Project | Pattern Cutting for the novice, toile time!

Hi all! Its been a while, I know, but I have been super busy doing marketing assignments, textiles and having a cold  :(
On the plus side, we have updated to a new supersonic internet router, and upgraded our broadband speed.... so now my pictures upload even faster...! *YAY*

And so, this post is furthering on from my last post, Pattern Cutting for the Novice and I have began drafting some toiles.

They have been pretty successful and the pattern cutting book has made creating them so simple and easy to put together, the books step by step guides and amazing pictures are incredible!

Firstly I began drafting the simple basic bodice block of which you can then use in order to create a simple t-shirt, a dress, a blazer and basically any garment that covers the upper body.

I took me a while to grasp how to draw a good curve using the Pattern Master and spent quite a long while drafting the curves, measuring them and redrafting them.
But after a while of redoing comes, success!

So, as I drew patterns and made the toiles I eventually came to a conclusion on one of my final piece's that I am overall pretty happy with.
As I worked through the step by step I was unsure how the different sleeve widths and crown heights would work together and change the movement of the sleeves (while also trying to grasp the pattern-cutting jargon). So, each sleeve I created I used a different combination of height and width and increased and decreased the sleeve head ease to see how they related.

As you can see from the pictures below my first toile was the striped red one. The sleeves were quite restricted, yet it gathered and folded horribly (I added a large sleeve ease as I though that it would make the sleeve loser and easier to move in), and I also found the front top dart rather ugly and intrusive.
Especially as I wanted to get rid of the shoulder seam and replace it with two angled seams which you can see in the lower pictures (I broke quite a few machine needles and got a tiny bit angry trying to get the points neat), and I also changed the position of the back top dart in order to correspond with and emphasise the new shoulder seams. I also changed the sleeve so that it was less restrictive on the movement of the arm by having no ease, a wider sleeve width and shorter height (you can see the pattern above) and so it fit perfectly into the bodice and allowed a good amount of movement.