My Wild Ginger journey begins...

I needed a nautical-themed costume in a hurry, and after playing around with the demo version of Wild Ginger for a few weeks, I decided to give the real version a go.

The inspiration for my costume came from one of the costumes from Opera Queensland's recent performance of the Magic Flute. All of the costumes were fantastic...I'm not actually an opera buff, but the costumes made the show worth it for me.

I was short on time, so instead of getting someone to help with my measurements, then test a few muslins before choosing something simple to start with...I dived straight on in and made a jump suit. I figured that it could be no worse than making up a pattern straight out of the envelope, and we've all done that.


So how was my experience? The mix-and-match capacity of the program is fun. The fit was not bad, but it wasn't great either. I will have to make those muslins sometime in the future. For this one, most of the fitting problems were hidden under the sailor collar anyway.

I was surprised to find that there were a few drafting errors. The back neck facing extended halfway round to the front...this mistake was so obvious that I corrected it before cutting out. The front facing was way too long. The overall length was also way too long. The program gives the options of shorts / bermudas /knee / capris / pants. I chose shorts, but I noticed that the first 3 options all gave a length that was below the knee line marked on the pattern (well, I presume that's what the line was). I ended up cutting off about 20cm in length. There were 2 pattern pieces (large rectangles) that I did not recognise...perhaps they were panels to turn the culottes into skorts?? I didn't use them.

I found that I don't like using solid pattern pieces...see-through tissue is much better for lining up the grain, marking points etc.

Overall, I think my experience was more negative than positive, but this probably just means that I will need to spend more time with it in the future.