122 - Knit Princess Line Dress. How to select different neckline?

Steve

Can you please tell me how to select a different neckline for 122 - Knit Princess Line Dress?

Thank you

Lori

Steve After you select a Measurement Set to use, Other options will become available to select from. Click on the Select a Neckline drop-down and a list will be provided for you to choose from.

Steve

Lori thank you very much, Lori.

Steve

Hello again.

I’m trying to make my grand daughter a summer school dress. She likes a zip at top of back. Am I right in thinking this…. Allow extra 4cm on width of back piece. Split back piece into 2 lengthwise. Stitch up from bottom to bottom of zip, at original size, ie 2cm fold each side. Put zip in using the extra 2cm each side at the top. How would I incorporate this extra measurement in the software?

Thank you very much.

Steve

I’m just thinking if I put the zip at top front, I could use a 4cm ‘ease’ on the bust, waist and hip. Is that right?

Many thanks

Lori

Steve Never add pattern ease like this. Ease will change the fit and all you really need is more room in the seam allowance for a zipper. Here's a step-by-step to do this. Don't be intimidated by the Fashioner, you can totally do this and it makes it so easy.

Just remember that the top title of every tool is actually a link to the manual, if you need any help.

I used a polo shirt pattern for my example so it is smaller for images. The process is the same for any pattern that is cut on fold that you want to separate.

Make a catalog selection as you normally would. When you get to the Output, select the Fashioner. All the patterns will be stacked on top of each other.

Select File > Save and enter a name. All the work you do will be saved to your account for future reference.

In this case, we want to modify the back, so we'll hide the others. Select Layers > Layer Visibility. You'll see all the different patterns here. Select the top level of each pattern you want to hide. Then Save.

Now you need to be make sure you are on the layer you are editing. Select Layers > Select Active Layer. Select the Back Seam Allowance layer. You can verify that it is switched at the top of the toolbox.

Now remove the seam allowance that is there. Even though you can't see it, there is a 0 seam allowance set on the center back. We have to change that. Get rid of the entire seam allowance. Finish > Remove Seam Allowance. Select the blue outline. It will disappear when done.

Select Finish > Change seam allowance value. Select the center back line or lines. Don't forget to select any hem lines running the center back, too. You can set it to the current default of the pattern or something else. In this case, we probably want something wider for inserting a zipper. Select Custom Value and continue. My selected set is in mm, so I want 1/2" / 13mm.

Now zoom out because you need to select the entire outline in the next step. Select Finish > Add Seam Allowance. Select all the outline curves and lines and nothing else. It has to be a closed shape for this to work.

Make sure the blue seam allowance is outside of the pattern, sometimes it will draw to the inside. Use the Other Side button, if this happens.

Now you can select File > Export PDF, which works just like the catalog. Make absolutely sure that you do not have the DRAFT layer visible. It creates huge PDF files.

Now you have a customized pattern and learned how easy it is to do something like this. You can use all the rest of the individual pattern pieces you got out of the catalog and just output the back from the Fashioner. You can also output any of the others, just use that Layer Visibility feature. Whatever you see in the workspace will output.

Steve

Lori
Thank you so very much, Lori, for your time to provide such a detailed explanation.

Steve

I’m making slow progress, my apologies for that. I was wondering if you could please clarify the following…..

I select from the catalogue, incl my measurement set and then change the pattern variations and ease measurements tweaks boxes. I then save to ‘my garments’.

When I return to my garments and hit the redo button, everything is remembered, but it doesn’t save the pattern variations and ease tweaks. The dress length, fabric stretch, sleeve length and the all ease measurements are lost on saving.

Can you please tell me what I am doing wrong?

I also note that when I redo the my garments item and if I do not save it, it saves automatically and date and time stamps it 1st jan 1970 1200am. Is that right?

Many thanks.

Lori

Steve Wow, that is all kinds of broken. We had no idea it was doing this. We'll get on it and I'll let you know when it's fixed. Thank you so much for telling us.

Steve

Lori Many thanks, Lori.

Steve

Hi Lori

Another couple of hours practicing…….

I have printed out the patterns on a4 actual size. Before marking onto fabric, I thought I would try and make up the garment using just the paper. On each garment piece, I cut along the seam allowance line and made sure I stuck the pieces together lining up the stitch lines. What resulted was a paper garment smaller than I expected. I have read your info and watched the online video on scaling. Here is what I found…..

Actual body bust size = 94cm. Waist = 93cm. Height 143.5cm. The scaling factor based on 146cm is 98%.

On my printed paper garment, I have measured the following…. Bust = 68cm and waist = 72cm. That’s smaller by 72% and 77% respectively. I made sure to print at actual size. Even if I got the scaling wrong somehow, I would have expected the actual sizing to be the same factor, but it’s 72% and 77% smaller.

I cannot figure out what I have done wrong. Can you please advise?

Many thanks.

Lori

Steve You printed out of where? Are you working in the Fashioner? There should be no scaling, everything should come out as it measures in the Fashioner workspace.

When you printed, what program did you use? I'm guessing Adobe Acrobat or perhaps Chrome browser? You need to make sure that there is no scaling. For example, if you are printing out with the browser, you would select More Settings and make sure that the Scale is set to custom and the value is 100%.

A quick test is to select the Fashioner Blank from the pattern catalog. Select the same measurement set you've been using. Create some Point > Add Free Point on the workspace close together. Then use the Shapes > Add Rectangle tool and make some different size rectangles in the workspace close to each other. Keep track of the sizes that you use. Try to keep everything within the area that can print on a single A4 sheet. Then print the sheet without scaling and measure your rectangles.

