Fashion Draping Workshop

 

Peasant Blouse Draping Workshop

Week 5 is skills week. To help with my project outcome I did a draping session with Zoe. We decided to drape a peasant blouse because it has the gathering feature similar to my collection design. The blouse have a low round neckline with puffy short-length sleeve and gathering on the neckline and lower waist. This blouse is also accessorize with epaulette on the shoulder. We only draped half to the blouse just to practice with creating the gathering feature of the blouse right on the mannequin. 

To start, we first need to cut 5 pieces of calico with the measurement provided in the book. The bodice is cut into 2 pieces of front and back, 1 piece for the sleeve and the other for the sleeve cuff and epaulette. 

After cutting all the rectangular pattern, next we pin the front piece of the bodice, making sure the upper part are pinned close to the neck. Then we make a gathering near the neckline and pin draping tape on top of the gathering to secure it. The next step is to do the exact same thing for the back piece of the bodice. 

Moving on to the sleeve, we first need to find the centre of the rectangular piece and pin it to the mannequin and around the edges to create the sleeve. Next we connect the front and back bodice by pinning the edges. Because we don't have the arm piece of the mannequin, it's quite challenging to drape the puffy sleeve without surface to pin it. Then we gathered the top of the sleeve and trim the sleeve length to the bust line. Next, we gathered the bottom part and pin elastic around it. To finish the sleeve, we fold the rectangular piece and create a sleeve cuff to cover the messy gathering. Although it's quite difficult to do the sleeve, but we manage to create the balloon shape with draping tape as the arm mannequin. 

Before trimming the neck line, we first make a gathering on the side between the waist and the hip line, then we pin the draping tape to make the neckline. And the last step is to trim the excess calico on the neckline. 

As this was not my first time doing a drapery on mannequin, I already know about the basic step of prepping the mannequin by pinning the tape on bust, waist and hip line and how to do a gathering technique on the mannequin. However it was my first time to follow a draping book as the guideline with pattern already provided and it was exciting to see how the rectangular calico pieces gradually turned into a finished blouse piece. I usually do draping to make the pattern of the garment that I wanted to make, but in this workshop, there's a already a measurement for the pattern which makes it really easy to assemble and not making a lot of fabric waste and excess. I was happy that the final draping result looks quite similar to the book. The blouse design reminds me a lot to boho chic fashion trend in the early 2000s. It will be much better and proportioned if in the future I can use an arm mannequin extension to help with the sleeve measurement. Although the blouse design might be outdated, but if it use a flowy lightweight fabric like chiffon and instead of short-length puffy sleeve, long bell sleeve with ruffles would be a flattering blouse I personally would love to wear.