How to Trace Patterns from Clothing

Ever wanted a piece of clothing to fit like your favourite item? Why not trace the pattern and make it yourself! This post will show you a quick introduction to how you can copy a pattern straight from a piece of clothing.
Lay out your garment as flat as possible where you want to trace. I am tracing the right leg below:

Place the garment flat along the side seams. As you can see in the picture, the front trouser leg is smaller than the back. The shaded area in the picture on the right is the extra fabric. You need to follow the shape of the unshaded area so fold any extra fabric out of the way when tracing.

Once you've traced around the basic shape of the front, add in any details such as waistbands and pockets. You can do this easily by measuring the size on the garment and drawing it into place on the pattern. With these trousers, I was also able to pull out the pocket to trace around the pocket bag shape:

Next trace the back. As before, place along a side seam and trace. After tracing the inside leg, I had to carefully pull the fabric along to find the seam on the other side. An easier way to do this is to measure the width of the back piece on the garment then draw onto the pattern:

As with the front, measure on the garment and draw on any details.

Once front and back are drawn, you can place another sheet on top of the first and trace each separate pattern off of the drawing. Add seam allowance and construct!

DIY Print - Vintage Knit Jumper

A couple months ago I went to The East End Thrift Store for the first time. The store is a treasure trove full of old vintage clothes with one catch - you've got to rummage through the mountains (and I mean mountains) of clothes to find something worth buying. 
The great thing about this place, however, is that you have the opportunity to fit everything you can into one of their small or medium bags and you get everything in it for £10 or £20 - depending on your bag size.
So my sister and I decided to take up the challenge head on... After some thorough digging, we came away with a £20 bag of 7 items of clothing, making each piece less than £3! Success! We kept some items for ourselves and we sold a few through eBay making a nice profit.
One item I still have with the intention of selling is this cute white jumper:

As it is quite plain, I've decided to improve it and make it a bit more interesting and contemporary by creating a colourful print.
To do this I used fabric paint and a stencil:

Using the stencil as a guide, with a protective layer inside the sleeve, I created a bright floral pattern:

I did this on both sleeves:

I then felt that there needed to be a pop of colour at the neck also to help create a more cohesive design:

To finish off, I fixed in the colour by ironing for 1-2 mins. And there we have it, a new jumper!

I will be selling the jumper through my Etsy shop: DesignedBySunna for under a tenner, where you will also find this lovely beaded slogan t-shirt:

Where to Find Creative Design Inspiration

The internet is a BIG place. So when it comes to finding inspiration for creative projects it can seem like a daunting task and you often have to trawl through irrelevant sites before stumbling upon something really inspiring. So I thought it would be a good idea to share some of my favourite websites with you:
1. Patternity This website is one of my most recent finds and I absolutely love it! Great quality images of different patterns found around the world. As I was scrolling through I was prompted to sign up with my email address and then I was able to view the whole archive. I recommend this as I haven't been bombarded with any emails from them. http://patternity.org/

2. This Is Glamorous This is a design and lifestyle blog about the most glamourous of places and things. Beautiful photographs of luxury and exquisite design within decor, fashion, travel and food. http://www.thisisglamorous.com/

3. Trendland

Trendland delivers new ideas and style notes daily with some great imagery to go with it. Areas covered are fashion, design, photography, art, culture, music and video. I often discover new photographers and artists that I love here.

http://trendland.com/

4. Patternbank

This website gives design inspiration for print, pattern and graphics as well as supplying fashion trend forecasts.

http://patternbank.com/

5. Charlotte Audrey Owen-Meehan

This tumblr is only a recent find but if you love colour you'll love this blog too. Charlotte posts pop-culture style, brightly coloured photographs with a very contemporary feel.

http://charlotteaudreyowenmeehan.tumblr.com/

6. OBI Scrapbook Blog

If you're into vintage illustrations this site is for you. OBI brings you beautiful illustrations from old ancient books.

http://scrap.oldbookillustrations.com/

7. We Love Illustration

Another new find, this blog is a source of creative and inspiring illustrations and artwork from a range of different artists.

http://weloveillustration.tumblr.com/

8. Trend Hunter

An old favourite of mine, Trend Hunter is a great place to find even the most bizarre collection of images you could think of. A great site to use if you are searching for a particular style of photography or artwork, such as 'whimsical' or 'gothic.' It covers a large subject area from fashion and design through to technology, culture and ads. A great site to have a look through when stuck for inspiration.

http://www.trendhunter.com/

I hope you have found this post useful and have discovered new websites to find creative research on :) And if anyone else has any great sites they know of, do let me know!