Patterns From Finished Clothes: Re-Creating the Clothes You Love

by Tracy Doyle

“Step-by-step, the photos and line drawings show how to copy pants, sleeves, pleats, shirring, pockets, and other details. It covers copying asymmetrical garments and knit clothing that is stretched out of shape....Doyle suggests ways to vary the pattern, then shows garments she’s collected from used clothing stores to study for unusual details...I’m glad to welcome this book to my library.”—The Creative Machine.

Genres: Sewing, Nonfiction, Reference, Crafts

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Dave Schwinn]

Scored this at Half price Books. No information here you can't find on the Internet today. But it felt really good to hold a BOOK on a topic that is still an issue today. Clothes that fit.

[Kati]

This book gives good instructions on how to make patterns from clothes you already have. It covers a lot of different situations, includes tips on copying clothes that are stretched out or worn from use, and importantly, covers pants, which a lot of similar books skip. The consignment shop examples in the back feel like they were just padding the text up, but the rest of the book is a good instruction manual.

[L]

If I was going to try to re-create any of my clothes, I would definitely look for this book again. I'm probably not. I am starting to try to learn to sew again, and this book has a few little tidbits of information that might be useful to the beginning seamstress. The instructions were very clear, and the book had plenty of pictures to illustrate the text.

[Alessandra]

A useful book for analyzing garments and drafting patterns from them in order to recreate them.