The AA jumpsuit - a successful knockoff!

AA? Sure! except in this instance it refers not to the evil brew, but 'Murrican Apparel.
A jumpsuit isn't the sort of thing I'd ever think of for myself.  And yet....

The backstory here is that my daughter modeled for me a new garment she'd just bought.  And she looked deliciously adorable in it.  So, being that we're very close in size, I tried it on.  Better than that, I examined it inside and out, and... you guessed it:  decided I too could not only wear one but make it too.

Copying a garment typically involves tracing each part, sometimes with cling film (plastic food wrap, whatever you call it these days - the stuff used to be called saran wrap back in the days).  Instead of doing that (with one exception*), I simply sketched the garment and then described its dimensions. In  four pages of excruciating detail.

Then, based on these measurements, I drafted the pattern pieces.

*The exception is the pants leg:  I traced the outside pants leg from waist to hem and the inside leg from crotch to hem.  I still had to describe some of the dimensions, but this gave me a very good basis for the overall shape of the trouser part of the garment.

Pleats abound in this suit, front! back! top! bottom!  So in describing it, I was careful to note not just the placement of each pleat but also its length, depth and direction.

For example, three deep and long pleats on each shoulder - front and back.  Bodice pleats at the waistline.  Four front pleats on the trousers.

Three long and deep pleats at the back shoulders, and shirred back waist. 

Two deep side seam pockets; the top of each is caught in the front waist seam.  

The left side seam is one long zipper, all the way from the armscye to about mid-thigh.  The zipper runs behind the side seam pocket.  Figuring out how to put these things together was quite a trick of mental gymnastics ... the pattern I drafted obviously didn't come with any assembly instructions!

I made a few small but important changes to the garment that improved its fit and overall proportions:

I shortened the bodice by 1 cm and the trouser crotch length by 2 cm, but lengthened the trouser leg.

I narrowed the outside shoulder line by about 2 cm and shaped the armscye. The original had a very unattractive straight armscye that created excess of fabric puddling around the armpits, especially in the back.

I oriented the front pattern pieces so the CF diagonal crossover is on the straight grain (i.e., no bias stretching or rippling) , plus I took out a gape dart, shifted to the bottom of the pattern piece, from the CF diagonal.  This really improved the fit of the CF in comparison with the original, in which the bodice noticeably gaped open. The original was also a bit too long waisted for me and my daughter - we're borderline petites - so that also contributed to the original's gaposis.

There's no gaposis in my bodice at all. 

I'm just about ready to tackle my new coat now.  So stay tuned...

Layered top knockoff - initial pattern development

Sleeveless tops, anyone?

They're my go-to summertime wear.  I've developed my own top pattern, both with and without a side bust dart, and frequently tinker with it to make the end product more interesting.  Like cutting on the bias, or adding pleats, for example.  I've also experimented with overlapping:

 and layering, here with shoulder pleats:

So when I saw this Vionnet top: 

CD$806 - ouch!

I thought, hmm, that's an interesting variation - and then, could I make it?  Drafting the front panel piece and attaching two of them to an ordinary back pattern piece seems simple enough, right?  It would be, but that's only half the story.  Look at the unusual seaming going on at the back: 

It has really interesting implications for the top's construction. Those shoulder yokes, for example?  I'm guessing they're not just decorative but functional too, that each is a continuous extension of the front panel, with no shoulder seam.  The diagonal seam from the armscye to the waist may also be an extension of the front panel around to the back:  which would imply that there's no side seam either.  Those were the two assumptions I went with.  

I started with a little schematic and sketched the one-shoulder diagonal panel:

Then cut out two of them. Voila! the front:

Starting with the same top schematic I sketched in the back seam lines, straightening the lines of the armscye a little for that futuristic aesthetic:  

The CB seam is useful if a sway back adjustment is desired, which is hinted at in the above layout.

Laying the front and back pieces on top of each other, the pattern pieces do look as they should - a tank top.

But when they're rearranged - combining the upper back shoulder yoke and lower back peplum pieces with the front panel, the pattern pieces look pretty extraordinary: 

Two pieces of each are required for the top; the CB seam would be at right in the above pic.  You wouldn't think you could possibly sew together something so odd and make a little top out of it, would you?  

My first proof of concept pattern pieces looked a little more complex:

Look at that:  I created a monster a rooster!!!  But it was drawn exactly on my TNT tank top, so I thought, OK, let's see how this works... And... it does!

The SA's are unfinished in the above, so it's pretty close round the neck and under the arms, and (thanks to a tiny drafting error on my part) it needs a bit more room round the hips to make those front panels more floaty.  The eagle-eyed amongst you  may notice that the shoulder "straps" are of different widths: I added a sliver of fabric to the left shoulder to round out that odd corner created at the shoulder seam point, where the outside front and back pieces met.  And it's also notable that this design demands a bra with straps that are set closer to centre than what I'm wearing. Peekage is not a look I favour (yuck!), and I wouldn't actually wear this design until I found a suitable undergarment.

The back is very close to the original.  The shoulder yokes could should be decreased in width and shortened vertically, and the diagonal peplum seam raised a bit. One important functional difference is that the original has a CB invisible zipper, but my top doesn't.  When you try to pull it on with both arms, the neckline closes up - a function of those loosely hanging overlapping panels.  So getting into it is a funny sequence: first the right arm, then the head, then the left arm, then you shimmy the whole thing down.  The zipper is truly unnecessary. 

More to come, after I've worked through these revisions.