One of the most important decisions you will have to make is choosing the right fabric for your designs.  Some fabrics lend themselves to knits and some to woven fabrics.  Test your ability to pick the right fabric for your designs ,by feeling all the fabrics on clothing you own. First step FEEL IT! You are testing the HAND of the fabric. Is it soft , is it stiff , is it heavy is it light. Then look at the content tag to read what the garment is made of. This is a law, by the way, in the USA. You can also try to tell if the fabric is woven or knitted or a combination of both. I have told you before that stretch fabric may be combined with woven fabrics to add a little stretch for comfort.  If you have read my last post you will see my introduction to woven fabrics set up on a loom.

Knitted fabrics are  not created on a flat  loom, but on a circular one. I have seen some being knitted at  the textile fabric mills when I worked in the garment industry. There are many, many types of knit stitches , but  the knowledge of a few basics will be helpful to you.  Hand stitching is a common stitch  for beginners to learn how to knit. It is described as a plain stitch by people who stitch. On what we call the  FACE side, you will see row after row of the plain stitch climbing up. On the BACK side of the knitted fabric. You will see is called a horizontal PEARL stitch. Fabrics that are knitted  can be very complicated and can change from basic knitting to a knit pattern that the loom can knit. Rachael stitch is just one example  of the fancy stitches you can work with, usually not very stretchy.

A rib stitch is usually knit two pearl two.This stitch is usually used for cuffs or any where you want garments be tight. It stretches very much when pulled, and sometime will not recoil A full garment made from this  stitch will  not cling to the body easily.  You see it on tank tops a lot.

A stitch that is a good one for beginners to use is  a top weight double knit  It  is what I required for my students at Palm Beach Community College  to use for a tee shirt. It is really a double knit, but not a heavy one like the original double knit was used in the 70,s It was introduced to women that need stretch in their pants. Men wore garments worn out of this double knit also. What a sad time for the garment industry. Double Knit pant Suits loved by men too.

We eventually came up with more and more combination of fibers that will stretch a lot. You see them in work out stores now with amazing man made (synthetic) textiles. a whole lot  of books have been written about all there subjects. check them out and pick one to buy. The stitches we see in work out wear garments today does not get out of shape easily like the rib knit stitch because they are loaded with synthetic fibers ,sometimes only man made fibers  (synthetic) Check out my next post about Comparing fabrics  from natural to synthetic

You dressed your dolls when you were young, You need to learn what type of material worked then. My granddaughter learned how to sew on her sisters sewing machine. She made a tube dress for her doll and wondered why she could not stretch this fabric on her doll. She made a new tube dress out of knit and it pulled up perfectly.There are woven fabrics and various knit types to choose from. You should know how to make your dress (work) based on the garments you sketched.A good lesson would be while shopping, check looking,feeling,fabrics as you go. Remember, to look at knitted fabrics and woven ones. Nowadays many woven fabrics will include some stretch fabrics.

Start with WARP WOVEN FABRICS on a long cutting table just like the tiny pot holders you made for your family back in the day. In factory’s,the fabrics that support woven come in various weight,from heavy yarns for jeans and other stronger yarns to various thin fabric very sheer fabric.

Weft is the name of the fabric that goes across the loom over and under each yarn which can vary according to unless the fabric desired.It has to be suitable,for your design. So I sent you to a large store to look at fabrics. The right fabric for the design is really important. Now go to a fabric store and feel a lot of fabrics. See if there is any stretch in some of the woven,because that will dictate how your ideas work or not

I have already given you a chart for high fashion illustration on a tall model. Most designers like to sketch their illustrations on a tall (10 head) fashion model. The clothing looks great on the tall runway models. You will still count off the 10 heads as I suggest on the static illustration in the sketching lesson I showed you in the last post. In my action figure illustration you can see the the model looks like she is moving forward. Her back leg is away from the front leg and she does not look like she is falling over. This is because her weight is distributed between both of her legs. If that were not the case she would look like she is falling over. The simple rule of thumb is that from her earlobe to the floor will be somewhere between her legs, I have drawn what is called the balance line on this illustration.If the model is leaning against a pole or holding on to one you can break the balance rule. Again practice practice. Check out some of my other illustrations here and you can find the balance line, so they look like they are standing up straight. Taking a class in figure drawing is a good option to learn more about how to draw fashion figures Other options are to draw your garments only. in the industry we call these FLATS. I will post more information about how to draw posts. The must show all details about the garment including seams,darts etc. This will indicate as to how the pattern should be made.

The general proportion of the fashion figure is what we call in the industry a 10 head high figure. Most fashion models have long necks and long legs. Their body length can be average. The average female is about 7 or 8 heads high. What do we mean about that? I am enclosing here a chart for you to go by, when you are learning to draw a fashion figure. When you are starting to draw your designs you will want them to look like these tall models, but remember, other proportions of the body need to make sense, If you are not an artist and have not drawn the human figure you might get the proportions of the body wrong and then wonder why your designs do not like look like the ones you see in magazines. Check out the sketch I have enclosed. Study it and make yourself a chart like mine to learn about the proportions to make your designs look great. You will first draw the head and the neck. this is head high one. I use the standard 1 inch for each head. This fits easily on an 8×10 space. If you like to draw larger use a 1 and 1/2 head and neck height. Complete your chart down the page in a straight line to create your master chart. Later I will show you a chart with the figure in action. When you get to the shoulders make sure they are wide enough for a good illustration. Most shoulders are drawn at least ,what we call,two heads wide. Draw the rest of your body on the chart from the neck to the chest to the approximate waistline. Then the upper hip to the widest point of the hip down to the bottom of the body as on my chart. This length can vary but usually the whole body is around 4 heads high. Now we have 6 heads left for the long legs of a model. Tall people all seem to have really long legs. Illustrators usually use proportions similar to the ones on my chart or longer, Fashion designers will draw legs as long as they want sometimes only drawing a suggestion of the feet. Go ahead and get started. Have fun with it. Later I will show you haw to give action to your Illustration

.  Look for my Fashion Coloring Book pages  selling for $1.00 now on my  Etsy sight . Go to my web page johannafashiondesign.com and go to my etsy pages scroll to the bottom of the site and click go to my Etsy site johannafashionworld