ContemporaryFashionEducation: 23 – DRAFTING ACCURATELY

Drafting accurately is extremely important. Patterns drafted for manufacturing should be accurate to 1/32 of an inch. This accuracy also enables someone sewing at home to produce professional clothing. Drafting on the computer ensures accuracy to an even higher fraction. When drafting hands-on it is important to check one’s work, measure, and make sure that straight and cross-grain lines are parallel and at right-angles.

In this post Shira is drafting a pant sloper. A sloper is a basic pattern from which other patterns are drafted. Once Shira has a pant sloper she will be able to draft many pant styles from her sloper without worrying about fit.

As Shira drafts she is referring to the instructions in the Second Edition of Drafting & Fitting Pants and Skirts, the book I am currently editing and that I plan to put back on the market this fall.

Shira is tracing the underlying lengthwise grain line on the yellow tracing paper on which she is drafting her pant sloper. She is using a 4-foot metal straight edge, available at hardware stores.

Shira first marked a lengthwise grain line down the center of the underlying grid paper. She then taped her front and back skirt sloper to the grid paper. She make sure that her skirt sloper’s side seam laid precisely over the lengthwise grain line before she laid the yellow tracing paper over her work.

Shira now adjusts the 4-foot metal straight edge before drafting the hip cross-grain line. She is checking that the hip cross-grain line will be drafted at a perfect right-angle to the lengthwise straight grain line.

Next she marks the hip, crotch, knee and ankle cross-grain lines. She is drafting all of these cross-grain lines to her measurements, taken before the drafting began.

Shira checks that her cross-grain lines are squared (at right-angles) to the straight grain line by laying an L-square against the 4-foot straight edge.