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I’m just going to start right off and say: PatternMaster’s biggest problem in making much of anything suitable for the Burdastyle set is the necklines. Very few non-Vogue-model people have worn anything with a classic jewel neckline for about eight years now. A jewel neckline, in the classic sense, is one that goes right up to the base of the neck as closely as it possibly can. IT TOUCHES YOUR NECK ALL AROUND I could not handle that even if my extremely-developed-for-no-reason trapezius didn’t mean that my neck, in the sewing definition, is effectly less than an inch long. A jewel neck is what you get when you do up the last button on a dress shirt, something that pretty much no one does ever. All the collar options in PatternMaster are basically based on a close, strictly-defined jewelneck, and very few of the built-in neckline options seem to go more than an inch below the collarbones. There’s nothing wrong with that! People can be modest if they want!

… It’s kind of a niche market, as far as youngish fashion goes, though. And very few people - at least people with non-swan-necks - are going to be interested in any of the twenty-five potential collar styles if none of them can be deployed on anything lower than a clavicle-strangling jewel neck. If the pattern would just let you pair a peter pan collar with a scoopneck it would be about 90% more relevant to the young sewist of today. 

Anyway, here are the hippest things I could make with this program after spending two days on Modcloth and Anthropologie and fighting with it.

A boring office shirt with a shawl collar but with kind of a lot of potential usefulness

A boring raglan shirt with no collar because the program breaks if you try to put a collar on a raglan shirt - I would probably wind up drafting something.

Like, the same thing, but with waist pleats and pintucks on the sleeves. I think I actually would like this shirt IRL if I could make it, though again I would wind up having to self-draft a collar, which is annoying given that this is a $200 pattern-drafting program. 

Look, the exact same thing but with sleeves that tie instead of button! 

A straightforward blouse for more complicated fabric

This has slit sleeves, which is kind of cool. It doesn’t seem to be very clear on whether you can cut things on the bias (cutting them diagonal on the fabric so that it’s clingy like a 90s rayon sundress). 

Okay, so here’s something: you can make midriff bands, but only in the dress section, not in the blouse section. Midriff bands have been here for about six years and they don’t seem to be going away, given what I’m seeing on retailer websites, though the kids these days seem to be more into huge torso drape things. So in theory you could adjust the measurements on the dress to be a mini-mini-mini-dress and get a shirt. 

Here’s another one that’s slightly darling if made in a wee fragile fabric. 

One person reads this and I have bored her to tears now but I never promised I’d be interesting.

The thing is that it’s really easy to make something completely hiddy. It took me hours and hours to make the stuff above but about thirty seconds to make:

I am not going to tell you you should not have a bellbottom jumpsuit with a keyhole collar and puff sleeves. I’m just saying that it was way easier to make something frantically over-the-top then to make a sensible shirt that was slightly interesting. Honestly this program would be really fun for doing outfits for, like, Star Trek. You can also make a really convenient jilbab, which is cool but not my market. 

Like pretty much all fitting resources ever, it’s firmly stuck in the early 90s. Your pant options are “rib height: tapered”, “slightly less than rib height: pegged”, etc. The fact that I see pleated pants on young things in high heels now won’t change the fact that I want flat-front non-mom jeans. I might try a trial run at it when I have money and see if I can successfully sew a shirt, though. I will probably post prospective projects here. 

Tried to look at Vogue again yesterday, and I admit it was partially due to the fear that sewing people seem to have an easy time dressing like the decade they learned to sew in for the rest of their lives and I am scared by the mom jeans and ankle-length shirtdresses in the fitting textbooks. Retreated to the sewing blogs in aggravation. I think every school of fashion has its purpose and aim, and describes different things about the body, though in my case what I mostly try to describe is “today I combed my hair, I think” and I wouldn’t call that a school. Vogue seems to mostly be interested in alternately referencing and concealing a very small body; all of its clothes are made to exist in a kind of - dyad? - with a tall birdy frame. Which is fine! Just because caramel is a good topping for a cupcake doesn’t mean I want it on my eggs, but I’m neither going to look in a cupcake cookbook for omelette recipes nor argue for the annihilation of caramel. I get frustrated with the whole “none of those things are going to look good on Real Women” discussions around high fashion, because a) what are those polish teenagers on the runway, then, robots? b) it’s a story about what the human body is, and the fact that it’s not my story doesn’t mean it’s not someone’s. But here I am seeming to replicate the same discussion. 

Anyway as far as I can tell the runway story about the human body this season is a) it’s shaped like a bottle top with no torso and big hips b) it is completely concealed under a cylinder of fabric. I tried to look for sources here but I got bored. Keep an eye out and you will see the bottle tops around, though. 

P.S. Just because I have tried to think about this doesn’t mean I will EVER CARE ABOUT BAGS IT IS A BAG YOU PUT THINGS IN IT oh well I mean I care a lot about Stargate and everyone needs a hobby.

Click on the pictures to visit the Etsy sellers.