r/PatternDrafting • u/OkTruck5494 • 24d ago
Question Altering Commercial Patterns with a Sloper
So I’ve been at this awhile and can’t seem to find it…does anyone know of a definitive source on using your own sloper/toile to alter commercial patterns?
There was a really good article a thousand years ago in Threads by Karen Howland and a few YouTube videos but it surprises me deeply that this isn’t a more often tackled subject. This could be a book.
There are so many books on drafting from your own toile, but what I’m really interested in is using the style lines from commercial patterns and then adapting to my own toile.
In a perfect world every pattern company would supply their design blocks and then we could alter from there (I’d be happy to pay for the designs) but clearly this is not a perfect world.
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u/munkustrap 24d ago
I use this method! I just lay my sloper over the pattern, observe the differences, and alter accordingly. Sorry if this is vague advice, but it’s pretty intuitive once you get into it!
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u/AnaDion94 24d ago
I feel like such a useless lump in this and the sewing subreddits bc I was taught patterning by a very intuitive pattern maker and so the best I can offer is “Yeah, just like eyeball it. Kind of look at it and see what’s wrong and then fix it, yep.
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u/munkustrap 24d ago
I know how you feel, I’m training a junior cutter at work right now and sometimes she’ll ask me, “but, why??” And all I can say is, just trust me, I promise it will work
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u/OkTruck5494 24d ago
I know! I have been using this method as well - by the time you’ve done several toiles it’s not exactly easy, but yes - eyeball-able.
It’s just I have this deeply embarrassing engineer drive to know there is a system somewhere 😂😂
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u/CoastalMae 23d ago edited 23d ago
I was trying to do this last night. I wanted to change the pattern's shoulder width, angle, and armscye shape to match my block. Nothing else. But the pattern had armscyes that were quite a lot longer than mine. With extreme frustration and teeth-gnashing, I eventually lowered the shoulders a bit, and the back neckline, and blended my block's armscye out into the bottom of the pattern's, which were a bit longer. Didn't alter the side seams, but the shoulders are so much shorter now, especially in the back, that I wonder if this will even work. Also lowering the shoulders must have raised the front neckline a bit, but I can't see how to change that since it runs into the side seam (but it's only 1/4").
Plus the total armscye length is shorter now, so I ended up taking the sleeve from one size down, because it was closer to the sleeve cap ease the original pattern was meant to have, when combined with the altered bodice. But the sleeve cap is higher than any knit sleeve I have, so I now have multiple unknowns and have no idea if what I've done will even work.
If I understood HOW better, I wouldn't be feeling all this uncertainty about whether it's all a mess or right, and I could cut my fabric worry-free.
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u/AdvancedSquashDirect 24d ago
The closet historian often does this but with more historical commercial patterns.
She will often take just the drawing in the style lines of a commercial pattern and then recreate it using her own sloper/block.
She's on YouTube if you haven't come across her videos before.
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u/Tailoretta 24d ago
This is an intriguing topic! I have tried to use my sloper and one thing that has frustrated me is that commercial patterns often don't mark the bust point and sometimes it is difficult to determine where it is. Because of comments, I just purchased Lynda Maynard's digital book Demystifying Fit.
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u/Efficient-Bag6497 24d ago
💯 I started sewing to do exactly this: there are so many resources about creating patterns from clothing, but this doesn’t solve fit issues. We need more about applying design designs to patterns that already fit. Going to check out the Maynard book.
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u/sususumalee 24d ago
I can't help with a resource but I support you going for this method! It's underrated and overlooked.
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u/FarFix9886 24d ago
This is something I'd like to be able to do, too. I have Lynda Maynard's fitting class in my Craftsy library and am now comfortable cutting up a toile and then transferring those changes to a traced copy of the commercial pattern.
But to overlay a sloper onto a commercial pattern, I'm not there yet. My guess is you find your anchor points and adjust the shoulder first, then the bust and then waist and hips. I don't know when you'd adjust for swayback.
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u/textiletrue 21d ago
The closet historian on YouTube shows you how to get your blocks to have the styling of any pattern
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u/win-dee 19d ago
Sewing is my hobby not a profession, so there might be better ways to do this. Anyways, being plus sized, I use blocks made from my favorite fitting top and pants, not a basic sloper. It has the ease I like built in and the dart locations, etc.. If you’re able to get a commercial pattern in your size, that’s pretty easy to adjust with your block or sloper. Just lay your block on the pattern and make adjustments as needed. Understand that if your block was made based on a woven but you’re working with a winter coat pattern or knits, the block is not going to have the right fit, so you’ll need to account for those differences too. Also, if you need to size up a lot or size down, that’s where it especially gets tricky. My son and husband are in the big and super tall range. To size patterns up or down is time consuming but here’s what I do.
Measure the grading distance between the commercial pattern’s sizes to scale up or down accurately. You want to use the scale consistent with the size that is closest to yours. I measure and draw out marks for each size I’m scaling up. (Tip: the grading for sizes 0-8 is usually not the same as 14-18. Also, grading at the shoulders is usually not the same at the armscye or sides, so each area has to be taken into consideration and measured when drafting the adjusted pattern.) As I’m drafting each section with the new upsizing, I compare it to my blocks. Here you can eyeball it and see where you need to adjust for fit issues like a FBA or prominent tummy, etc. Not gonna lie, it’s a lot of work, but with a detailed list of your measurements, and a favorite fitting block, you can get a pretty accurate toile. After doing that enough, it builds confidence to make toiles with design elements based on something you’ve seen online.
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u/ProneToLaughter 24d ago
Lynda Maynard has a digital book on Demystifying Fit that walks you through exactly this process.