Patternmaking For A Perfect Fit: Using The Rub-... Official

She stood before her full-length mirror and slipped the muslin over her shoulders. She held her breath and looked.

Clara laid a large sheet of pattern paper over her corkboard, and then laid the front panel of the jacket over the paper. Smoothing the fabric carefully to ensure the grainline was perfectly straight, she began the "rubbing" process. Patternmaking for a Perfect Fit: Using the Rub-...

With her fresh paper pattern cut out, Clara was ready for the ultimate test: the muslin toile. She cut the pattern pieces out of cheap unbleached cotton and basted them together on her sewing machine. She stood before her full-length mirror and slipped

The art of dressmaking often feels like a conversation between the fabric and the form, but for Clara, that conversation had become a series of frustrating arguments. Her latest project—a vintage-inspired Dior-style jacket—was a masterpiece on the hanger, but on her own body, the shoulders pulled, the bust gaped, and the waist sat an inch too high. Clara was an expert at following commercial patterns, but she was realizing that her body did not fit the industry standard. Smoothing the fabric carefully to ensure the grainline

Once the perimeter of the front panel was pinned out, she took her tracing wheel. She firmly rolled the spiked wheel along the chalked-out seam lines. As the spikes pressed through the denim and the paper, they left a perfect, dotted trail on the paper beneath.