In the Sketchbook - May 2016

Welcome to In the Sketchbook, a monthly look at fashion design sketches that we are working on for ourselves. Sketching garments on a personal croquis is a great way for the individual couture enthusiast to move beyond the use of commercial patterns and into a world of personalized design! It can be intimidating at first, but with a little bit of practice it becomes something you look forward to. Join us for a look of what we have going on In the Sketchbook! Brought to you by Wendy Grossman of Couture Counsellor and Steph King from Siouxzeegirl Designs.

Welcome to the newest feature of my blog! I recently took an amazing Design class with Sarah Veblen at her home studio in Maryland. This was Exploring Fashion Design- Design 1, a 6 day intensive class that has opened me to so many new ways to look at design, process design and to move forward with creating beautiful and well thought out garments.

One of the many tools we learned in Design 1 was to create a personal croquis and then how to use that croquis to sketch out garments and then further develop these into working drawings. A full review of that class is forthcoming!

This new monthly blog post will come out on the last friday of each month and will feature sketches and working drawings that I have worked on during the month. Don't forget to click on over to Wendy's site, The Couture Counsellor, to see what has been happening in her sketchbook this month! If anyone else has sketches they would like to share please add them to the comments.

Please enjoy my sketches! I expect with time that these will just get better and better and more developed. For now I am just in the beginning stages of my journey. 

A summer dress that is in the muslin phase. I have 2 linens that i am contemplating. Both clear bold colors. the dress will be done in a solid color with top- stitching detail. this started as V 1404 but has several design changes.

Playing off the above dress, I wanted to design a fall/winter dress that would involve possible subtle color blocking. you can see these in the 2 different colorways on the right. the sleeve detail is just design lines in a regular sleeve.

Several warmer weather outfits! Each plays with the idea of incorporating sheer fabrics as insets, gathers or overlays.

The jacket on the left is the star of the ensemble. Incorporates interesting design lines with the thought of possibly using a 2 sided jacquard or 2 coordinating fabrics to play with the interesting design lines. On the right I show how this jacket would work with slacks, a pencil skirt and a pleated skirt.

During the Design 1 class I was challenged to play around with long jacket silhouettes over sheath dresses for possible work ensembles or evening wear. Here are 2 different ideas that I have come up with.. Still not sure how I feel about this silhouette for me...

Winter coat idea. possibly leather/wool/fur combination. Certainly would be a statement piece!