Draping: Why You Should Learn to Drape

Draping is the art of creating clothing by pinning, cutting and hanging fabric directly onto a mannequin or body.

It’s a lovely, creative way of developing clothing and one where you can really let your inner creative pattern cutter loose!

Understanding Draping

So you’re thinking about trying out draping but you’re not quite sure if it’s for you or what exactly it involves?

I’ve got you covered! Draping is a wonderfully creative way of making patterns and clothing.

Let’s start by taking a quick look at what the process involves…

Prepare your fabric and mannequin.
Place your fabric over the mannequin, cutting and pinning it to create your design.
Mark your drape up, taking care to be accurate and mark every relevant point and seam.
Unpin your drape from the mannequin and lay it flat over some paper, ready for tracing.
Secure the fabric onto the paper and trace through and around it to create a pattern.
Remove the fabric and finalise your new pattern, making sure the check true all areas.

Benefits of Learning to Drape

Learning how to drape is great because it opens up a whole new world of creative pattern cutting. The possibilities of what you can create are absolutely endless!

While draping you will have the chance to get up close and personal with your fabric and the body that you are draping for. You will also get to see your design evolve and develop as you create it in real life. Every pattern cutter has their own little tweaks and quirks that they find while they drape so it’s important to remember that draping is a personal experience and one that requires practice and patience.

Some of my favourite things about draping are:

You get to grips with your fabric from the first moment.
You are working in full scale, on the body (or mannequin) so you get a real feel for your design as your work.
You can create wild, creative designs that are totally unique and impossible to create with flat pattern cutting.
You can work with volume, twists, cowls, pleats, gathers, layers, darts, cuts and shapes in a totally unique way!

Take a look at some examples of draped designs below

Where to Learn Draping

While it’s tempting to dive into draping and try to create big, creative designs, it’s also important to remember that you need some foundation knowledge before you do that. You’ve got to learn to walk before you can run and all of that!

I’ve created a draping course that will give you a solid foundation knowledge so that you can build all of your future draping knowledge around it.

Take a look at my Draping for Beginners online course which covers all the basic knowledge and skills that you need to get started in draping. Alongside learning key theory, you will also learn how to drape four unique designs. Each design that you drape will teach a new principle and allow you to experiment and play with your design and fabric.