S1. EP9. Some Exciting News – Indigo Robe Fabric & Bikini Cover-ups!

by | May 25, 2019 | Season 1 | 0 comments

We’ve got some fantastic news! We’ve finally got the gorgeous Lily print fabric back from Fashion Formula! We sent off the print about two days ago and it’s just come back, which means we can now start making Francesca’s Indigo Robe. Not only that, but we’ve finally booked a holiday! We wouldn’t normally mention it but to celebrate we’ve decided to design and make a series of gorgeous bikini cover-ups for Francesca, before we leave at –the end of the month.

 

Francesca’s Indigo Robe – Lily Print Fabric has Arrived!

Earlier in the week we contacted Fashion Formula and asked them to print 3 metres of our custom designed Lily print so we could start construction on Francesca’s Indigo robe. Two days later we received our print and it looks gorgeous! We opted for a high sheen satin, picked from their extensive collection of fashion fabrics. All in all it cost around £57 for the print so roughly £20 p/metre. There is one slight issue which was completely our fault- he scale of the print is slightly smaller than Francesca requested. However, it still looks fab. As we’re running the Edinburgh marathon over the weekend, I have asked a Tosca, an excellent machinsit and samplist to make the dress up in our absence so it’s ready in time for our holiday on the 29th! So more images of the finished garment are still to come. In the meantime, here is a close up of the print and that high sheen satin from Fashion Formula!

Bikini Cover-Ups for Corfu!

Ok, so let’s crack on, there is soo much to get through! Since we’ll be going away on holiday in just under a week, it seemed important to get the ball rolling with our collection of Bikini cover-ups. We printed a few fashion templates, courtesy of Prêt-à-Template and put pencil to paper. Once the preliminary sketches were created, we imported them into Adobe Illustrator and created some precision digital illustrations. We then added colour and fabric scans to bring them to life. We chose a selection of Japanese Ikat cotton from The Cloth House, located on Berwick Street London- check out their website, they have a wealth of gorgeous fabrics to choose from. Here’s a close up of the fabrics we sourced.

Japanese Ikat cotton is a great material to work with. It drapes well and is effortless to sew. The most fascinating thing about Ikat cotton is the patterning. The individual fibers are dyed before the weaving process begins. This creates a striated pattern effect that is impossible to achieve with print. You can read more about it on Wiki here.

sHere are more polished version of our Bikini beach cover-ups created using adobe Illustrator. 

Learn Digital Fashion Illustration in Adobe Illustrator

Want to create your own digital fashion illustrations from your hand-drawn sketches? Great, watch our FREE video tutorial and get the basics.

The Poncho Bikini Beach Cover-Up – Pattern Making Tutorial

With our collection of beach cover-ups designed, we set about creating the pattern. We used Francesca’s individual measurements, added them to a profile in PatternLab,  selected the relevant basic blocks in the Lab and minutes later PatternLab created them for us. We downloaded them as an e-pattern and imported them into Adobe Illustrator ready to transform them into our finished Poncho sewing pattern.  45 minutes later we had created our pattern ready for construction in our chosen fabrics. If you want to see the pattern making process then scroll to the bottom of the post and watch the full video. 

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The Finished Garment

Once the pattern was created and the fabric cut, it took around 2.5 hrs to construct this simple yet gorgeous garment. We’ve added some pics for you to take a look at! Let us know what you think in the comments below. Do you like the fabric choice? What would you have done differently?

Pattern Making tutorial –  Kimono/ Poncho cover-up

Want to know how we created the sewing pattern for the Poncho bikini coverup showcased in this week’s episode? Great! Check out the video tutorial below to learn how. We show you how we transformed our custom fitting, PatternLab, basic block into this gorgeous yet very simple pattern using Adobe Illustrator.   

 

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