Hey everyone welcome back to my channel with Wendy in this video
I'm going to be going through something that is going to help make it a lot easier for you to kickstart a sewing
Project and that is to make some patterns out of your capsule
wardrobe and if you pick the right pieces to make these patterns out of these patterns basically become your building blocks of
Guaranteed fit whenever you're starting a brand new sewing project if you've been around here for a long time
You know that my sewing tutorials typically don't involve patterns
but just
tracing items that you already own but there's lots of times where
You don't have something that is the exact same fit as the thing that you're aiming for and so I want to walk through how
To do the building block that can get you to whatever fit you're interested in
I do have a previous video where I show you how to clone your clothes as in how to
Fold and lay flat your clothing and trace around it to make a pattern that can make more of that same item
So I'm not going to go too much into that exact technique
But instead I'm going to talk through which items in your closet are going to be the ones most effective for building this capsule
pattern collection at the end
I'll show a few examples how I've used these kinds of techniques to make lots of my sewing tutorials that are on this channel
So I'll see you at the end
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Dress shirt is a good template because when it's fitted it gives you the minimum
Size so you can make a lot of tops from that just by changing the sleeve length or by making things wider for some Flair
Pretty much as long as you don't disturb the neck hole and the shoulder area too much
it will all fit nicely at those key points and the other important thing to look for in a dress shirt is that it's not
Stretch material since that will be misleading to copy a stretch material onto a non-stretch material
One trick I use to not let my pattern cheese get lost is that I always have the front and the back
Attached to each other along the center
So I folded my paper in half folded my dress shirt in half and used some clips to hold it in place
And then I traced the front first again
I will link the video where I go through this process and a little bit more detail
But the goal is to get the material as flat as possible
Without straining the fabric so that you can accurately mark all its edges and seams on the paper
The sleeves are a bit tricky, but think of it as trying to draw a shape
That would be like as if you cut the sleeve open to lay it flat
so I'll do one side of the sleeve flip it over to the other side at the sleeve and then once I'm happy with the
Markings, I connect them all with a black marker. So it's nice and clear now for tops that aren't as fitted at the shoulders
I like to model those off of loose sweaters. We're going to grab two sweaters into one pattern set
So for this first one, I'm gonna do the Raglan style of Raglan sweaters
They have sleeves that are connected from the collar to the armpit
so there's no
pronounced shoulder which means hint hint that this would be a nice beginner project because it's not as picky on fit the good thing about
This knit that I used is that it doesn't have a lot of stretch
so that makes it ideal for
Pattern drafting because I'm transferring it onto a non-stretch material and the loose fit means that this is good for blouses
but it also crosses over into hoodies and jackets and other
Layers, you know, the second letter style is drop shoulder. This is a sweater from university days
I was part of a Christian group on care this and they have this sweater for the memories but also because it's been a loyal
Comfy fit the sweater has not let me down
So the drop shoulder means that the shoulder seam it hits below the shoulder, which is a placement. That looks great on jackets and cardigans
hence bringing this into the capsule wardrobe
Selection so now I'm just tasked with trying to capture the different shoulder seams
I repeated my tactic of folding the paper in half and with the Raglan my trick is to keep
peeling the fabric back so that I can see the seam and
Transfer that onto the paper and once I was happy with that
I've brought over the drop shoulder sweater and added that to the pattern trying to keep the collar and the armpit location as
consistent as possible
That way I get to reuse the lower body part of this whole pattern when it comes to the sleeves
The sleeve is a little bit tricky with the Raglan
It has kind of a weird slope along the top since the back of the sweater is higher than the front
so keep that in mind when you're trying to trace both halves again thinking of it like
Trying to replicate the sleeve if it was cut open and lay flat now for pants
I wanted one pattern set to encompass three styles that I gravitate towards
So we'll start with the easiest since it's big and forgiving culottes
This pair that I love is high-waisted
it has an invisible side zip and
An elastic band on the back of the waist so the trick will be to copy that over to a pattern next up
I'm going to add to it these plaid pants that are a bit more fitted and they end above ankle
There is a flood closure in the front
but I'm going to ignore that because I can only manage invisible zippers for now and
The back I noticed that it uses two small darts above the back pockets to taper the waist above the butt
so I'm going to show you how I transfer those darts onto a pattern and
Finally, let's add a nice long pant to the pattern this para touches the floor and it has some flare action at the bottom
It also has a front fly. But again, I'm not going to trace it because fly zipper really intimidate me
I do really like the height of the flare on these pants tracing it will give me a lot of options to make fun
Statement pants in the future. So this is a good choice
The front of your left and right legs is symmetrical. So we just need one to cover them both
I folded my culottes in half and I marked it all the way around now with a dress pants
I did try to preserve the location of the crotch seam to be consistent across all the patterns
But it is a different fit from the culottes. So the waistband did end up in a different spot. I do love high-waisted pants
So all of my pants are high waisted then to give me a seam allowance
I brought in another marker or some tape and some kind of stick and
