…custom croquis…

The more I get into sewing, and the more I scroll sewing insta, the more I get thinking about different way to combine shapes and silhouettes to create something unique. Most recently, I’ve had a delivery of swimwear fabric that I can’t wait to make up into something cute for summer.

The starting point is obviously to sketch it out. Sketching it out requires a croquis/blank model to sketch on. The problem with stock design croquis is they are tall and willowy and ideally figured, and I am…not. I’ve been pondering it for a couple of days and this morning I hit on a solution.

I would DIY it. Because why wouldn’t I?

Once I hit upon the idea, it was such an obvious solution. It took under 10 minutes to pull together, in the end. I popped on some well fitting active wear (my Avery leggings, and a commercial crop top), and got one of the kids to snap a couple of full length photos on my phone.

From there, I simply airdropped them to my iPad and imported them to a new a4 file in procreate. To create the croquis, I lowered the opacity of the photo and enlarged it to take up most of the page. On a new layer, I chose a black 6B pencil brush, large size, and started sketching the outline. Once I had the outline, I added another new layer to mark bust/waist/hips for proportions when I’m sketching. Repeat the process for the second pose and… voila!

Two me-shaped design blanks to sketch all my ideas on!! Far from perfect, obviously – the neckline on the front-on me needs fixing for a start – but they will work perfectly as a base layer that I can refine and tidy up on actual design sketches. I’ve also left the reference photos in the file, and just turned them off, so I can compare designs to an actual me, not just a sketched me.

With that done, it’s time to get to the fun part of actually getting this ideas out of my head and onto paper…or onto screen, more correctly. I have 6 weeks until what will hopefully be our first beach weekend of the season, so plenty of time to tweak my swimmers design and get them made up…who am I kidding. Six weeks? I’m cancelling my weekend plans and working on the pattern first thing tomorrow!