I made up my first pants sloper over the weekend and took it in to my instructor yesterday. I don’t have photos of it on me, because I left my camera at home yesterday.
Here were the three problems:
1. The grain lines were bending inward above the thigh from about the hip to the waist
2. Small whiskers at the crotch
3. Swayback and short/ dipping at center back
- * Gotta love good old fashioned ‘Paint’. For the most part, red shows new lines (except for the new grainline which I made blue for some reason)
Remedies
1. Redraw the grainline. She marked the straight/ creaseline/ grain on me while I was wearing them. Now, I’m not sure this is correct! In the front it was off about half an inch, the back a full inch (2.5 cm). I talked to Marji after class and we’re both curious about how this is going to work out. It just seems too easy! Generally, the pants fit well. But, it seems to me that the grainline never changes and I should be altering the pants to get the line to fall correctly. But. I’m willing to see!
2. Added 1/2 inch to the bottom of the crotch line while shortening the crotch 1/2 inch.
3. Took in 1/2 inch for swayback and raised the back by 3/4 inch — tapering to nothing at the sides. I also copied the same 1/2 inch crotch shortening exercise from the front.
Hopefully I can make these up tonight for tomorrow’s class. The pattern is due!
BTW, does anyone know how to *draw* on photos with a Mac?
Miss Celie's Pants 
if you figure out how to draw on the photos would you please? I am curious about the adjustments. I have the same fitting issues and this could help. thanks.
You could get a Wacom tablet… that is the FUN way to draw on your pics, hehe. Or you could get a free software like GIMP.
You can use photoshop elements to draw on photos by using the pencil tool. This is a very powerful application and is only $99 if you don’t have it.
Try uploading your photos to Picnik.com. It’s free and there are many Photoshop-like tools.
Whiskers at the crotch? Oh my, that sounds like a difficult fitting problem :-).
Seriously, where is the haircut picture?? I’ve recently broken up with my hairdresser, for cause, so I’m particularly curious to see how other people fare. I know you have the same idea than I do though: if your glasses are weird enough nobody can see your hair..
I don’t understand a word of what you said but it sounds very fancy! I am curious to see how the grain change works out; it’s an interesting solution.
I’ll be interested to see the pants AND the haircut. I love your hair, so looking forward to the “shape up”.
You can’t draw on photos with Picnik unless you pay for it. I think. More accurately, I couldn’t figure out how to draw on a photo with picnik. if you figure it out, clue a gal in, OK?
Good luck with your pants. It’s not an easy thing to draft or fit. Why is that?
Hope your haircut turns out to your liking. It’s always scary. Oh by the way, “only your hairdresser knows, for sure” !!
Wow, this sounds very daunting. I’d never thought that seriously about taking a sewing class until I started reading these posts. Now I feel like I don’t know anything about sewing apparel! But I guess I shouldn’t feel that bad either when a lot of my projects don’t turn out well. Apparently there’s a whole lot of stuff I don’t know.
p.s. hope your haircut goes well. I just got a haircut after not having gotten one in almost two years. (yup, that’s how traumatic my last one was!) fortunately, this one went well so I’m sending good vibes your way.
Huh, yeah that shifting the grainline thing sounds funny to me too. I would never have considered suggesting it to any of my students.
I will be looking *very* forward to how that turns out. It would be awesome if it really WAS that easy!!
Totally unrelated, but I had to comment that Pottery Barn is offering the Single Girl Quilt for sale: http://www.potterybarn.com/products/p12669/index.cfm?pkey=call-quilts-coverlets-shams&cm_src=hero. Maybe you already know that. But, I thought of you when I saw it.
What a pleasant surprise, enough to take me out of lurkdom. I have not looked at the blog for awhile so please forgive my lateness on the news but what a nice present. But what makes it more interesting is that I plan on taking this exact same class next fall along with fash 100 or 200. I was so hoping they offered it during the summer. Now I have so many questions I want to ask you but I’m not even going to go there on a blog comment. I was just at the school a couple of weeks ago trying to get more info on the program but was not able to get to anyone. I’m hoping to do the full FD degree but will be able if just do enough for the Patternmaking cert. Hope you do well in the class, I have taken other classes at BCCC and know what the people can be like and I think your doing the right thing.
One of the coolest little free (well, it’s in “beta,” but it’s been there for a LONG time) apps for the Mac is called Skitch. It takes screen shots, then gives you a palette of stuff you can do with the image: Resize, crop, rotate, post to a server, save to History, and DRAW on it: freehand, ovals, rectangles, lines, arrows, text, fills, adjustable colors and line widths. When you’re done, drag it off as jpeg, pdf, tiff… It’s a must-have!
http://plasq.com/skitch
Jing is similar, for Windows, too, and does video as well as stills. But Skitch captured my heart and I haven’t cheated yet.
http://www.jingproject.com/