I am totally new to seamly and new to sewing by patterns alltogether. I am wondering if and how I could create sewing patterns for car seat protection covers. Could be a project with potential for a steep learning curve for the app as a beginner, is what i thought but I would be willing to try since the fabric isn’t very expensive and I have scrap fabric for a test.
Unfiortunately I can’t upload pictures of the seats, as a forum beginner. 4 x Mercedes Sprinter seats is the project.
Any suggestions would be apreciated. I am interested in the app also for garments, and the car seat covers just dropped in as a request of my brother.
As always, I suggest that you do the tutorial in the wiki to learn how Seamly works. It’s very basic and covers all the main aspects of Seamly.
Taking precise measurements is always needed and with a car seat cover, you can probably create Custom Variables in the Variables Table, instead of creating a measurements file with custom measurements.
I’ve used Seamly to make patterns for bags, cupcake boxes, dog jackets and for people, so it should work for seat covers.
From what I understand S2D is primarily an app to draw patterns. I‘m having a hrad time grasping how one would start drawing anything, that has a perfect fit for an object. I understand there are pattern making systems like Müller & Söhne.
How would one start when standing in front of an object such as a car seat? Would I have to use large sheets of trasparent paper and draw lines by hand? Then what? How do I convert that to S2D? Angles would already be pretty hard, but bending curves?
One idea would be to measure the dimensions of each piece of fabric used to upholster the seat in the first place. You could size them down onto a reasonable amount of graph paper, & puzzle them together to get a feel for how you’d want your draft to look, & how to measure to get that result.
Well… my question would be what is the purpose of using Seamly for the seat covers? Would it be a one pattern deal? Or is the idea to take a basic seat pattern and make variations on it? Is it to make patterns available to others? If the purpose is to just make 1 set of seat covers there are methods more suitable than Seamly. Also Seamly’s main advantage is drafting one pattern and having it resize to many people’s measurents. I don’t think resizing car seats is a needed thing?
That being said… since there are no “car seat drafing systems” what I would do is drape a seat with cheap muslin to get patterns of all the pieces… then use a radial projection method (or variation thereof) to “digitize” to Seamly. If you picture the muslin pattern as a grid, it’s a matter of transferring all the grade or important points on the muslin to Seamly in an X-Y space. I actually outlined a few years back a couple patterns where I did exactly this… one was a draped shift dress the other was a pre-existng mens jacket.
You might even be able to use the image import feature now to draw over photos of the muslin pieces.
Thank you. Below you can see the seats of the camper. I have to clarify that the seats need to be covered for protection. My toddler nephew will soon start to run around and wreck havoc, when going on a camping trip. For that purpose all seats should have a removable cover.
Can I use image import directly from those pictures, or do I have to include some calibration grid by default? That would bea genius solution. I am still gatehring information. Still not sure how to proceed.
The purpose would be a one pattern deal and also for learning how to use the app, since I also have other sewing projects I will launch soon. Resizing car seats is totally obsolete.
Radial projection method sounds like something used by NASA. hence very Interesting. Will look into.
If using seamly for this project is unnecessary, I will probably stick to some standard method. You muselin draping sounds like a plan. Is there any tutorial online for that? Thank you very much.
A cursory search didn’t turn up any results for an upholstery draping method, but there are several methods I’ve seen tutorials for online of draping patterns for people. It basically amounts to
wrapping fabric around the object in a way which matches the aesthetic of your vision,
marking any folds in the fabric,
taking draped fabric off the object,
& cutting into the preferred pattern pieces.
Different tutorials will switch up the order of operations somewhat, but all proceed from there to fixing up some of the weirdities that inevitably ended up in the drape, copying out, & sewing.
In this case there is the benefit that you can pin the (muslin) fabric pieces to the seat… unlike draping on a person where I discourage sticking pins in them.
What I suggest is to pin the fabric to the seat where ever the seams are… then connect the dots so to speak with a pencil to draw out your copied pattern piece. BTW… I have done this countless times over the years with taking a pattern off existing garments by placing the garment on a piece of paper on carboard (usually the cardboard bolts from fabric) and pinning through the seams and paper. Then just drawing the seam lines from pin hole to pin hole. In fact the very first garment I made was for the show “La Ronde” when studying theatre at the University… was from a real Victorian bustle dress that I took the pattern off of doing exactly this, with the exception the school had large worktables with a cork like work surface you could pin into.
Once you have all your pieces draped and seamlines drawn, you can add the seam allowance. For your purposes this pattern should suffice, but if I was to actually transfer it to Seamly I would take pictures of the draped pattern pieces rather tham pictures of the seat it self. There will be less distortion. Easiest way is to tape the pieces to a wall and take pictures, making sure the camera is perpendicular to the wall to limit the distortion. That said, I don’t think the fit is that crucial given the fact that it’s just for car seats.
In the case of draping actual clothing you would generally do this on a dress form of a proper size. There are DIY methods to make a cheap dress form of yourself or others which you can just Google.
Brilliant. I now understand much better how S2D could help me in my endeavours. I am totally new to sewing by patterns and pattern making, and I was browsing arround the subject to find ways for some sorts of automation options.
Thing is, that I believe it would be less of a hassle to have all my sewing patterns stored digitally, not only for quickly applying different measurements for different people, but also for not having to deal with various pattern samples or cardboard patterns that take up space. Combining the app with a projector attached to the ceiling would even make printing and drawing obsolete. Pretty much what I am looking for.
@Douglas could you provide a picture of a pattern piece which could be used to import into seamly? I would like to practice and draw a pattern by that. I would like to know what you cosider to be a viable picture for import.
The car seat project is way too difficult to combine with seamly as a beginner. My Idea is to make basic patterns by draping, then use stretchy fabric and make simple protection covers that have a tight fit. That would do the job.
As for seamly I would like to start with a simple project such as a T-shirt or raglan hoodie for which I already bought a pattern. it would be nice to have the pattern transfered to seamly and then sew one piece for me and resize for a freind. This would be a much smoother introduction to seamly than bulky custom size car seat covers.
