Sewing.com - Making a pattern from a RTW garment

Do you simply adore a blouse or slacks that you already own, whether ready-to-wear or not? I have a blouse that I bought from a catalog company. It fit perfectly, it was the right color and texture, and I was so happy with it; that is, until I washed it. Somehow, it ended up in the bleached load!! It was simply ruined. I tried to bleach it several more times to give it that tie-dyed look, but it didn't work; it served only to make it more ugly. I've been holding onto this shirt for a while and finally decided it was time to take it apart and make another shirt out of the pattern. I'm going to share with you the process and hopefully you can learn to revive a special garment too.

Tools:

The first step was to take the old garment apart and make pattern pieces. In order to do this properly, I needed to gather the right tools:

A good seam ripper. If your seam ripper is dull, replace it. There's no need to keep it for any project if it's not fresh and ready to cut those threads.

Pins. The pins will be used to attach notes to the pieces as you take the garment apart.

Sticky notes or small pieces of paper that are large enough upon which to write a substantial note - what is this piece, which is the front and which is the back seam, do I cut it on the fold, do I cut more than one?

Pen. You'll need this to write those notes.

After you have all the appropriate tools, get comfortable, inspect your garment, and get ready to pick out some stiches.

Inspecting the old:

Take a look at your garment. Can you leave half of it intact? If so, then this is your plan. For the purposes of this example, I did leave half of the shirt intact.

By leaving half of the shirt together, I will later be able to refer to the look of the garment, pocket placement, side seams (this shirt has about a 3" split at the bottom of the side seams), and other placement issues - buttonholes or frogs, etc. For this blouse, I did not take the neck binding off and will rely on a bias strip later to create the binding, as that's what the original shirt appeared to have.

In the case of this shirt, the half of the shirt not taken apart will serve as my pattern instructions for sewing the shirt together.

Taking it apart:

This blouse had a two-piece front with a pocket on it, as well as facings, sleeves, and a one piece back. I began by removing the sleeve, being careful to note whether there was a front or a back that needed to be marked. For this shirt, the front and back were the same, so I merely marked the piece as "sleeve".

Then I removed the side seam and shoulder seam to remove the back. It was at this point, after careful inspection, that I realized I could cut the back on the fold, so I took the blouse with the back partly removed to the ironing board, ironed in a strong crease in the middle of the back, and cut along the crease; thus, I left behind half of be back of the blouse and only took away half, which I marked as the back and with a note to cut it on the fold.

Next came the front. Recall that this blouse has a front top and front bottom, a pocket, and a facing. I removed the pocket and facing first, as they were the simplest pieces to take off. I marked them carefully with their piece names. At this point, I took out stiching that held the top two pieces together, marking them with their names and noting the position of the pocket that had been removed.

Front 2 pieces.

Front bottom/pocket.

Front facing.

Now that we have it all apart, it's time to press all the pieces and make a decision. Do you want to transfer these pieces to paper (i.e., newsprint, the back of wrapping paper, etc.) or can you use them as is? I've chosen to cut my pattern with the fabric as is, but if you do choose to make a paper pattern, it is at this point that you would trace the pieces onto paper and write your instructions on the paper pattern pieces.

Next - Cutting out and constructing the new.