I'll do this same test here in a minute to verify that something isn't seriously wrong and let you know my results.

Lori

My test was fine. Everything printed out exactly to size.

Steve

Lori

Hi Lori

Thank you very much for your time in carrying out those tests.

I haven’t got round to the zip bit in Fashioner yet, but just wanted to do a paper garment for size purposes, so I generated the pdf outputs from the original software. Good job I did it this way as I have got something completely wrong. I will investigate the Fashioner software soon, but if all else fails, I could just add 2cm to the front pattern piece and do 1 cut and a flip cut and then stitch up the middle, inserting the zip at the top. My grand daughter now wants the zip at the front and not the back.

I downloaded the pdf files using my IPad and printed full size from there. When I get the chance over the next few days, I will do another garment using my Laptop and download the 3 sets of files onto there, ie pdf pattern, dxf files and png files.

I will try Acrobat with the pdf files and I also have the option to use Photoshop to play around with the png files and I could also import the dxf files into Illustrator.

Again, many thanks for your help and I will post what I have done wrong in my next post, in the hope it could help someone else from doing the same mistake I have.

Best regards

Lori

Steve Sounds like a good plan. The saving feature of the basket is fixed now so you get a proper date and the variables all save out with changes.

Steve

Hi Lori

I haven’t had chance to do any further checks yet, but many thanks for letting me know the save function is now working.

Take Care, Best regards.

Steve

Hi Lori

I have now had chance to do further testing and as promised I share my results below.

I hope you can help further.

With regards to the saving of the measurements, I can now confirm that these are now been saved. When I logged back into the system, the measurements were already saved from last time, so i assume it must have been a 'display' of variables issue and not the fact that it was not saving on the server. I cannot confirm if the previous pattern was constructed with or without the actual saved variables or if it was constructed using the 'displayed' variables.

With regards to printing to scale. I can confirm that I have performed various tests on my Laptop and I am confident that I am printing to full scale, actual print size and that this was not the issue in my paper dress been smaller than I expected. The printing from my iPad was exactly the same as printing from my Laptop. I have also used Fashioner to measure the stitch line on the shoulder and the fashioner software is showing 4cm and the actual print is also measuring at 4cm. I have done other tests with different measurements and these match exactly in both the fashioner software and the actual print.

For your reference, here are the documents I am using on the server.
Measurement set 24413. Garment 31188. Fashioner Session 14105.

Now that I was confident that my printing was ok, I have now tried to investigate further.

My understanding is that the garment is made up from 4 individual pieces. ( minus the arms )

1) Folded piece for front.
2) Folded piece for back.
3) One side fabric material pattern side up.
4) One side fabric material pattern side down.

I have used Fashioner to calculate references to the 'waist' measurement as follows.

Front: Between waist_ctr_p_322 and waist_ctr_panel_cp_322 measures 9cm. As this is on the fold, the front of the dress is 18cm around the waist part.

Back: Between waist_ctr_p_323 and waist_ctr_panel_cp_323 measures 9cm. As this is on the fold, the back of the dress is 18cm around the waist part.

Sides: Between waist_side_panel_p_325 and waist_side_p_325 measures 13.53cm. As the waist_side_p_325 point doesn't reach the stitch line of the side piece, I estimate that to touch the stitch line from waist_side_p_325 would be approx 15cm.

Now based on my assumption that the garment is made up from 4 individual pieces ( minus arms ), I calculate the waist measurement from the 4 pieces as follows:
Front + Back + 2x Sides = 18cm + 18cm + 15cm + 15cm = 66cm.

This is the actual waist measurement of the printed garment.

Now with ref to Measurement set 24413, the actual waist measurement was 93cm.

Therefore, my printed template is approx 29% smaller than I expected.

Can you please explain what is going wrong?

Thank you very much.

Best regards.

Lori

Steve Fantastic write up. Thanks so much for taking the time. It took a bit, but I think I've got it.

The dress is composed of 6 pieces. Starting at the center front working clockwise around the body, you will cut one of the front on the fold, then we have the right front panel, then you have the right back panel, then you have the back cut on the fold, then you have the left back panel, which is connected to the left front panel. If you read the instructions on the panel it says to cut two, flip and cut two.

Using your measurements, you would have Front + Back + 4x Sides = 18cm + 18cm + 15cm + 15cm + 15cm + 15cm = 96cm. Your measurement is 93, but as you saw in the Fashioner draft, the side waist is over a bit to fit the hip curve. That adds a little room.

Does that make sense?

Steve

Hi Lori

Thank you so very much for taking the time to explain my error.

Your explanation is spot on and I misunderstood the instructions on the pattern. I was missing 2 pieces, which does indeed make up for my missing measurements. ( I did think the arm holes were a little on the small side as well, but didn’t realise why ).

Can you tell this is only the second item I have attempted? :-)

I am from England, UK and have taken this up as one of my many varied inside ‘winter projects’, after my retirement. We are just approaching ‘summer’, but it’s still on the cold side for this time of year.

I made my Wife a T shirt, but for some reason she only loves wearing it in the house and garden…… I cannot think why….. :-)

I will get the other 2 pieces printed later this week and attach them to the existing printout. Thanks to your explanation, I’m confident that all will now ‘measure up’.

Thank you once again for your assistance and I will, of course, keep you posted on my developments.

Very many thanks.

Take care and best regards.

Steve.

Lori

Steve I like that someone is so engaged in the program to ask questions. I don't mind helping at all. Eventually you'll be making items that your wife will enjoying wearing outside the home and bragging that "her husband made it himself". I still make things that I won't wear in public, but they are still nice to have. You've got a great attitude and you'll gain skills quickly.

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