"Il fait triste aujourd'hui."

When we speak about the weather in french, we speak about sadness, & beauty. When it rains really hard we say "it's raining cords" and yes, it's that today.
It's a perfect day to post the first step of the showstudio http://www.showstudio.com/ pattern project.

I found the pattern project resource in this book and I love this photo. It was what drew me in. There is something so exciting for me about a mannequin with the ribbons draped in a design of some sort, or to delineate the quadrants of fitting structure we use when draping toile. This photo is the cover of the french version of "Fashion Design" by Sue Jenkyns Jones, that I spoke about two posts ago. "Form Shape Possibility"





This second photo is so very beautiful. The ribbons design a bustier, perhaps a wedding gown.
It is really important to note that the shape of the mannequin is how the garment will be shaped when the garment is made. The distance between the bust and waist is longer that normal, and really curved in at the waist which is where the support comes from, and the bust is a balcony form. This is how your body will look in this garment when the garment is finished. If you have ever had a true french "balconette" bra , you know exactly what I mean. I have one and I am always amazed at how great it makes me look. A friend of mine tried it on & she's much smaller in size than I. She swore it took skin from every part of her torso and placed it elegantly in the cups.

Showstudio pattern project, Yamamoto mystery garment!

The Showstudio website set up a sort of garment construction challenge for internauts to participate in. The participants were asked to submit photos of the garment they made from the pattern download, and they would be posted on the site. This challenge was created on their site a couple of years ago. I chose the Yoji Yamamoto, as he is one of my all time heroes.
They announced that it was a mystery garment as there was no photo of the finished garment to view in the beginning. A true challenge for everyone. There are 2 main pattern pieces, but in the form of tons of letter sized sheets of paper to connect.


NB To start, I'd like to say that this is an industrial pattern. There aren't drawings for construction techniques, and there are only minimal indications for how much seam allowance, topstitching, snap placement, and hem depth. I will show you by my process how I figured this out to the best of my ability.

After printing here is how I assessed and began the project:


This photo is a general scheme of one of the two pattern pieces with clear but minimal construction directions printed where necessary.










This is the second general scheme again with minimal directions printed where necessary.









These two above sheets show the two finished pattern pieces used to cut the garment.


These pieces which are laid out end to end comprise the first part of the second pattern piece as printed from my home printer and the first step in connecting the pieces from that downloaded pattern.






I had to do this on my kitchen floor as it's the longest portion of flat space I have in my very charming, very tiny Paris apartment.

This is a close up of a few of the pieces. It's clear where one must connect them by the little crosses at each corner. I folded the top edge of each piece and overlaid them one by one. I then used a very long pattern makers ruler, or yardstick if that's what you have. I laid that along the straight edge opposite of the curvy lines. The straight edge is where other pattern pieces must be attached, so this line must be clean and perfectly straight. This particular step and the following few will be next weeks' post.

Click on any of the photos to get a full screen view. If you can do that you will also see that I'm still working on the teeny weeny details of the kitchen redo, i.e. baseboards!

This project is a commitment and will take perhaps several weeks. I'm excited about it and hope you are too.

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ALSO, check out my links. They are all such great sites with so much to offer. It's a joy to share them with you all.

See you next week!