"Patternmaking for Menswear" by Myoungok and Injoo Kim

[jruley]

Curious if anyone has used the subject book, published 2014 by Bloomsbury and which I recently bought from Amazon.

The authors' approach looks interesting.  Tight-fitting "slopers" are drafted to measure and fitted to the upper and lower body.  Once adjusted, these are further manipulated to make different styles of trousers, shirts, vests, jackets, etc.

Is this a viable route to personal wardrobe patterns?  Or is it likely to result in twice as much work, because the patterns for finished garments will have to be fitted anyway?

[theresa in tucson]

J, speaking purely from a home sewer's point of view, using a drafting book as a basis for a personal wardrobe is going to cause you more work.  I've got a minimum of experience in drafting and have never been able to get a wearable garment that fits me well in one or two iterations and drafting a well fitting pants pattern has completely eluded me. 

The sloper is tight fitting.  To get a wearable garment you must add wearing ease; make a muslin to check for fit; add design details; check them for fit; lather, rinse, repeat.  It's best to start with a basic garment, a "basic block" that fits you and copy it.  Then you can add details and change it.  Don't try to take a bodice sloper and make a coat pattern.  Start with a coat that fits.  Now a drafting book can certainly help with design details and changing the basic block but never create from scratch when you can copy what is already working.

My successful jeans pattern was based on a paper pattern from Boostrap Patterns adjusted to fit the way my favorite jeans fit with some details thrown in from a McCall's pattern.  That was two muslins, three iterations of wearable jeans tinkering with small details, and lots of time spent with the measuring tape.  But I'm fitting myself without help so that takes much longer.

[Henry Hall]

Can I just point out that questions about patterns/drafts and discussion relating to books should be in the parent forum of the Apprentice section rather than the child (patternmaking/construction). The latter are for reference material and tutorials/guides that are not derailed or littered with conversation.

Sorry to seem uppity about this.

[posaune]

well, I looked with google book and I think it is worth a try. I could not see the drafting of back crotch -a pity the front looks okay.
(Your figur problem is not included inn the fitting as far I can see - but it is anyway a difficult one)
I think the drafting of a "Grundschnitt"(basic pattern) or sloper is valuable for you to check the measures and do the necessary alteration. If you now add more of less ease or the armhoel is deeper or... or... the alterations
will be always the same. The hanging of the side with 2 cm is with an ease of 4 the same as with an ease of 8.
So when you take your proofed and trued sloper and add the ease you wish you will have to make some changings due to the fabric you work with or maybe you do not like the design. But you will not have to fit from the basic.
lg
posaune
As I'm very carefull with asian proportional systems - because the porportions are others then the proportion for a nordic type - I think this looks good. But it is a modern draft.

[jruley]

Can I just point out that questions about patterns/drafts and discussion relating to books should be in the parent forum of the Apprentice section rather than the child (patternmaking/construction). The latter are for reference material and tutorials/guides that are not derailed or littered with conversation.

Sorry to seem uppity about this.

Sorry!  I didn't realize that's how this area was divided.  Looks like we have four threads that have turned into conversations, so I'll send Hutch a PM asking him to move them.

Maybe moderator status should be required to post in the Reference sections, since posts are to be locked?

[jruley]

J, speaking purely from a home sewer's point of view, using a drafting book as a basis for a personal wardrobe is going to cause you more work.  I've got a minimum of experience in drafting and have never been able to get a wearable garment that fits me well in one or two iterations and drafting a well fitting pants pattern has completely eluded me. 

Thanks, but my experience with drafting has been different.  I got usable results for trousers the first time using both a German draft (Flingelli) and the "Mansie" draft from the C&T forum, though in each case a flat seat adjustment was needed.  I don't wear vests much (except for historical reenactments), but the 1907 Croonborg draft worked OK when I made a novelty one to wear one Christmas.  My shirt pattern OTOH started as a McCall's product.  It was grossly oversized and I'm still not totally satisfied with it except for casual use.

The sloper looks simple to draw, so I suppose I could do worse than make one up and see what it tells me.

The book is quite new, so I'm still curious if anyone here has actually used it.

[xavierrai]

This book is on my list, a colleague had a copy and used it to teach part of her pattern making class.  Once you have a well fitting sloper (which does take a few fittings to adjust to how you like clothes to fit) you would have a pretty versatile way to make a variety of modern clothing.