Together this created this double headed tool that lets you add a seam allowance all the way around now for the back
this is much harder to do because
most pants will use some kind of tactic to take in the fabric at the waist above the but that's just because
Typically, the waist is smaller than the butt the back also has a deeper curve along the crotch seam
Which can also be tricky
so the technique I made up involved using a scrap fabric on top that I
Slowly trimmed and modified to get the shape of the inner leg curve
then I took the pan out of the way to trace that onto the pattern directly now the easiest way to get an
Understanding of the darts is to copy from a plaid print item
So if you measure the distance between the lines on the plaid
Before and after the dart the difference between them is how much fabric was absorbed into the dart
So I take that
distance and I add it to the hips of the pattern and then I smooth it out until it connects to the side of the
leg again
and now you have enough fabric for your butt and
You know where the dart is to take in all the excess fabric. So it fits your waist
amazing
here we are pants and
skirts
I got this skirt in the last year and there's a few reasons why I love it as a pattern guide
It has an invisible back zip with darts
So that's going to give me a really snug pattern the cut of it also gives me my ultra miniskirt measurements
so that leaves a lot of room for different styles because from
From the tiniest dial you can go as long and as wide as you like the skirt to be and of course
It's plaid. So the mystery of the darts can be solved
It's got a built-in ruler to basically help me figure out the darts. So like the dress shirt and sweater
I folded my paper in half to get all of this pattern on one page
This is definitely one of the simpler tracing jobs with the main trick being again
To use plaid if you have it to measure how much fabric there was before the dart was added
Repeating what I did with the pants
I measured the distance between the lines before and
after the dart and then add that difference at the hip so that the extra fabric is
Restored to the pattern. These are the two pieces that I cut out following the dress shirt
some of the key things to pay attention to is that the back will always be higher than the front simply because
your neck
occupies a bit more space in the front than in the back and so you don't want to match that height in the front or
else you're gonna feel a little stifled arm holes can also be quite different between the back and the front so that's why it's also
important to trace them out separately
You can see here that the front armhole doesn't go as far down but the background hole does go much further
True to the length of the dress shirt
I also maintained the back being longer and the front being shorter so that that was repeated if I wanted to follow it exactly
To really give the body full movement
These two should be separate pieces so that this bottom piece here can be wider and brought in
through some kind of dark or pleating and that helps your back to move more freely, but
Depending on the fabric, you might not always have to use a yoke
But I included where it was just in case I needed it and then here is the sleeve piece
I marked out which side was the front and which side was the back and then followed the curve of the sleeve
I won't always use the cuff
but I do like to mark out how wide it is because
proportions are pretty important in terms of how the finished piece looks now the way you use this pattern is
With a sleeve you fold the fabric in half and then place the sleeve on top with the goal of getting two
Symmetrical pieces not twins but symmetrical so that one is good for the left and one is good for the right
And then with this piece, it's all about folding and 1/2
So when you're tracing the front
You'll want this fold to align with a fold on the fabric that when you get one symmetrical piece
and normally what I do is I just lift this and fold all these crumbs out of the ways that I'm only looking at the
Front then likewise when we're doing the back
Flip it place this fold along the fold on the fabric. So you got a symmetrical piece
And if anything is showing through you just fold it out of the way
the sweater
so this shape belongs with yes and
this shape
This shape up here
Similar to the dress shirt I captured where the cuff is
If I wanted to replicate those proportions and then also here again, this is the front
This is the back front goes lower balk doesn't go as low all of the pants that I did were
High-waisted because that's just the way I like it. This is where the flare begins on the flare pant
So I marked that in case I ever wanted to use that as a guide for where to go even more
flared or like do big ruffles or anything like that the skirts definitely the simplest out of all of the items that I
Trace to make a pattern they're a tube and very forgiving and if you make it on a stretchy fabric
You don't even have to worry about this stuff going to give you an example of how
Helpful, it is to make patterns from capsule items
I have a pattern that I copied from a winter jacket, which is another great capsule item if you live somewhere cold
And if you watch my recent video of me turning a sleeping bag into a puffy parka
You would have seen me use that pattern set as well as when I made a clear raincoat
now, I have a nice and flat set of papers that can guide me whenever I want to make a jacket and as long as
I follow them
I know I will be able to fit inside because it was traced from something that I can fit inside
If you do end up using anything you learned here to make something please to use the hashtag
Made with Wendy so I can find it on Instagram later this month
I will be uploading video where I use the skirt template to help me make a
Skirt if you want to keep an eye out for that
I think I will be premiering it which means if you hit the bail notification
You're gonna get notified when it's going live. We can all watch it together and chat with each other
I did this last month and it was really fun. So I want to do it again. That's all for this video
I hope you found it really helpful. I know that cloning clothes tutorial is really popular
And so I just wanted to make something that could kind of like build on that
Thank you all so much for watching if you're subscribed then I'll see you next time. Bye