Transcript:

Welcome to sewingnpatterns.com. Today I’m gonna show you how to use this dress design planner.

Im lekha the founder of sewingnpatterns.com Im just like you busy with tons of things going on in my busy life, and this planner is made for myself to add more wardrobe pieces to my life and this planner takes care of all my planning and designing things and gives me a proper action plan to get started.

By now hopefully you downloaded the planner and printed it out. If not, Pause this video and do it now.
So without any delay, lets get started.

Before we get into, if you get a chance to use this planner and if you are loving it, Leave me a comment and Let me know below this video. I will be so glad to hear from you.

Step 1 of this dress design planner is the purpose. I mean Why are you making this in first place. The reason this question is so important is because… Honestly we start so many projects, it could be anything, not just clothing. And only few make it to the end. We stop doing it because we get busy on other stuff, we lost inspiration, we are not motivated, we don’t feel like doing it and most importantly we forget why we even start it. And this is where this page comes to action. It reminds us every time and motivates us to go back to the project. Please don’t skip this page no matter what. Also this gives you a clarity of what you are doing.

I put together fill in the blanks to make things really easy for you and I got an example if you are stuck anywhere in between.

So there you go, for this project in my example, I want to design a top to wear for casual outings like evening walks or grocery shopping or may be on playdate with my kid, which makes me feel comfortable to move and look pretty even on casual occasions. And this is why I’m doing this project.

Once you got clarity on your purpose, Lets move on to step 2, the inspiration.
I don’t know about you but whenever I see any dress that I love, I save it to my pinterest board named self wardrobe and this way I have a whole set of ideas and inspiration, so I don’t have to start from scratch looking for inspiration. If you don’t do this, I highly recommend to create a board on your pinterest and start collecting anything that you are inspired of. Or if you are not digital type don’t worry, I recommend to pull designs from magazines and stick them on a book, like I used to do when there is no pinterest.

In this big box put on your visuals that inspires you for this particular clothing that you are going to create. This could be outfit ideas or your favorite celebrity clothing or anything that inspires you.

For this example I’m gonna go for simple ones. Because this is a casual top, I don’t want so many things going on and like to keep it as simple as I could. Also, I should be able to complete it in a weekend.

I choose these images that I liked. And pasted it here. You can print images that you like and stick it here or you can cut images from magazine and put them here. Whatever is comfortable to you 

For this image, I liked the look of one single color and here I like the gathers that drapes on the body, not too bulky nor too tight and the length I wanna go for long top that makes me very comfortable. I love this wide v neck that looks so pretty also the strip of the fabric attached on the shoulder leaving the look of something worn on the neckline. Also I wanted to include 3/4th sleeves.

Here are the elements I picked from my inspiration. I want you to note down anything that you liked from your images. In my case I picked v-neck, soft gathers, neckline detailing, 3/4th sleeves, knee length

Moving onto next sheet. I want you to pick 3 to 5 colors that suits you most and would love to use. If you don’t know which colors suit you, I have an awesome tutorial and you can download it by clicking here.

I pick these 3 colors. Use this white space to collect fabrics that match your colors. I got this image randomly on internet, but I want you to use real fabric swatches or images of similar fabrics that you like to use.

Now Moving on to my favorite part which is design development.
Put your inspiration sheet beside you while you do this and look at your elements list.

Step 1 is to Use the boxes here to draw your lines. If you have no idea what this means, click on here to download the tutorial.

Once you pick your lines, Put them into the clothes and add the elements to that lines. Create as many as you can. Just let your mind flow. Remember don’t look for perfection here. Just go on with the blank mind.

Now the final design. You may like one from here and one from there from your previous designs, Now its time for master piece, eliminating unnecessary and adding any extras and developing to a brand new design. Draw the flat sketch here. This is a great way if you want to map out where darts fall or any technical details that you wanted to figure out. Use this section for any notes.

Now the pattern development. Once you are done with design part, You need to figure out how are you making pattern for it. Are you drafting from scratch? Are you modifying a sewing pattern? Or Are you recreating pattern from old clothes? By the way, I have an tutorial on it. Just click here and it takes to the tutorial.

Once you figure out how you are making pattern, use this space to engineer your dress. Put everything that you think in your mind here. Again make any notes in this section.

Once you are done with pattern development, think about how you are going to sew it. Note down all the steps. The reason this is so important is because, Its always better to plan to avoid any mistakes and wastage of fabrics. I have given a general process of dress making here but yours can be entirely different. I just wanted you to use this as a handy guide.

Finally Put all the things you need to buy in this shopping list. And project is not complete without the planning right? I want you to put every single step you need to do in this sheet and stick this in a place that you see everyday and this allows you to track your progress and works as a reminder.

Well that comes to the end of How to use this planner. If you have any questions or if you get a chance to use this planner, please leave your valuable comments and takeaways in the comments below this video.