professional bad example

so i think that oddly enough, the not also cheapest, but best book to learn about the concept of contouring (a technique you need to make sure that garments with low necklines or armholes don't gape) is bodymapping: the step-by-step guide to fitting real bodies. it's kind of an odd book otherwise, it teaches you how to make a basic torso pattern by draping fabric on your body with the help of another person and draft a matching sleeve, and because i'm a horrible perfectionist and love precision down to half a millimeter, i just don't think that's a good way to make basic patterns. except for dress forms that don't squish and move and constantly change their shape maybe. but the instructions on contouring are honestly really good. only thing i'd change is to make all the extra darts you draw in symmetrical, but that probably doesn't even affect the usability much, it's just nicer to look at.

the other books with these instructions i own are patternmaking for fashion design and pattern cutting and making up: the professional approach, and the latter one in particular is also really good, i learned a bunch of other things from it at a point when i was already able to draft a glove-like basic pattern on a level few people are able to. but you can get a used copy of bodymapping for like $4 plus shipping, so if you're not serious enough about the hobby to want to spend $50+, or simply can't, go for that one

tested the "normal cut" choli pattern i bought from blouse guru and am quite happy. i really can move my arms incredibly freely and the shoulders have made no attempt to fall off my body so far. i won't post any pictures though because i managed to be stupid and cut two identical fronts despite checking multiple times, so now one's wrong side out. doesn't matter for a mockup obviously, but it still looks dumb and not worthy of someone who's had the amount of professional training i've had.

if these patterns are all this good, and yet so affordable (at least by our standards)... man, i really hope the prices make for decent earnings in indian terms. the people behind this site deserve it.

issues: seems like as is, the bust measurement and the bicep are too large. i may just plain have measured incorrectly and picked the wrong size though, or it's because my breasts are unusually small. so, take the whole thing in where needed and see whether that improves the fit. also, i still want to try and modify it using my personal block and see what that looks like. especially the special backwards-pitched sleeve and armscye - i spent what probably adds up to days of my life perfecting these, at a point when i already knew that my time was running out, i want them to see some kind of use...

i generally feel so good about doing stuff that isn't just passively browsing the internet. and even being able to do so in the first place. i'll make the most of what time i have left.

useful note: you can buy highly affordable choli blouse patterns at blouse guru, and that's interesting because cholis have some really interesting stuff going on with sleeves that fit smoothly when the arms are down, yet provide a lot of freedom of movement. and also, the way they achieve a very close fit around the breasts, though that's something i have largely figured out myself at this point. always good to learn more, there's a reason i own literally dozens of pattern drafting books that sometimes resulted in shocking revelations from just a single sentence or two

i picked a normal cut, a princess cut, a double katori cut (i'm not actually sure what precise style that refers to, but it appears to be similar to the way bra cups are cut, even closer fit than you can get with princess seams) and a seperate long sleeve that supposedly fits all of them, all with low front and back necks, for a total of about 7€. (though come to think of it, maybe i should also have picked something with a very high neckline to see how that affects fit and freedom of movement. i was thinking of how the information i might get from these patterns could help with drafting regency bodices, i guess, and the only one i might still get around to reproducing would be low-necked. i do know that going from a properly fitted low neckline to a high one isn't as simple as just raising it, there's further alterations involved to prevent gaping that might end up causing the neckline to choke you if you just move it back up...)

payment accepts paypal, so no problems at all in that respect.

(i wonder if the people who run that business are now really surprised that someone from germany wanted to buy their patterns...)

EDIT: yeah, i was right going from the technical drawings. a katori choli has set-in cups and an underbust band much like some 1930s bras. for further differentiation, on a regular one the cup is cut in one piece and shaped using a dart, on a double katori it's cut in two pieces seperated by a horizontal seam, sometimes with an additional dart in the undercup (so really, in that case it's functionally three pieces). this is all so intrigueing, i've never seen anything quite like it in western pattern cutting

tl;dr the esmod pattern drafting textbooks aren't that good at all, the second one even actually just repeats a lot of the stuff in the first. i'd have expected better considering esmod's reputation. as is, i'm sending them back to amazon. i wish i could just recommend this book to everyone who wants to draft patterns, it's seriously great and i say so even though i don't personally like müller und sohn-style basic drafts, but it only exists in german

hm, okay, now i've got pretty much the most fitted one-piece sleeve pattern possible. it's not comfortable to bend my arm all the way, but i can do it, and as i've said before, i don't actually expect a long fitted sleeve with a high cap to be super comfortable at all times. i don't think i should actually use it as is, though - it takes the concept of the front edge being shorter than the back and needing to be stretched to fit to an extreme, the difference is a whopping 3.5 cm, and the resulting shape would look a bit odd on modern clothes. but i could use it to derive two-piece sleeves (especially historic ones) and a less fitted form of one-piece sleeve. i would probably just have to rotate some of the currently huge elbow dart into the front edge and leave it unsewn. how much? i guess i'll have to refer to my many books to decide that

so the problem with my fitted sleeve is not actually the elbow width, it's still just my fat upper arms. specifically, the fact there's a big hanging flab of fat that keeps the bicep the same width most of the way down instead of a nice taper towards the elbow. i would need to either increase the bicep so there's also more width at the height where it's needed (though that would also mean even more cap ease) or draw a really weird seam shape. and if i did increase the bicep, i could minimise the fallout by also increasing the elbow (and the wrist to preserve the proportions)

now i've got a set-in sleeve that fits perfectly smoothly when the arm is extended, but won't let you bend your arm much past 90°. i expected the draft to fit exactly like that though, and got it right on the first try. i feel like i've just leveled up or something. and as i said - this sleeve cap also won't let you lift your arm much past shoulder level. in my opinion, drafting patterns that fit perfectly smoothly without much freedom of movement and then deriving the looser, less constraining variants is easier than trying to do it the other way round

more notes on long fitted sleeve drafting:

