A technical flat is a very clear and accurate drawing or digital drawing of a garment. A technical flat displays all the stitching lines that will be on the garment. When creating a technical flat you need to enure that the weight of line is consistent throughout the drawing, so you don’t have some very thin lines and some thick lines. A technical flat is used mainly in the manufacturing process as a guide, a technical flat is very similar to a blueprint but instead for a garment.
A callout is an enlarged section of your technical flat, which you draw near your technical flat to focus in on some of the smaller details that you can’t see or include in your technical flat. Callouts are usually used to focus more in on particular details, such as pockets.
To create technical flats of my clothes, I needed to create a fashion crime scene first. So I masking taped around my body onto the carpet to create a life size croquis that fits my clothes. I then laid my clothes on this masking tape croquis to take photos. It is important to add masking tape lines onto your masking tape croquis to indicate where your waist is, your elbows are and knees are. This helps when you are creating a scaled down version of the garment onto a smaller croquis, so you can see on the photo whether the garment for example, meets your waist or goes just above the knee. This allows for a more precise and accurate technical flat.
These are photos of the front and back of my denim jacket.
These are photos of the front and back of my top.
These are photos of the front and back of my denim paper bag skirt.
These are photos of the front and back of my shorts.
These are the materials I used to create my technical flat drawings.
I choose to do a technical flat of my denim jacket first.
I started by watching two YouTube videos by burtonclass, the first video was ‘Symmetrical Hand Drawn Flats’ and the second video was ‘How to Create an Outset for Your Flat.’ I found these videos very helpful as I had no idea how you create a technical flat or a Outset.
This is the step by step process of how I created my technical flats.
I created the callout/outset for the pocket on my denim jacket by measuring the size of the pocket on my technical flat. Then I multiplied those measurements 3 or 4 times. Once I had the measurements I then started redrawing the pocket adding all the detail. After this I then drew a box around it before drawing a line from the box to the detail that is on the technical flat, which you are enlarging.
This is an image of the finished technical flat for my denim jacket with a callout/outset for the pockets.
I decided to photocopy my denim jacket, I did this by placing a plain white piece of paper behind the tracing paper, whilst photocopying it.
I then repeated the same process, when creating the rest of my technical flats.
This is the technical flat for my top and the photocopy of it.
This is the technical flat for my denim paper bag skirt and the photocopy of it.
This is the technical flat for my shorts and the photocopy of it.
Technical flats are quite a tricky skill to be able to do as you are trying to scale down a lifesize garment to draw onto a small croquis that fits onto an A4 piece of paper, whilst still having accurate proportions.
I am happy with my first attempts at trying to create technical flats.
However, on reflection I think that the length of the arms on my denim jacket are slightly too long and are out of proportion to the size of the denim jacket.
I think that I will be able to improve on the proportions and recognising what is out of proportion, as I create more technical flats and garment drawings.
Bibliography
Symmetrical Hand Drawn Flats
(YouTube – burtonclass)
Link : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lUuJGGF8oDU
How to Create an Outset for Your Flat
(YouTube – burtonclass)
Unpicking Fashion 