Sunday 25 October 2009

Suit Jacket - pattern cutting

As you may have been reading over on my Five Costume Blog, I have been attending a College Course to learn some tailoring skills and improve my work quality.
My plan is to apply these skills to a variety of projects including an Inverness Cape over on my new Three Costume Blog.

I also intend to use the course to help kick-start my Tennant Suit work, which has rather lapsed of late.

The last work I did on the suit jacket was way back in May 2009, when I cracked the Faux Flap Pockets. (see right). That work is still valid, as too is the design I did for the Box-Pleat Breast Pocket I had done earlier (see below).

However, the one thing I was having issues with was the body shape of the jacket itself.

Being self-taught has got me a long way, but doing a fitted jacket was proving to be challenge that was stretching my skill too far. My plan is to gain the knowledge I need form the course to rectify this and crack making fitted jackets!

I discussed this with my tutor, Nicola, and she explained that I needed to first create a ‘block’ for my jacket.
A block is a term used for a non-pattern specific shape used for fitting, from which usable patterns can be easily derived.
She explanied to me the best way to arrive at my block.

Firstly, we need to draw everything in pencil at quarter-scale. From there we make up, again at quarter-scale, a thin cardboard three-dimensional test which checks it all meets up at the seams correctly. Once that is done, I can then work to full size to check sizing and fit. Finally, we can plot the position of the seams for a given jacket style to cut the pattern I need.

Saturday 24 October 2009

The Five Doctors

No, the title of the posting is not a reference to the classic 20th Anniversary special from 1983, but to collectively the Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Tenth Doctors!



Confused?

Well, I have been having a lot of fun recently, slowly expanding the costume pieces I do.
To start with, they all appeared together in the original Tennant Coat or Tennant Suit blogs, but I have since started building separate blogs to cover the costumes of each Doctor, so they are easier to find and digest.

So far I have added a special blog for the Fifth Doctor to cover the Five Trousers and Five Coat I have been working on.
I also added a blog for the Sixth Doctor, to pull out the information about making my Six Trousers.


This past week I have added the Seventh Doctor blog as I have been working on a replica of the Hanky that goes around his hat (see left).

Now I am adding the Third Doctor to the portfolio! This is because I am starting working on making the Inverness Cape he is often seen wearing.
I am doing it as part of the college course I am currently on.


So start checking out my other blogs as I slowly add to them.