A couple of pattern paper options

In Germany, it seemed easy to get rolls of fairly inexpensive paper meant for tracing patterns, probably because it's more usual to trace patterns out of magazines in Europe. That paper is close to tissue-weight, but shiny, and it can be folded up easily and compactly. I didn't bring a substantial amount back with me — I pretty much ran out and didn't buy more before the move. It'd be nice if it were available here, but I don't think it is. The one downside I remember was that it was easy to tear it by erasing, if you weren't careful.

I know there's a wide variety of things people use for tracing and making patterns. The following are just types I found easily. I'm sure there are cheaper options if you're willing to order online, go to a hardware store, use something narrower, etc.

Newsprint can be found in large, wide rolls and is relatively inexpensive compared to other art-supply papers in similar widths. That's the main reason I bought this. It isn't transparent, of course, so it isn't great for tracing, but it's useful for big pattern pieces. It's a substantial weight and doesn't fold all that nicely, but what're you gonna do?

This paper works well for tracing. I've used both the white and the canary versions in the past. It's heavier and feels crunchier than the European pattern tracing paper. You can erase pretty carelessly with no problem. I bought the 24" width; that's already relatively expensive and the wider it gets, the pricier it is. I think half of your widest body circumference plus a few extra inches (for ease and seam allowance) is a good minimum width. That way you stand some chance of making complete pattern pieces without taping.

You can also find rolls of gridded drafting vellum, which can be really nice for drafting patterns from scratch, but that's a whole other price point. Incidentally, I did see alpha dot pattern paper for sale at Fabricana, but by that time I already had these two rolls and didn't feel the need for more.

Gala Fabrics

I checked out the Gala Fabrics Vancouver location today.

In size, it reminds me of an average Philly or New York non-chain fabric store: not extremely wide side-to-side, but it goes back a ways. Unlike some of those stores, it's very well organized, well-stocked but not overfull, and all of the fabrics are labeled with content, width, price, and sometimes origin. The salesmen were nice and helpful.

They have a lot of what looks to be very nice suitings and formalwear fabrics. I didn't focus so much on those today — it was just too hot for me to think about silks or wools — but I noticed Italian suitings, lovely Chinese brocades, different silk types, and many fancy laces and metallics. Over toward the other side, where I paid the most attention, they had quilting cottons and batiks, denim, cotton voile and shirtings, solid and cross-dyed linen and blends, some knits, a little bit of hemp, and some rayon-like fabrics, including Tencel, bamboo, and cotton/rayon blends.

There is a wide range of prices, from the sale tables and remnants up to the really high-end fabrics. This is not a bargain-basement type of store, but I doubt that could work given the location. I think the prices are quite fair given the service, the labeling and organization, and the quality and sources of the fabrics. There are also enough notions that it should be possible to rely on this store to be able to complete a wide variety of projects. I'm glad it's there and I plan on returning.

Copying a T-shirt

No doubt there's all sorts of advice on copying RTW out there. You can do a much more precise job of it if you want, and this can be well worth it for a very detailed garment. I'm copying a simple T-shirt, though, and I think a quick method can be good enough. (This post probably doesn't give enough detail for someone with little or no patternmaking experience; in that case I think it might be better to start with a less quick-and-dirty method anyway, so you can be more confident you've got an accurate copy. YMMV.)

First, you need some sort of paper. I'm using a roll of newsprint, but if you don't have a lightbox, you might want tracing paper instead. This is helpful for making the pattern symmetric later on.

Second, you want a hard, flat surface (ideally a cutting mat) that can stand being poked.

I rolled out my paper, then put my T-shirt on top, trying to get the torso as smooth and flat as possible, without being stretched.

This top turned out to be even simpler than I thought: the front and back were probably meant to be identical, except at the neckline.  So I tried to get the folds to be along the shoulder and side seams, and lined up the hems as best I could.

Next to the seam gauge, there's a needlepoint tracing wheel on there — very useful for tracing seams through to the paper underneath. You can use pinpricks instead, although it takes a lot longer. I don't like regular tracing wheels and tracing paper for this; they move the fabric.

