterns perfectly customized, you'll put them to use as you find out how to make a bodice sloper, complete with wearing ease. Suzy will even discuss design options that can be created from your bodice sloper, and how to transform your woven sloper into a knit sloper.
Patternmaking Basics: The Bodice Sloper
Accelerate your fashion design evolution. Create a moulage and use it to make a custom-fit bodice sloper — the foundation for personalized patternmaking.
Overview
About
Suzy Furrer has decades of experience in the fashion industry. She is the founder and director of Apparel Arts (established 1996) and Apparel Arts Productions (www.ApparelArtsProductions.com). Suzy developed a comprehensive curriculum to give students in-depth training for both professional and personal sewing. She is the author of "Building Patterns, The Architecture of Women’s Clothing."
01: Meet Suzy Furrer
Suzy Furrer shares her patternmaking background and explains the moulage and sloper you'll be making.
4 min
02: Measuring for Moulage
Whether you're designing for yourself, a friend or a client, Suzy shows how to get key measurements without making your model uncomfortable. Measuring a dress form poses its own challenges that you'll learn how to address.
24 min
03: Calculating & Setting Up the Moulage
Using your own measurements or the example Suzy provides, you'll fill out the provided worksheet to plan your moulage. Then draft along with Suzy to create the "bones" of your moulage on pattern paper.
25 min
04: Drafting the Front Moulage
Drafting the moulage may seem complicated, but Suzy shows you how to go from A to B to C and beyond to get precise measurements, darts and shaping laid down on paper.
45 min
05: Drafting the Back Moulage
You'll continue drafting the back of the moulage and truing it up so it will line up with the front. Suzy demonstrates the importance of making a shoulder adjustment for the best fit.
41 min
06: Tracing, Cutting & Sewing
With your moulage laid out, you can now trace it on pattern paper and prepare your muslin. Suzy gives some tracing and cutting tips, adds seam allowance and provides the order of construction for stay-stitching, sewing seams and sewing darts.
29 min
07: Fitting & Troubleshooting
Now that your muslin is sewn up, you can check it on your model or dress form. Suzy points out all the key areas to check and how to adjust them. You'll then transfer those adjustment to your moulage, redrawing and cutting to achieve the exact duplicate of the body you're designing for.
29 min
08: Drafting the Bodice Sloper
It's time to draft your sloper! To the precise measurements you've established in your moulage, you'll add some ease throughout the garment. The sloper you create can be the foundation of countless designs, from blouses to dresses to coats.
26 min
09: Truing the Sloper
Polish your sloper by truing up your lines and darts both front and back, then place the pieces together to ensure a smooth transition between them.
27 min
10: Transferring the Sloper to Tag
Trace your sloper on heavier stock such as oak tag for durability, and transfer all your darts and critical measurements.
20 min
11: Bodice Sloper Design Options
Now you're ready to start designing! Suzy points out the many points in the sloper front and back that can be modified according to your designing desires. But what if you want to work with knits? No problem! With a few simple changes, your sloper can be modified to use with stretchy fabrics, too.
37 min
