Hey, your watching withwendy and this video is all about how I make patterns from my clothes
There has been quite a few comments on different videos where people ask me to slow down a bit
or go through the part where I cut out the fabric pieces
I wanted to put together this video to clarify because this is the exact method that I use
for practicality all of my tutorials
every time i'm fitting something, I just take things I already own
give it kind of a golden rule for tracing, and then your guaranteed to make something that fits you.
Even if it doesn't look great at least it fits you.
And I know sewing patterns can feel really overwhelming, so this is my way of easing into it.
After the tutorial I'll show you how I used the patterns to make this structured tee
so stick around until the end if you want to see that.
were gonna start with a little closet raid to look for a top and a pair of shorts that fit you really well
what your looking for in this top is that the shoulders hit you at the right point
so that you can use it as a guideline for where your shoulders should always be
and at the same time try to make sure the fabric isn't stretchy so you know that its a true fit.
On the shorts its better if you find a high waist one, so that you know exactly how high they can go
to reach your bellybutton, and also make sure that at the bottom its the appropriate length
for how you want the shortest of your shorts to be.
The next thing you'll need is some big paper, I used craft paper since I had it around
but you can also use tracing paper.
were gonna take a big sheet that we've cut out and fold it in half lengthwise.
I lay down the shirt so that the fold is directly along the shirts line of symmetry
and start tracing with dotted lines all the way around the body piece of the shirt.
I'm keeping the dotted lines about a half inch away from the edge of the shirt
and this is honestly how I use all of my clothing as templates
just tracing about a half inch away so that there is enough room for a seam.
The dotted lines make it a little bit easier to use broad strokes
and then afterwards I connect the lines with a solid line all the way around.
when I do the back side of the shirt I will show you how I did the arm hole.
Once your done tracing the front add a little mark along the fold to remind you where the top and the bottom
of the template was so that you can flip over the paper and keep things continuous.
Here we are with the back side of my shirt, this time tracing again half inch all the way around
but focusing on the shape of the back side.
The way I do my arm holes is I place my fingernail about half inch distance away
peal back the fabric and add a little mark and then keep going every inch or so to add those little dots.
Once all the dots are down, you can connect all of them and that will give you the shape of the arm hole.
I decided I wanted my standard shirt to have a bit lower of a base collar
and on the front side template make sure you add a curve to show how deep the front neck hole should be.
Some standard things to note about body patterns is that the back is typically higher than the front.
One other typical difference between the front and the back is that the arm hole on the front
tends to have a much steeper curve than the arm hole on the back of the shirt.
And that's just because the front of the body has to accommodate a bit more arm motion as well as your chest
whereas the back is a lot more flat.
If you want to lower the front neckline, you add scoops going lower and lower
and if you want to widen the neckline, you just go outwards from the centre.
The shoulder that we traced will help us to get the seam to land exactly on the shoulder
but if you ever want it to be a drop shoulder the pattern will be shaped so that the shoulder point keeps moving outwards
At the bottom of the pattern, if you want to shorten or elongate it to make a crop top
or an oversized shirt, all you do is adjust the bottom length
and you can also change the shape of the bottom.
And finally if you want to change the width of the shirt
then you just modify the template outwards along the two sides.
With your paper still folded in half, go ahead and lay down the sleeve of that same shirt, also folded in half.
I started with tracing all the way along the top piece using my dotted lines
and peeling back the fabric so that I can get the shape.
Once I'm done tracing the front side I flip the sheet over
add two little marks to show me where I stop and start
and then trace out the back side of my t-shirt sleeve.
When we unfold it you'll notice that the front side has a much steeper curve, and the back side is a little bit more straight.
Kinda compliments how the body armholes work.
I go ahead and cut out this piece, and now its ready to make you one sleeve.
So remember when your tracing this piece out, your gonna have to trace it through two layers
to get your right and left sleeves.
This gets you a t-shirt sleeve but if you want to lengthen it to be a sweater
you just extend the pattern downwards
and similarly when your going towards a drop shoulder, you shorten the curve of the sleeve.
And finally you can always widen your sleeves by going outwards from the armpit point.
Okay, now for the shorts I fold them in half so that I'm only looking at one half of the front.
And this is the general shape that your going to see.
I trace around it with my dotted lines, again half inch distance away.
These shorts have a waist band so I added in extra mark half inch above that waistband seam
so I can remember where the waistband was.
Connect all of those dotted lines then we'll move on to the back side of the shorts.
The back was a little bit trickier to fold but I just made sure I had it on one side along the line of symmetry
down the middle of the back and on the other side I pulled it outward
as much as I could to get to the side seam of the shorts.
I also traced around this with my dotted lines that same half inch distance away.
Once your done cutting them out there's a couple of things you can check to make sure that you did it right.
One is that the side seams should be the same length, since there going to be touching.
But you'll notice the inner leg seam on the front and the back are very different.
The inner leg seam on the back is much longer and that's just because it has to be able to fit all the way around your butt.
I cut these templates out to fit shorts just to save space
but if you want them to go longer you just lengthen out the leg.
And since we used high waisted shorts you'll know that if we keep lowering it at the top your going to eventually get it to hip height.
If you want your pants to be more billowy or wide you just widen it out along the two side seams.
And that's how I use my clothing to make patterns for more clothing.
For this structured tee I used the front and back and sleeves as the templates.
I laid down the back template along the fold
tucked the front out of the way and that's kinda of my way of making use of both sides of that template.
And they I followed the exact shape of the back and cut all the way around.
On the other side of the fabric I laid down the front template along the fold
I tucked the back out of the way this time and once again cut all around the front shape.
This one I made it a bit more spacious than the original to give it a looser fit.
For the sleeves I wanted both to be in the same direction of the grain.
So I cut one with the template facing up and one with the template facing down
to make them symmetrical whilst still facing the same direction.
Finally I cut a strip of fabric along the stretchy direction to be the collar trim.
If you want to see how to put those pieces together to make a t-shirt, I've put a link the description
to a basic t-shirt tutorial that I made, it will show you how to sew them all up together.
For this t-shirt, I mixed it up a little by adding some big slits on the side.
And that's one thing that's nice I guess about making your own clothes
is that you are the boss, and you can make your clothes as you like.
If you liked this video, let me know
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That's all I have for today so thank you all so much for watching I will see you next time.
bye~