The top was fairly skewed, so I couldn't line up the armscye seams all that well, and the back hemline was a bit shorter than the front (this can be done for a full bust, but I'm not sure it was intentional here). This happens in knitwear. Even woven RTW isn't perfect, but I think in knits it's worse. It could be a combination of inaccurate cutting, skewed fabric (if you knit, you can even get this in hand knits if the yarn twist is wonky), and any sort of asymmetric stretching that happened as the garment was worn. Just do the best you can.

If it won't stay put for whatever reason, you can put weights on, but I find cotton knits on matte paper don't cause much trouble. I free-handed around the side and shoulder seams, 3/8" from the folded edge, and around the hem, 3/4" away. Then I used the needlepoint tracing wheel to do the same with the armscye seams, feeling through the fabric to get the back armscye seams as well. The same thing was done with the front neckline.

(This photo was seriously washed out; I've tried to adjust it to make something, anything, visible. Sleeves are up top.)

The sleeves were done separately, but in a similar manner. These ones happened to be symmetric, fitting the symmetric armholes. I ordinarily consider this a no-no, but this top does seem to fit pretty well, so I'll give it a pass. Makes it easier to copy, anyway. There, I made sure the hems were lined up and the underarm seams on the fold, then did the same thing — freehand around the folded edges and hems, and traced the armscye seam with the tracing wheel. You may notice that with the sleeve flattened out, the armscye is a little longer than it was when the torso was flattened out. This is fine, as long as nothing's seriously stretched; it means there's a little bit of ease in the sleeve cap (which is a whole other debate I won't get into now). It's a good idea to trace both, so that you can average out any discrepancies.

By folding the torso piece in half, you can find out how asymmetric your pattern is. This one will line up OK along the side seam, and close along the shoulder seams, but one shoulder is noticeably wider than the other. The armholes were way off compared to everything else. The same comparison can be made by trying to match the right and left sleeve tracings.

After that, you basically want to trace this off, interpolating as best you can, to get a symmetric pattern. A lightbox or tracing paper will help here.

So here's the pattern.

I will have to copy off a front or back, and I'm going to recheck the shape of the armhole — the sleeve cap looks like it might be just a bit too long for the armscye, which might not be concave enough. But overall, the pattern looks more or less as I would have expected.

For knits, it's also a very good idea to measure the stretch percentage of the original fabric (how far a crosswise fold will stretch — say, from 4" to 5" is 125%, or 25% stretch. The pattern will fit similarly if you use a similar fabric, but could end up seeming quite a bit smaller or larger otherwise. Noting down the fiber content helps too, since different fibers have different recovery.

New Look 6387 done

... well, except for a final press, especially around the neckline.


My general thoughts on this pattern:

• The neckline looks wider, and the collar narrower, than I would have expected from the flats. (Other differences — shallower armholes, piping, more hip ease, more length, and an extra button — are my changes.) I think the narrower collar would maintain a good scale for view A, since there's the ruffle added to it. I don't know how much all of this has to do with New Look's grading, and how the proportions would look in, say, the smallest size (this is a middle size).
• The way I did this, there was an awful lot of hand work. You can do a lot less if you're fine with topstitching down centers front and around the neckline, armholes, and hem.
• For beginners, the instructions would make this harder than it needs to be. No, the tie ends are NOT made identically to the button loops — you have to finish the ends! Purchased bias tape will look pretty bad on some fabrics, and, uh... I think there was some other questionable thing about them that I can't recall at this point. I'll try to think of it if I get around to reviewing this.
• The tie ends are long enough that they'll go around the front, if you like that sort of thing.
• Worth hunting down? Maybe, if New Look normally fits you well. It seems like there aren't so many fitted, woven blouse patterns these days, so I'm happy I still have some of these old ones.

Short-term plans

I've finally got a little time to work on the New Look shirt, and that's slowly coming to a close. I just need to finish hemming it (a slow process; I don't like any of my thread colors against the print enough to topstitch, so it's blind slipstitching all the way), unless I decide the closure moves around too much and needs a snap at the neckline.

