LAY PLAN FOR MY SHIFT DRESS...

A task that I have to complete in order to achieve my grade for my manufacturing brief, is to complete a Lay Plan. These are important in industry, as they allow manufacturer's to know how much fabric they will need, so they reduce the risk of wasting fabric quantities and money. I created a Lay Plan for my shift dress, as it will be the first garment I make, so it seems convenient to create a Lay Plan, so I know how much of my fabric I will need. I did have a little bit of excess but nothing that I would be able to create a large pattern from. I found this one quite simple and straight forward as it is a basic cut dress with a facing and additional circles.

LAY PLANS FOR MY LEGGINGS...

As part of my functional skills criteria for the day I had to attempt to create a lay plan for my leggings creating a different lay plan for three fabrics. I started by measuring the paper to what width and meters needed I needed and started to place my patterns in the most confined spacing to reduce wastage. I completed two and still have one to complete but I shall complete that soon. I found this task a little bit confusing because I got mixed up with how I positioned the pieces so I learned from that mistake and hopefully won't make that mistake again. I also completed a costing sheet which allowed me to work out how much I actually needed not what I thought I needed.

CREATING MY BLOCKS AND PATTERNS FOR LEGGINGS...

For the last week I have been creating my leggings block for my manufacturing brief as I didn't want to use a trouser pattern. I found this process quite simple following instructions from a Winnie Aldrich book. After I had created that I could move onto patterning and simply traced around the blocks attached the front and back together removing the side seam and drawing 1cm seam allowance and that was my pattern done. I had to use 1cm seam allowance as I am working with stretch fabric so over locking the seams together. If you ever struggle to find a good pattern cutting book I recommend Winnie Aldrich it's simple to follow and has everything in it.