The Croquis Initiative

One of my new years sewing resolutions was to sew one of the patterns from the Colette Sewing Handbook. I received the book as a Christmas present from my Husband in 2011, and haven't sewn one thing from it. That's pretty shameful, no? While I was looking through the book trying to find the best pattern to tackle (I'm thinking the Pastille btw), I found the page on making your own croquis and was a little intrigued. I didn't want to stuff about with getting my husband to take photos of me, and go throught all the drama of making my own croquis if I wasn't even sure I was going to use it. A quick search on the internet found this link to a site that has heaps of free croquis that you can print and use. Even though I'm not making my own specific croquis, I still wanted one that was close to my body shape. After sifting through them all I found this one.

I was quiet happy that this most closely matched my body shape, until I realised that this was the fashion croquis for a child. Yes, that's right, a child! (Well, probably a teenager, but still!). My mutantly small frame aside, it's been great. I've been sketching away for the last few weeks coming up with all sorts of sewing plans. I'm sure most will never get made, but it is a great way to visualise a design. And the colouring in of the pictures is quiet relaxing.

Here are a few of my designs. Most are for a future self imposed challenge I like to call “The White Sheet Project” (more on that later) and the other two are plans with fabric from my stash. It's a little hard to see the details in this scanned images, but you can get the idea.

I have a slightly modified copy of the above croquis, with a dark outline, that I trace onto a piece of white paper and fill in with my design. I'd love to buy a sketch book and use that so that my designs are all together, but the paper in all the sketch books I've found are too thick to see the croquis underneather. So, for the time being I'm using A5 (half size) computer/printer paper.

If you've struggling to visualise your designs, I highly recommend using a fashion croquis, either your own or a generic one. It has helped me enormously and if nothing else, it's an excuse to get out the pencils and do a bit of colouring.

 

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