The double and triple pencil trick is clever. I had a holder for two pencils that also worked, but did drive me batty when one slipped, which happened a lot whilst tracing. I recently got a guide for my rotary cutter and now its so easy- just trace without seam allowances and then cut (almost perfect) allowances on the fabric.

And thanks for the pencil tip. There are a few things I’d love to make from my Burda mags but I still haven’t bothered because of the tracing.

http://lladybird.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/look-a-mini-lt-and-a-tutorial-to-make-your-own/

(Although my own tip would be to wear shoes when you take the initial photos – I did ones with and without, and it was amazing what a difference wearing shoes made to the silhouette.)

Then to get the dress on to it I pasted the line art for the dress (grabbed from Burda’s website) into a new layer in my drawing program on top of the croquis. Scaling it to the right size involved trial and error, but once it was about the right width and positioned correctly at the shoulders I erased and redrew bits of both the line drawing and me until they matched everywhere else. I suspect this will get easier with practice!

Don’t you love it when a really simple and cheap solution is found, especially when its easy peasy to use? Brilliant.

You’ve sewn so many complicated projects! I’m sure you’ll do fine with the cheongsam/qi-pao!