Making clothes in elastic fabrics, which follow the shape of the body and have a good fit is a great differential, both for those who sew professionally and for those who make clothes for their own use.
Knitted clothes never go out of fashion, as they are comfortable and easy to maintain and are present in various segments such as fitness fashion, pajamas, children's clothing, lingerie and beachwear, for example.
However, despite being quite popular, at the time of modeling it has some criteria that end up making the process difficult.
Know that it is very common to ask questions such as: How to work with fabrics that have elasticity? or even, how much should be reduced in the mold?
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And that's where I like to use draping, because we skip the elasticity calculations, a common practice for those who work with flat modeling. In draping this step does not need to be done, because when we position the knit on the mannequin, unlike the flat fabric, where we need to make the darts so that the clothing fits the body, in the knit we skip this step.
The part of transfers of brushes also does not happen, because we only need to worry about the stretching of the knit on the dummy and control not to stretch more on one side than on the other.
And know how we do it? We prepare the knit with checkers.
This is the only care we need to take when working with elastic fabrics in draping. We always need to do this preparation in the knit, through checkered markings.
The size and distance between them is up to you, I usually use my mattress ruler to do this step.
Another advantage is the time we are going to create and interpret the models, just make the base and we can do the interpretation and creation of models directly on the dummy. It's as if we have a canvas and we can create as we wish: we create the neckline, cutouts, length variations, add style elements, decorative details and best of all, already predicting how it will look.
For knitwear, especially in the fitness fashion niche, the ideal mannequin is the long-leg model, as some models of pants in this segment have cutouts.
As for lingerie, there is no need to be the model with the long leg, you can opt for the specific model for lingerie. Which also goes for beachwear.
Like the idea? Forget about knitting elasticity calculations, removing brushes or retracing patterns from scratch.
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Here at draping we just need to mark the knit and... voilà: Enjoy the process!
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It is very fast and assertive to work with the knit directly on the mannequin and the best of all is that we can obtain countless types of pieces: lingerie, bikinis, bathing suits, blouses, dresses, pants!
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I'll take the opportunity and leave a complete list of classes I recorded on my channel about knits. All are free classes, so I hope you enjoy this content, and that it is very useful for you.
In these classes you learn the whole process, how to prepare the knit for draping, how to draping different pieces such as: the basic block in the knit, tops, blouses, pants, swimwear, bikini, lingerie....