Dart Manipulation #5: Two dart series

I am sorry for the quality of some of the pictures, they are not as good as i would like them to be.The bodice am going to make is one with a straight/bust dart and also a waist dart like the drawing below

 In the second photo, top right, i drew a line from the side seam where the bust dart should be, the you can see that i cut out the dart in the next picture on the left then i slashed the bust dart line. I also marked a point "x" at the junction between side seam and waist.

The instruction says close the dart until the point labelled x touches the square line but am thinking the waist dart looks too small for a Barbie sized doll but am going to sew it anyway and if it's impossible am going to open up the waist dart. the image on top left shows the dart closed until "x" is on a horizontal axis. i then placed another transparent paper over the pattern, traced it and moved the dart point away from the bust point int the last image bottom right (i will show how to move dart point below).

How to move dart point.
First mark a point half way from each dart leg, then draw a line from the half way point to the dart point. Along the the line you just drew mark a new position for your dart point labelled "x"

Then draw a line from each dart leg to that point. then you can erase the old dart point and done.

Cutting the pattern (bellow). The waist dart look really small, that will be hard to sew!

The bodice appears to be ok, but as shown in the book, the point of the side dart should be further away from the bust point compared to that of the waist dart, however I used equal distance as the waist dart so I have to fix that.
The side dart also looks a little like a French dart instead of a straight one so I will position it higher up nearer to the arm hole. (image bellow)
The waist dart was really small and difficult to sew but not impossible however I will still increase it ( normally I will fix one problem, then sew a bodice then fix the next problem and then sew another one, but am just going to take the easy way out this time)
It's also possible that once I increase the waist dart I probably won't need to change the position of the straight/side dart so am yet to decide what am going to do.
Also there is some fullness between the bust and the waist dart, maybe because they are too close to each other.

Dart Manipulation: Two dart series

  I am so sorry for my long absence,I have been overwhelmed by medical school, but I'm going to try to continue, doing a little at a time, and hopefully I wont be absent for this long ever again.

   I am going to start the two dart series.

This is the pattern am going to use in the next post

Dart Manipulation #4: Pivotal transfer technique

In this case i did not connect the dart leg to the bust point i left the bust point intact

The pattern is place on another pattern paper, i then put a pin through the bust point and the pattern paper below

label the dart leg A and B and mark the point where you want the new dart to be (extend it to touch the paper below), which in my case is the mid neck. Also mark the position of dart leg A on paper below.

Now i draw the outline from the mark at the neck point to that at the dart leg A. As you can see i labelled the mark at the neck C

Now rotate the pattern until dart leg B is where is where A used to be.

Now draw a line from point C to dart leg B

Now connect dart leg to dart point and viola ( all lines joined and trued )

Dart Manipulation #3: Slash-Spread technique

Bellow is basic bodice pattern i started off the manipulation with

So first you draw a line from the dart point to where you want to re-position the dart, in this case am moving it to the shoulder

cut through the line to the dart point

close up the old dart to open the new one and tape the old one close

here are the rest of the pictures

next time i will show the pivotal transfer technique which i like the most, though for a small pattern as barbies', the slash method was easier.

Dart Manipulation #2 : straight dart to waist dart

   So i figured out the bust point but it is slightly higher than its suppose to be, I wanted to move the dart completely(parallel to the old dart) but then I will have to make a muslin and test the fit so I decided to cheat and just do this:

   I marked the bust point on the muslin, then opened it up using a seam ripper and put the transparent pattern on it to transfer the marking on the pattern

 So this is how I cheated, I hope it's not gonna cost me
I joined the bust point to the dart legs which as u can see does not correspond to the dart point so fingers crossed

I then drew a perpendicular line to center front and then a line from the waist line  to the bust point

  I then cut along that line and moved the part that I cut to close the straight dart (some people call it bust dart).

Next true side seam

and VIOLA

I don't know, i think its not perfect but am still going to continue working with this pattern. Some people use tissue instead of sewing in muslin every time, may be i will try that.

Dart Manipulation #1

Dart manipulation is the process of changing the position of the dart to create a different design. This can be done even on commercial patterns, that way even if you don't want to study patternmaking in detail, you can still create new designs from the patterns that you buy.
   This picture shows the basic locations of dart, starting from waist dart which was not labelled, next is French , then straight( perpendicular to center front) , then mid armhole,shoulder tip, mid shoulder, mid neck, center front neck, CF bust and CF waist dart.

        My Basic Barbie bodice has what was suppose to be a straight dart (though not that straight) so I need to make it into a waist dart because that is how the basic pattern is suppose to be according to the book I use.
Another thing is I have to figure out my bust point(apex of breast), unfortunately barbie doesn't have nipples, but am going to figure it out, though it got me thinking why I can't just use the dart point as a hinge if you know what I mean.
  This pic below will give you an idea

so this is how you manipulate dart, you slash a wedge and move it over to the other side while using the bust point as a hinge, i guess if i use the dart point then every dart will be radiating from a different point which i guess will distort the shape of the bodice. Both pictures above are from my patternmaking book.

Final sleeve pattern for now

So i didnt use the previous sleeve pattern again because i realized  the cap height is too long. I drafted a new sleeve free hand, with no specific instructions, but i made the cap flatter.
I increased the armhole ease of the bodice, so i made two sleeves and of course two bodice. Here is the result in pictures.

these are the sleeve patterns i used

These are the two bodice one on top of the other, you can see how i increased the armhole ease to the pattern piece below, of course the one above is the one from the previous post

this is the one with increased armhole ease, as you can see it didn't workout at all

This is the bodice from previous post, armhole  not altered, of course in the previous post i made the armhole deeper than the original bodice. 

The above was the more successful one though not perfect yet because there is bunching of fabric below the armpit, am not eager to fix that though as i have already said am going to start dart manipulation and maybe come back to the sleeve in the future, or may be just do the sleeve in human size coz this very difficult. I think that i can fix this by slightly increasing cap height. I am going to use my original bodice, the one in this post to do the dart manipulation. Am excited to start different designs from the dart manipulation, am using patternmaking for fashion design 5th edition by helen joseph-armstrong. I will talk about  dart manipulation in the next post.