The Fashion Sketchbook

I used to love designing clothes. I would watch a show or go to the mall and be so inspired by the shapes and textures around me. Then I would go home and dig through my stash of fabrics and sketch out something amazing in my fashion sketchbook. I loved the outfits I designed, even though only about half of them became actual clothes.

Fast forward fifteen years and three kids and I found myself frustrated with the major disconnect between what I drew and how the clothes fit on my actual body. Part of the problem (admittedly) is that I still see myself as a fit twenty-something who can wear anything and look like... well, like a fit twenty-something, rather than the forty-something mom who threw some clothes on to drop the kids off at school and hopes that she won't have to get out of the car at parent drop-off because she's not even sure she remembered a bra. But the bigger part of the problem (in my opinion) is that the croquis in fashion sketchbooks are ridiculous. Not even supermodels have legs that long! And how can they have such a sharp hourglass figure with a hip measurement of 24" and still have room for internal organs? 

I am 5'4" and about 160lbs with a slightly protruding mom-belly: probably a pretty common height/weight, but not one that gets a lot of press in the fashion industry. So, not only do I have a lot of tweaking to do when it comes to clothing patterns, but before I even get to that point I have to try to imagine what this garment would look like on my body and what changes I would need to make in order for it to be flattering on me. Where is the best place for this midi skirt to hit so that I don't look like a hobbit? How high can I make this waistline before it looks like my boobs end right where my hips start? Should I even bother with a crop top? These are important things to know before cutting into fabric and I found it difficult to imagine how an outfit I designed on a croquis would work on my real-life body.

For Christmas last year my mom gave me some credits to MyBodyModel which is this amazing website where you put in your height, weight, and measurements and it comes up with a croquis of you! While it is tempting to put in false information, I was completely honest and I absolutely love this little croquis-me! I love that I can trust my designs to look roughly the same on my as they do in the drawings. For fun, I redrew a couple of my old designs onto my new croquis. Puffy sleeves and high waists aren't super flattering on my actual body.

There are a couple things that I really did like about my fashion sketchbook, despite the distorted proportions:

1) I like having all my design ideas in the same book. One design often inspires another.

2) I like the little tips and sketch ideas such as how to draw a specific drape or seam.

3) I like having different poses.

So I decided to make my own, of me, in fashion book form.

I printed a variety of colors and poses onto cardstock then followed a tutorial by Sea Lemon for single sheet bookbinding. 

Each sheet had to be bound by every thread individually before moving onto the next sheet so it definitely took a while but SO WORTH IT! I love the different colored threads on the binding--they are 2ply waxed Irish linen that I bought on Etsy from Tinkercrafts. I cannibalized my favorite tip sheets from my old fashion sketchbook and added them as pages in my book. For the cover, I used the box from a master pattern kit from the 70's that my mom found for me at a yard sale. It was missing some pieces but I loved the font and images so I displayed it with my vintage sewing books until I decided to cut it up for this.

It's exactly what I envisioned and I know exactly what I'll draw in it first...