[TTailor]

I'd have to say that there are numerous issues with the close fitting sloper draft that Jruley is currently trying to fit.
i have only seen this draft and not all the modifications that supposedly go with it to turn it into something else.
Many ladies wear drafting systems such as Natalie Bray, have you develop a basic block for a person or size and develop other styles and garments from there. I wonder if they are advocating this approach to appeal to people who are more familiar with ladies wear pattern development.

In my opinion the "close fitting sloper" is neither fish nor fowl as they say.

A close fitting sloper or What I would call a block, should be shaped to fit the body and this is not.

If you want to turn it into a shirt, well the neckline seems too big. More like a jacket width and depth.

The armhole shaping is more appropriate for a shirt, not for a close fitting block for a jacket. There are no darts until you move into the dart section of development.
The shoulder seam is set up like a shirt rather than either a jacket or something closely fitting the body. A shoulder dart is pretty basic required shaping for both men and women. And no, they have not transferred the shaping to the waist dart in back.
The front is completely straight, like a shirt, but I don't know if they modify the neck point placement at some other point for a jacket......

Can you tell I am not impressed?

[Henry Hall]

I totally agree. In women's wear you see the development of a draft (this so-called 'sloper', a word I learned here) that can be turned into a dress as well as other similar garments.

To me, for menswear anyway, this approach seems like more work with all the tweaking that would be necessary to move between different kinds of garments - which all have features that aren't interchangeable.

What is wrong with making a coat block(s), shirt block(s) etc. A set of blocks that can be altered for style in a jiffy rather than having this idea of a universal master block to work from. It can't work in many cases because, in my opinion, a shirt doesn't fit like a jacket (at all).

[posaune]

ohoh,
In womans I do a tight fitting garment (which is not for wear) to test all my measurements and the relations body to draft. This can never be done without darts and only side seam shaping.
From this I proceed to basic pattern (what you maybe call block): knitted, dress, blouse, jacket, coat. Inside these 4 basics I can develop severall ease steps  (with more or less darting) - tight fitting - fitting - loose fit as numerous sleeve styles.
Since I read men's tailor pages I read about the wish of tight tight fitting shirts - but, please, no darts. So this draft is maybe the answer to this request. It is what could be called an unisex draft. It will work in Ladies till bust circ 100. Beside the neck hole - but maybe this a mistake in general with this system. And I too would call it loose fitting and would use it for T-shirts, pyjamas or other "shapeless" garments (leisure ??).  You can work with it without any knowledge of iron work or the finess of tailoring work for gents.
lg
posaune
They wrote that they have a darted version.

[jruley]

I don't know whether this book is any good or not; after all I've only worked with the close-fitting sloper draft.

However, I would suggest looking at the whole volume before passing judgement. 

The drafts show both the close-fitting sloper as I made, and a version with darts in the front and back.  The section on fitting issues is small, but most of the illustrations show the darted version. 

The basic close-fitting shirt draft also has darts; and other styles are presented with things like princess seams.

In addition to slopers for woven garments, there is a chapter on knits.

[lepus]

I'd have to say that there are numerous issues with the close fitting sloper draft that Jruley is currently trying to fit.
i have only seen this draft and not all the modifications that supposedly go with it to turn it into something else.
Many ladies wear drafting systems such as Natalie Bray, have you develop a basic block for a person or size and develop other styles and garments from there. I wonder if they are advocating this approach to appeal to people who are more familiar with ladies wear pattern development.

In my opinion the "close fitting sloper" is neither fish nor fowl as they say.

A close fitting sloper or What I would call a block, should be shaped to fit the body and this is not.

If you want to turn it into a shirt, well the neckline seems too big. More like a jacket width and depth.

The armhole shaping is more appropriate for a shirt, not for a close fitting block for a jacket. There are no darts until you move into the dart section of development.
The shoulder seam is set up like a shirt rather than either a jacket or something closely fitting the body. A shoulder dart is pretty basic required shaping for both men and women. And no, they have not transferred the shaping to the waist dart in back.
The front is completely straight, like a shirt, but I don't know if they modify the neck point placement at some other point for a jacket......

Can you tell I am not impressed?

I developed some interest in the book after a member here started using it and after I could find only glowing reviews of it on Jeff Bezos's site. The book carries a rather hefty price tag, so I used only the publicly available pages for a first impression; consequently my views are based on that source alone. In addition, I have to declare an interest, or rather a disinterest: I take a dim view of publications that talk about "bicep", as some singular singular of the intrinsic plural "biceps", without caring about how painfully silly that is.

