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Wednesday, January 22, 2025
How To Make A Muslin Mockup
Sew Historically: First of all, I hate making mockups! đ But theyâre essential for a good fit of the garment. I usually have to make more than one mockup before Iâm finally satisfied with the fit: especially for form-fitting garments like corsets and tailored garments like jackets.
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Making a mockup is one of the most difficult things for me to wrap my head around as a costume designer. Following a pattern is easy enoughâyouâre given perfectly-sized pieces to cut and instructions on how to sew them together. Draping is a little more difficult, but it usually is pretty forgiving unless youâre working with difficult fabric or a tight fit. But, in order to make a successful mockup, you have to go through rounds and rounds of revision before you have a finished product. Being able to take a three-dimensional shape and split it into two-dimensional sections is a lot more difficult than it sounds! Although it isnât usually the designer who is doing the patternmaking and mockups for their designs, I think itâs still important that they have an understanding of how it works. If you grasp mockups, you can have a lot more productive conversations with the tailor/seamstress who is making your costume.
I have often seen muslin mockups of costumes in many different settings. Sometimes it's been my sisters, my friends cosplays or other theatre shows and have always wondered how they were made. It was not something at the top of my research list but when I saw this article I jumped at the chance to read it. It was interesting to read about how to make one and then to read about the different fabrics and their substitutes when making a mockup. As someone who has never really done anything with costumes, I have always wondered what all goes into it. When it came to the fitting sections I was surprised to learn that it is adjusted by just cutting the fabric and adding another piece. It seems like a basic solution but for whatever reason I had never thought of it like that, I got the idea of taking it in but for whatever reason just had not thought that deeply about it needing to go bigger.
I thought it was funny that the author acknowledges she hates making mockups at the beginning of the article; me too! As someone who makes custom patterns a lot, mockups are a frustratingly important part of the process. I often find myself wanting to cut corners and not make one, because putting one together can sometimes feel like such a waste of time and resources. If I have 20 other costumes to alter and barely a couple yards of scrap fabric, do I really have the time and ability to functionally sew a whole new garment just to make sure it fits properly? The answer is always yes, because you have to. Despite how hard I try to convince myself otherwise, making a mockup will ALWAYS save so much more time and resources than if I just sat down and fully constructed an ill fitting garment. If the planning stars align and a lot of people are wearing garments with the same pattern base, I can use just one mockup with color-coded markings which always makes me begrudgingly admit the value of them. One aspect that is unfortunately frustrating no matter what you do, is the fact that the cheaper fabrics used for mockups often struggle to mimic the exact qualities of the final fabric you use. Mock-ups will help prevent a lot of mistakes, but issues with the final fabric itself, like stretch or stiffness, still pop up.
Iâve always struggled with making mockups for my sewing projects. I usually get fabric for free from various sources so I havenât felt the need to create a test piece out of cheap fabric. This article has enlightened me as to how useful mockups can be when you need to make alterations during the sewing process. I might try to make a mockup for my next project especially if it is a form-fitting garment. I have never made a mockup before and I feel that I would have had an easier time with my past projects with them. I didnât know that mockups are usually made with the seams facing outward, but that makes a lot of sense to me now that I know how to properly use one. I often use knit and upholstery fabric for my garments straying from fabrics with stretch, this will probably be easier to find a mockup fabric for because it is easy to find cheap tablecloths and curtains to use for fabric.
I have not really made a mock up before. I tend to just follow the pattern that I have and hope it works out, which is not the most sound of plans. I have done alterations on the garment fabric before, but it doesnât really work on patterned fabric when there needs to be fabric added in places, it can look a little strange. Muslin mock-ups would definitely remove that issue since the pattern could be set up from the beginning with no question on whether the piece would fit or not. I admire the people who do so much work like this consistently for a well fitting garment. I know I would not be able to do that all day and the little I do would not be done particularly well. However, with the help of this article and instructional video, I hope to work on my mock up skills so that one day I can do it properly and stop messing up my patterned fabric.
As someone who really enjoys sewing, but doesnât have any experience with doing any of my own patterning or draping of garments, I thought that this was a really interesting article to read. I definitely never would have thought that in a muslin mockup, leaving the raw edges out would be a good strategy to make it easier to adjust the item. It definitely makes a lot of sense, that way you can more easily rip out seams and adjust them while the mockup garment is still on the person or mannequin, but Iâm so used to sewing and making sure that all of my raw edges end up inside that I never would have considered doing that. I liked how this article discussed the challenges of creating muslin mockups that accurately reflect what the actual garmentâs fit will be like. Obviously, every different fabric is so unique in how it does things, and muslin is not a perfect representation of the drape and stretch of most fabrics.
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