There’s been a lot of talk lately about muslins and I thought I’d chime in and talk about what I do with mine after a garment is finished.
I make a lot of muslins for my pattern drafting class. In the skirt section alone, I sewed roughly twenty five muslins and went through almost thirty yards of material! My instructor recommended saving the muslin and the finished pattern in a manila folder and storing the folders in banker boxes. However, I found that this was a little too ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for me and instead chose to hang them in a closet off of my sewing room.
My muslins are an incredible resource! For nearly any type of skirt, I have a fitted pattern and a muslin to go with it. If I get an idea for a garment, I can go in my closet, select the appropriate style, and play around. I can tack on pockets or embellishments, play around with decorative seams or yokes, or futz with hem length. If I change shape, the muslin can be used to rework the original pattern.
At the end of each unit, I go through my muslins and decide which to keep and which to scrap. For the most part, I’ve been saving the majority of designs but occasionally I’ll run into a style that just doesn’t suit me (like my asymmetrical draft). If I do scrap a muslin, the material can be used for interfacing and scrap material so material rarely goes to waste.
Do you save your muslins? If so, how do you store them? Have you ever actually used a muslin once a garment is complete?