The book looks to be intended for students in the fashion and design industries who want to create a variety of garments for men. It offers "components" for them to "compose" new garments with, as well as giving examples in a wide range of applications. It does so by using a limited number of master patterns, called slopers, which it modifies and adapts. In concept it is therefore similar to Winifred Aldrich's book "Metric Pattern Cutting for Menswear" (1982), which does the same, although that has only about a quarter of the pages and fewer variations.

Because the sloper is at the foundation of a garment pattern development, it is very important that it is constructed correctly. There are instructions to take measurements and it has some advice on how to fit, but that doesn't seem to be the primary objective. It may be enough though for a student to produce a sample garment for a fellow student to model. In contrast, for example A.A. Whife's "Cutting from Block Patterns" (not dated) has a great deal of information on how to adapt a block for figure peculiarities, apart from descriptions of a number of style variations (it of course uses block patterns instead of slopers, i.e. a further development stage).

I'm not sure I'd concur with everything the book says about measuring and sloper construction though, and I'll mention some considerations here.

Sloper construction is divided into those for wovens, pants, sleeves and knits. Take the wovens as an example; these are two slopers for the male torso, called Slim Fit and Classic Fit. Those names wrongly suggest an association with fit, but they simply are straight slopers with 4" and 6" ease respectively on the chest circumference measure. The chest measure is of crucial importance here as it determines the widths (and also some heights as proportional derivatives) in the pattern.
The description of how to take this measurement is a bit particular: in a plane parallel to the floor through a point on the sternum "midway between where the third and fourth ribs meet the vertical center line of the sternum". In other words, in the anterior third intercostal space; easy enough to find for a doctor, nurse or physiotherapist, but for any reader? It doesn't help that in the illustration on page 13 the chest measurement (1, line A in the figure) apparently is taken below the biggest part of the chest (line B).

Fig. 1


A few words on how to take the measure when the largest circumference is not in anterior intercostal III wouldn't have gone amiss for those readers who assume they can blindly trust the directions, in my view.

Another peculiarity is to be found in the measurement tables for the across-front and across-back measure, called Front Interscye and Back Interscye. X-back is always 0.5" larger than X-front (with reference to half chest), while A.A. Whife gives a table where, except in sizes 30 and 32, X-front is always larger than X-back, for size 48 even 1" larger (for half chest). There is probably some style variation involved, but I can't explain this difference.

For some reason, the illustrations in the book appear not always to be to scale. For the sloper Woven, Classic Fit (page 37), the vertical "scaffolding" lines are shown dashed, while the calculated lines are solid.

Fig. 2


As shown, the sloper itself is of the straight type, virtually the same type as Winifred Aldrich uses in her book. Assuming that the balance (blue lines in the figure symbolise critical dimensions) is correct and that neck, shoulders and armhole fit, below the last point of body contact the sloper is a tube or curtain that hangs straight down.

Fig. 3


If the body fits within this tube, you're in luck, because there is no adaptation described for prominent hips, waists or seats; those measurements are not taken into account at all for the bodice sloper. In fact, searching the index for words like "corpulence" shows up nothing, possibly because the condition simply doesn't exist in the USA. Even if the real body dimensions don't push against the tube, they may still eat away at the ease where it is expected to be, making further modifications difficult or their effects unpredictable, for instance when taking out waist surplus in the three waist darts. It would perhaps have been helpful if suitable modifications were discussed at the sloper construction stage, but as said, the book seems to pursue a different objective.

What struck me as weird is the advised ease distribution in a sleeve head. Page 32 suggests that 30% of it is to be taken up in the lower third of the armhole. Apart from when a bigger sleeve has been cut to fit around a very muscular arm, I fail to see any functionality associated with that, other than to hide the ease left over from bad technique, wrong calculations or inaccurate patterns.

Fig. 4


Concluding, for those who want to create a variety of garments based on a sloper and when the body to be clothed falls within the limitations of the sloper construction, it may well be a useful and comprehensive source. If the body doesn't comply with those limits however, you're on your own. How difficult that can be, even with practically one-to-one guidance, is shown elsewhere on this forum.

[Greger]

Never liked the word sloper with clothes for males. Always figured it had something to do with women's upper bodies. Since some guys use it I started wondering if it is a term from some other language, German, Netherlands, Italy, somewhere? If it is not legitimately a word from real tailors I'd rather not see it around clothes for males concerning tailoring. I'd like to keep the tailors world pure.The tailors world is its own. The rtw fashion world is its own. And, women's clothing is its own. I like organization, which is division, and certainly not mangled together. So, what is the true history of the word sloped? Where does it belong, and, not?