Day one
Today marked the first day of my Lingerie class, just after the French public Easter Monday holiday yesterday. I am very excited about this course and have studied Pattern Drafting and Garment Assembly at the same school leading up to this course. The only downside today though was my rotten cold, which evolved from a few sniffles a few short days ago into a fully blown sneezy, germ laden cold.
So, just a round up of today. The beginning of the class started with introductions. Of course you have to do it in French and I am never comfortable making public pronouncements about myself in French. So I kept it short and sweet. After that we were given a long list of items (fournitures) to buy. Here is a sample list of items in French, with translations in English where possible, just in case any readers out there are interested. I wont list them all as its a big list.
Rapporteur plastique – protractor
Compas avec rallonge – Compass with extension
Equerre – T Square
Porte-mines – Mechanical pencil
Pistolet – French curve
Bolduc – Designer tape
Poinçon – Awl or punch
Pic a patron métallique – Push pins
We also had to measure ourselves. It was particularly fun getting up close and personal with my fellow student Sophia. And it was all in French! The exercise was aimed at familiarising ourselves with the numbers, then comparing our measurements to size 40 (the standard/average size at our school, which is a small size 40) and see where we went right and wrong with our measuring. Which of course, we did. Particularly the bum measurements. Oh, and the crotch one too. Did I mention that measuring the boobs is quite difficult? We had all sorts of dramas trying to work out what size our boobs were ; the width, depth, under the boobs, over the boobs, the edge of the boob to the armhole. Not that easy.
Day Two
We wasted no time and started with the body suit today. Four hours of confusion, me stumbling quite a few times as I had no idea what the teacher was saying, and making a ‘Bêtise” I finally had my pattern drafted. With such a large group of students in the class the teacher can only describe each point and how to get to it. So if there is a time delay, as in my case, I end up missing steps. Thank goodness for the lovely helpful students around me who helped me. The pattern was not an easy one but I am glad it is finally done. Lets just say there are a lot of lines, perpendicular lines shall we say, within this pattern. And in total there are 59 separate steps to get to the finished product.
We then outlined all the separate pieces in color and started on a ‘Toile’. ( I don’t know this one in English but I guess Muslin?) Of course I had to make a huge mistake didn’t I when I started tracing the pattern pieces against the DF (Droit Fil, or grain). So I had to start again. Because I am a bit slow, and still rather sick with my cold I am going to have to finish this as homework in order to catch up a bit!
If you have any questions or comments please feel free to do so down below.
A plus!
M Sugar
Mademoiselle Sugar 