Vanilla Kitten

My favorite style of Victorian clothes have a more-or-less rectangular front, so I started my pattern with a rectangle for the front. I'm using paper towels to draft my pattern because they behave more like fabric, but I can still draw on them with pen. The dart in the side is to help it lie flat over her generous bosoms.

I kind of skipped a few steps here, but all I did was cut another rectangular piece to go on the side. I taped the flat edge to the front, pulled the bottom to the side, and marked the seam with pen. Then I cut it off with a seam allowance on the side. I just folded the top half to the angle I wanted for her neckline and attacked it with my pen.

This might clarify things a little. You can see where the pieces are taped together and how I angled the top up. But you can also see that it's sticking out awkwardly, so you have to collapse the corner sticking up next to her chest until it folds in flat. That's a dart. You will probably want to mark it with a pen and tape it down.

Here's my dart folded down and taped. At this point, I taped all the pieces to the doll in the place I wanted, pressed the paper towel right up against her shoulder joint, and drew a semi-circle for the sleeve opening. Then I pulled the side free and cut a matching circle about a quarter-inch away from my seam line. And that's how I ended up with the confusing side piece. After taping everything back down again, it was time to make the back.

I followed a similar method to com up with this back piece. The major difference being that I put the straight edge of my paper towel along her spine, because that side would go on a fold when it came time to cut these out. I taped the back down and folded the side under until it matched the seam line on the side, marked my new seam, and taped that down.

I drew a line on the back with my pen, marking out the back of the neckline and folded the excess under. Then I adjusted the position of the shoulder seam until it looked straight, marked both pieces, taped them together, and drew a new, adjusted armhole, and cut around it. I only had one more piece to go before I had all the pattern pieces I needed.

The sleeve. Sleeves scared me for a while, because I could never make sense out of them, until I played around with paper towels and finally figured out the weird shape. First, you have to make a tube (or cone) that is as wide as you want at both ends. For my Victorian shirt, I want to add the shoulder-puffs, so I made the sleeves wider at the top. For a t-shirt sleeve, a straight tube will do, and for a fantasy-style sleeve, reverse the cone, so the wrist is wider than the shoulder.

Line the sleeve up with your armhole and trace the armhole onto the sleeve. It helps to put you sleeve at about a 45-degree angle to your shirt, which is what gives a sleeve its unusual shape. For my Victorian sleeves, I lined up the bottom seams so the lower part of the sleeve would be fitted with the puffiness only at the top. For a fitted sleeve there shouldn't be much excess. Or, if you want puffy princess sleeves, make the mark in the middle of the sleeve so you have gathering on top and bottom.

This is the sleeve with the excess cut off. This time I did not leave a seam allowance because my sleeve ended up not being long enough, so the cut line is the seam. And you can see a typical sleeve shape emerge.

This is what the sleeve looks like with the rest of the pattern. You can see the pleating on top giving it the distinct puffiness of Victorian sleeves while the rest lies flat.

And here's another shot of the finished pattern on the doll. If you made it this far, congrats. Now all you have to do is take it apart into its pieces, pin it to some fabric, and cut out the pieces.

This is what the pattern looks like after you've carefully untaped it and laid all the pieces flat. It looks amazingly like professional pattern pieces, so good on you for doing it all with paper towels, pen, and tape. That process is called sloping and you can do it for a person using throwaway fabric (old t-shirts or bedsheets).

Since my patterns are small, I like to trace them onto my fabric with either pencil or chalk so they wash out later. This is a helpful practice because the pin bumps can sometimes distort a piece when they're small. Also, as I mentioned, my sleeve was too short, so I added some space at the bottom and traced between the two points.

Here I've traced a few more pieces onto my fabric and I've also folded the fabric and pinned the layers together. This way I can cut 2 pieces from one tracing and I can also place the center of my back on a fold to get one symmetrical back piece. This can save time, effort, and fabric if you do it right. I bought a yard of this fabric and with all these pieces, I think I used less than a square foot of it.