Thursday, August 24, 2017

Decisions, decisions...

A while ago I bought some knit fabrics from the traveling fabric market. They're 1/2 meter cuts and I envisioned combining them to make a t-shirt. But except for one shirt I made from a Knipmode pattern, the rest have been sitting idle while I tried to decide how to combine them.

Here are the prints:



And here are the solids - I just put the colors here because the photograph of the fabric didn't really match the true color:



I tried to think of ways to combine them but wasn't having much luck moving the fabrics around on the cutting table, holding them up to me in the mirror or draping them on my dress form, and I didn't have extra fabric to make swatches. I decided to sketch a design on my Surface (I love that I can "draw" and "paint" on the screen with a pen or realistic brush). I plan on using either Jalie 2566, which has set-in sleeves, or the Knipmode t-shirt from 5/2016 that I used for the first t-shirt with these knit fabrics. I started with a line drawing of a basic t-shirt to represent the Jalie and used the line drawing for the Knipmode. Coloring them in with the solid colors was easy, but I really wanted a way to put the printed fabric into my drawing. I know I could probably do this with Adobe Illustrator, but I don't have that software. After some searching downloadable apps to see how to make my line drawings transparent to make use of them more, I stumbled upon an online drawing program that solved my problem wonderfully, and I am excited to use this tool in the future for planning garments! The program is Lunapic. I had to play around with the resolution of my uploaded fabric pictures, and it's not perfect, but I think it gives me a great way to visualize the top in the fabric.

After using the tool a bit, I decided that I didn't like the look of combining more than two of the prints in one garment and by using them in pairs I would be able to get two tops. Here's what I came up with...now I just have to decide which ones to make!

The Jalie t-shirt:


The Knipmode t-shirt:


I'm leaning toward A and D using the Jalie pattern. What do you think?


4 comments:

  1. B and D. Definitely.

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    Replies
    1. I think you're right - B instead of A. As much as I'd like to think I'm going to look slim in those stripes, I'm not! And having the strips up top may give more of an illusion to balance out my hips. Thanks!

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  2. Glenda is a star with combinations.

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  3. Wow, A and D were my choices before I even read to the end of your post. I will have to check out that tool.

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