skirt design - croquis

 So the next step of the designing process is the croquis. The class recommends using a photo to use as a base, so I had my husband take a handful of photos of me. I've got front, diagonal, and back views, but I'm starting with just the front view. I might have him retake some pictures - the forward leg screws with perspective and makes it harder to draw on it. Suddenly I understand why so many clothes-showing photos have the leg to the *side* not forward, but this is a detail I hadn't really noticed until I started looking... One then traces the outline of the body onto paper.

I have a less defined waist than I'd thought, and a straighter hip, but otherwise I can't say there were a ton of surprises, given that I do look in the mirror fairly regularly.

Using this, she demonstrated how to sketch clothes onto the body. She demonstrated with a pencil skirt, an A-line short denim skirt, and a knee-length trumpet skirt, and recommended that we, the students, take elements from her designs, since she will be making these skirts on camera, and we can learn techniques from the construction of those skirts.

One of my biggest body insecurities is my varicose veins. I haven't worn shorts or a swimsuit in public since probably the end of high school or early university because that's about when the veins showed up. They're only one leg, and currently most visible above the left ankle, with another large patch below my left knee. I actually like my right leg, and if both legs looked like that, I wouldn't mind showing leg. But there we are.

I'd drawn my sock line into the croquis because I virtually always wear hand-knit socks. My shoes are sized to let me wear the socks, so not wearing socks makes my shoes too big. However, it occurs to me that the line could just as easily stand in for a footless tight. I have a handful of pairs (I think black, grey, navy, mid-blue, and purple) because I thought I wanted to try the tights-under-skirt look, but not having a lot of skirts, that makes it difficult.

I decided to go ahead and draw in a just-above-knee pencil skirt. I think this might work with the footless tights. The second sketch was an attempt at a princess-seamed trumpet skirt but I couldn't quite work out what kind of length I wanted it. The third is a long wool skirt - maybe a straightforward A-line, maybe a walking-skirt type thing, I'm not sure - but it looked odd until I thought to draw in my favorite cowl necked handknit sweater - and I think this might be a good winter look for me.

I don't know what fabrics to use yet, but we're still just in the doodling stage anyway. I'll need to mass-trace some croquis, or else get some tracing paper or something, and I didn't feel like doing more right now, so I'll just let the ideas percolate a bit more while I move on to the next part of the class.