Next up, I think, will be a few T-shirts which I'll try copying from a touristy but well-fitting RTW one I have. They won't be anything fancy, since they should play well with as much of my other stuff as they possibly can. So it may happen that I'll sew along with one or the other Patternreview contest this month, but I probably won't make anything that'd look impressive enough to be worth entering.

Fabricana

I took advantage of the BC Day free transit and went over to Fabricana the other day. Here's what I thought of it:

• It's a decent size, certainly larger than what was in my small city in Germany, though not as big as G Street Fabrics or the largest multi-story shops in Paris (hey, much bigger city.)
• Prices seemed pretty normal for Canada, not that I've recently had much to compare them to. (And I'm talking about the marked-down prices; most bolts had an "original" price and a slightly lower one.)
• There are a lot of notions, trims, buttons, tools, etc. The buttons are the carded kind, meaning they are maybe somewhat less high-end-looking than the sort that vendors usually display in plastic tubes, but still good quality, and a lot more reasonably priced. (Let's face it, one hallmark of the homemade is using high-end materials, by which I mean most things that are nicer than plastic, on anything but denim or very expensive fabrics. Not that that's something we're forced to care about, of course.)
• There are big eveningwear and home dec sections, which I pretty much ignored this time. There's a good-sized quilting section as well; I don't really quilt, and I try not to use those cottons for apparel, but I might make an exception for the batiks. I glanced at the flannelette, but it all looked like very obvious children's prints. I also noticed fake fur, rainwear, some activewear (not sure if any of it was wicking), sweatshirting and fleece, random prints on sale, etc.
• Things I liked: chambray and slubby cottons, which are unassuming and therefore could be the best wardrobe builders; rayon batiks, which are very pretty as prints and about the closest thing to rayon challis I can usually find these days; and linen knits, which I sort of regret not buying any of, though they were relatively expensive and in few colors. They also had a fair amount of denim, lots of wool suitings, some meltons and other coatings, and lots of bamboo knits. I didn't notice a whole lot of silk, but that's probably because I didn't have the time or inclination to look at the eveningwear area. I don't remember seeing all that much linen either, aside from the one small stand of knits.
• They have the major American pattern brands, Burda (I think) and a few Canadian ones (Jalie, Sewaholic, and Favorite Things, at least, if not others I missed). I suspect they might stop selling Simplicity and New Look, since they'd pulled out all those drawers and put a deep discount on them; from what I'd heard Fabricland/ville had announced they'd stop selling them too, quite a while ago.

I think it's a pretty nice store overall, but given the distance, I'm probably not going to go there that often unless I somehow really need something I can't find in the city. I might feel otherwise if I didn't have such a fabric stash already.

Stats for May-July

I haven't done much sewing during this time, but my stash has changed a lot.

• I acquired four pieces of silk and one of acetate (some from friends, thanks!) which amounted to 14.08 yards.
• I gave away a net 31 pieces/72.3 yards of fabric before the move, which presumably means a total of 36 pieces at 86.38 yards.
• In the past month, I cut one project, New Look 6387, using 1.11 yards. This is not far from done, but I do have to finish the hem, and decide on and finish the front closure.

Notes to self:

• I now have access to a dryer, so I feel like I can go wild get more washable but slow-drying spring and fall fabrics.
• I need to recheck what my stash reduction goals were, but it's less than half what I had since I started keeping a database. 
• I'm behind on my planned project rate. Part of the problem was that my stash was inaccessible for a month and a half. Not to mention it isn't realistic to get a lot of other things done around a move.
• Although I kind of wish I had more linens and cottons, the proportion of those in stash actually decreased. A lot of what I had was in colors I no longer prefer, so that's why. I'd also acquired some more silks and wools in good colors, because those were readily available where I was, but I'd really like to find some more rayon wovens and linen prints, among other things.

So that's out of the way. I hope I get more done this month.