Drawing My First Dress Kit Bodice

Well, here it is 10:39 pm and I have finished drafting my first personal bodice pattern from the Sure-Fit Designs system.  What a fun experience!

At first I was a little intimidated, I have had such bad experiences from trying to figure out commercial patterns.  But the Sure-Fit Designs Dress Kit Instruction Book is very well laid out and clearly illustrated.  Still I struggled at first trying to get the exact placement for the neck line, so I pulled up the Dress Kit How-To-Videos and watched the three part series on how to draft the bodice for the Dress Kit.  And hey, is it me (being so late and all) or does Glenda Sparling look like Annette Funicello?

At any rate as soon as I turned on the videos and followed them step-by-step along with the instruction booklet I was really having a happy time, and what a sense of accomplishment.  I feel like a grade school kid grinning from ear to ear as I show off my own personalized sewing pattern.  The whole process took me about two hours which includes measuring myself and taking the puppies outside for a little exercise.

Also as a note, I used a pencil to draft my pattern which is a good thing and a bad thing.  Good because I needed to erase and redraw my lines several times. Bad because the pencil is really dirty and messy on the vellum tracing paper.  So if you are a big baby beginner like me use pencil for your first pattern, but switch to a nice pen for nice clean lasting patterns.
  

Hi Rebecca, Of course, the bright, fat markers I use are for demo only -- using pencil doesn't show well in the videos.  But I will caution that I always use pencil for all my patterns - definitely not pen.  Pen doesn't allow for errors and we all tend to do a little (or a lot) of erasing.  Just make sure you've got a nice big, fat, soft eraser.  I own about 3 of these and wouldn't be without them!