- EN 13402 offers the only instructions for measuring the length of a bent arm that have ever made sense to me: from the shoulder point over the elbow to the wrist bone, with the arm bent 90° and the fist clenched and placed on the hip. they even specify that you should measure the right arm! (presumably because most people are right-handed and muscle development might mean that that the measurements of their right arm are slightly larger. maybe it would've been better to specify the dominant arm.) turns out that the sleeve cap plus the back arm length need to be precisely this length to produce a fitted sleeve that lets you bend your elbow. there is probably some way to calculate it too. i like proportional measurements.

- the elbow of a fitted sleeve probably needs to be measured around the bent arm. it would make sense, but i'll make one more mockup with the increased length and unchanged elbow just to be sure. this makes it 2-3 cm larger than around the extended arm.

- modern instructions for fitted sleeve drafts all have ridiculously tiny elbow darts. it's as if the author knew that in theory they're supposed to have darts, but had personally only ever worn fitted sleeves made of elastic materials and which meant they didn't actually understand their purpose, so they just put in this pointless little wedge of a dart as a bare concession to the concept. on my various sleeve drafts the legs of the elbow dart have been as much as 6.5 cm apart, never less than 4 cm...

... okay after some experimenting i don't think i need the extra elbow width. which is good because it means i end up with a smaller elbow dart. bending my arm more than 90° caused the sleeve hem to ride up and isn't all that comfortable, but raising my arm further than shoulder level also causes the hem to ride up and isn't all hat comfortable, and that's fine by me because it's simply not what fitted sleeves are for. they're supposed to look nice when you just stand there and do nothing, or maybe do light desk work or stuff, clothing that fits this way was literally invented to show that you did not need to do physical labour. if i wanted/needed a larger range of motion, i would draft a sleeve with a flatter cap, more ease and a straighter sleeve body. plus honestly: how many activities even require you to bend your arm more than 90°? bicep curls, i guess (which you sure wouldn't wear fitted, woven clothing for)?

i just have some tinkering left to do with the elbow level. you'd think it would be exactly halfway between bicep and wrist, but nope! there's so many things we take for granted about the shape of our bodies because they just seem to make sense, but it's not true. bend your arm as far as possible and you'll find that the wrist does not line up with the bicep level. will have to see what to do about that.

got it. cut the centre front piece of the stays on the true bias and all other pieces on the straight grain, and in combination with a pattern a little smaller than your natural measurements, you get a nice smooth fit. no boning except the pieces next to the lacing edges. the full bust is slightly larger because it's hoisted higher on the ribcage where the back is wider, the underbust is larger because you don't get the sharp break at the underbust level that you get with modern undergarments or later regency stays (so part of the breast tissue is mushed into the underbust) the waist is unchanged. no need to muck about with weird nonstandard grainlines, though i can see why bernhardt did it (partial bias has almost the same properties as true bias but uses less fabric, i believe it was used in 18th century bodices too). i've never worked with the true bias before, but it's my new best friend. and the way it fits isn't anything like what you'd expect from historic support garments, either! honestly it actually feels less restrictive than a modern longline bra!

now i just need to decide whether i really want a centre back lacing. it would look much nicer, but while i was able to lace myself into long regency stays at one point, it is really annoying to do. i also found that laced-on straps are actually functional, but that the reason they're functional means i should possibly plan a gap between the end of the strap and the top edge of the centre front - they've stretched out by more than a centimetre. maybe it's because the mockup fabric is thin and also wasn't prewashed, but i'm still wary...

played with the bernhardt stays pattern F a bit and found that the proportions are actually very similar to what i've drafted - except the lacing gap is really nonsensically big. like, i had to add 5 cm to the centre back piece to get a 5 cm lacing gap, meaning that the original gap would've been 15 cm (meanwhile the width of the centre front piece and the location of the armscyes were very close, so i don't think the whole pattern is just too small for me)... also it would be kind of weird if the straps were really meant to angle as far towards the centre back as they do on the stays that blog's author made. but if you wore stays that were actually too large for you, but had a huge lacing gap so you were still able to lace them, it would absolutely make sense for the straps to end up angled like that. and some regency stays do have huge lacing gaps, so that's my theory.

anyway i also found that the side front piece's grain line follows what would be the side seam on a modern bodice, then the seam lines of the other pattern pieces are lined up with the side front's and their grainlines drawn parallel to the side front one. i just don't think i can get myself to make stays where the centre front and back are not on the straight grain though, and as regency stays show, it can't be strictly necessary for a good fit with minimal boning either.