In Part 3 of my No Rules Draping series, I’ll show how I work back and forth between flat pattern pieces and my customized dress form to create a garment that fits my body. In Parts 1 and 2 of this series I demonstrated how to get a dress form that fits and ways to use the dress form as a design tool. Now I want to share the way I most often sew using the dress form, which is to work back and forth from 3-D to 2-D: 3-D is my dress form and 2-D is a tried-and-true (T&T) flat pattern.

A T&T pattern is one that has been used before (tried), maybe a lot, and one that has been worked around enough to know that it will fit when it is made up (true). You may be one of the lucky people who can sew a pattern right…