Charles Kleibacker // Bias Cuts, Book Reports, Videos

If we're going to talk about bias cuts and layout, we've got to talk about Charles Kleibacker.
 Obligatory wiki page link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kleibacker

This is a great three part series on YouTube with Kleibackerk, from 1979.

part one

https://youtu.be/v-M1ygDVWNE

part two

https://youtu.be/1ovNISEy0c0

and part three

which is laying out a pair of bias pants

https://youtu.be/8BGP68kq_Q0

from the credits: "The series "Think Couture with Charles Kleibacker" produced by the Iowa State University Extension Service. New York fashion designer Charles Kleibacker visits the campus of Iowa State to conduct a weeklong seminar to textiles and clothing students."  

Talking as it he works it through, dropping diamonds and daggers. He gives a great show, and while I'm going to pick out some moments to watch here, it's worth your while to watch the whole videos at some point.

One unusual feature: the inner leg dart on the back crotch seam on the pants in question
(specific time stamped video links referring and illustrating it). I've never seen anything like it, and I still haven't given it a try except as an alteration.

dart on lower back crotch seam

https://youtu.be/v-M1ygDVWNE?t=466

https://youtu.be/8BGP68kq_Q0?t=826

The thing to remember about Kleibacker is that he was always conscious of how much a garment cost to make in terms of yardage and time, and how it presented in a store on a client.  He goes fast when he needs to, and slow when it counts. I can hear his precise thinking in Kenneth King's videos, and I mean that as the ultimate compliment. Kleibacker was a teacher and a designer, but he was a businessman at every step.

 After watching the Kleibacker videos, I had a brainstorm and found this:

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu1197564134&disposition=inline

starts with page 135 warp twist vs woof twist

specifically:

""How the garment hangs on the body, the cut, is paramount to a good bias design. In developing his designs in the fabric he was using, Charles Kleibacker noticed that there was a distinct difference between how the warp yarns behaved in bias as compared to how the weft yarns hung. In the weaving process, weft yarns are slightly looser in their position of the finished fabric than are the warp yarns which are held on the loom with greater tension. The tension of the yarns within the fabric affects the softness of the drape and the resultant balance of the bias hang. This is especially noticeable on asymmetrical bias designs where the pattern piece extends from one side of the body beyond the midpoint to the other side of the body. In explaining this concept, Charles likes to take a square piece of muslin or other fabric and hang it from one corner with the true bias on the center front of a dress form. The resultant folds formed by the draping fabric are not even from side to side because one side “hangs from the lengthwise grain, and the other falls from the crosswise grain.”13 (See figure 6.2.)""

""To overcome the differences in the hang, and to maintain a competitive price, Charles designed his garments with a center front seam. This ensured that no matter what kind of fabric he used for the garment, the godets formed by the drape of the bias were always equal one side to the other. It also allowed him to develop his ideas by draping only one half of a garment instead of needing to drape the entire garment. Because most ready-to-wear is patterned with the right and left sides exactly the same, when fitting and perfecting the new design, he would also only have to adjust one side and then simply transfer the adjustments to the other. ""

It's well worth reading the whole dissertation. Good illustrations make timely points. 
but the takeaway I want you to have is: a bias piece of fabric does not drape and grow the same way because the warp (the lengthwise grain) and the weft (the crosswise grain) are never ever ever equal to each other. One will give more one way than the other.

Which we will illustrate in the next post.
CLIFF HANGER!!!