A croquis, in fashion terms, is a figure drawing with the clothing loosely drawn in to show how it could hang on a real person.  A croquis based off of your own body can give you an idea of how a particular garment would look.  Or, your own croquis will scare the daylights out of you because you are drawing your actual size and proportions, not your perceived size.  I, for one, imagine a much smaller size than I really am.  I made a croquis based off of my own body by dressing in tight clothing, taking a photo, printing it and then tracing the outline.  You don't get to see any of those steps.  It wasn't pretty.  Trust me, you don't need to see me in skin tight clothes...

On to why I humiliated myself in the privacy of my own home by taking self-portraits in short shorts and tank tops.  I'm trying to decide what style dress to create using my Alfred Shaheen fabric.  I have about 2.5 yards of a gorgeous floral print with shades of aqua and purple.

The colors are actually a bit muted in this picture.  The background is a very light blue, not white.  I wasn't able to find this particular fabric anywhere online, but I did find some similar and I'm guessing this fabric is from the 1970's (but I could totally be wrong...blame Google).

 Here are my inspiration dresses:

Picture from C. Madeleine's

Picture from Posh Girl Vintage

The top one is a Shaheen wrap dress from the 1970's.  I got the idea of a black top and patterned bottom from this one.  The next one is a faux sarong style Shaheen dress from the 1950's (again, if I am lying, blame Google).  I decided to take a bit from both dresses and create my own.

I started with Butterick 5850.  This is a dress with a wrap style bodice and a tremendous bridesmaid's bow with a straight skirt.

Butterick 5850

See how skinny this croquis is?  My own drawings (just wait, you will get to see them) are not quite that small.  At all.

My next idea was to use Butterick 5814.  This dress is a retro styled dress with a wide neck and flouncy ruffley thing on the skirt.

Butterick 5814 by Gertie

I wasn't a fan of the bodice, I envisioned myself constantly pulling the shoulders up.  Plus the wide neck makes it a little more dressy than what I need.

So I've created my own dresses by taking the parts that I liked and combining them to create a new dress.  I also used a croquis of my own outline so I could get a better idea as to what sized elephant I would look in each.