The Basics of Pinning

It's time to go back to the basics of pinning. When you're beginning to do draping, one of the first lessons you learn is how to pin and how to pin correctly. So you'd be surprised how many students don't pin correctly in the beginning, but I'm here to show you how to do it right. All right, the first method is you've got your muslin, you've got your form, and you need to pin the muslin to the form. How do you do it? A lot of people normally, in the beginning, stab. They go straight in, and that doesn't work. All right, big X. This is how you do it. You just pin it to the form, slightly at an angle, just like that. Make sure you catch the form and you catch your muslin. Simple as that. So I'm going to keep doing it, see, slightly at an angle, and then make sure that you've got, see, look, it's good. It keeps it there. See, it's not moving. Okay, so keep doing this. Now, correctly, you want to do it at like about an inch, an inch and a half intervals, all right? So keep doing it, just like that. You don't want to be like, okay, I'm putting a pin there, and then one here. Why? Because then you've got this gap here, all right? So you need to fill in the gap, all right? So just keep pinning, keep pinning, just like that. Make sure that it's at an angle, and I'm going to get to the waist, and nicely done. Now, a lot of students ask, how do you pin a dart? See, basics of pinning. So here we have our dart, all right? So you want to fold it, see? I'm going to fold it just like that, and there's a couple methods. You can either do the slide method or do the up and down method of pinning. So the slide method is you take one part of the dart. See, I'm going to show you right here, see? All right? So you go from one dart leg to the other, right there, and you want to hold that down. How do you do it? You do the slide. This is the number one. So just go like this, and slide it through. Make sure you catch the dart from underneath. So I'm going to do it right here. I'm going to show you. See how it's open? You want to touch this plus that together, all right? So watch. I'm going to just slide through, catch, and pin. So I'm going to show you, see? Look, it did it. Another way of doing it is up and down, all right? Now, this is a little weird because normally, I don't know, naturally the body, the hands, they want to go up and down with the pointed pin going up, but that's wrong, all right? Because that hurts. You want to do it up and down where the ball of the pin is on the top, and the pointy sharp part of the pin is on bottom. So you want to go like this, slide it, and pin. See? Just like that. Okay, I'm going to do it again. So ball on top and sharp on the bottom. Make sure to catch and pin, all right? Two methods for pinning dart. Slide or up and down. Lastly, in terms of pinning, how do you pin two pieces together? Well, there are a couple methods, but one that I really like is the slide method, okay? So I've got one right side, one left side of the front, all right? So let's just say I want to pin these together, almost like if they were buttons, all right? So you've got both, see? I put this over the one and under as if you're like opening up the shirt, but I want to pin them together to show my instructor how pretty it is, all right? Take your pin, and you want to do the slide. So slide, make sure to catch one, do not touch the form, and then slide. Look at that! Easy, all right? So about an inch and a half space, and do it again. See? It's away from the form, but you're attaching it, all right? I'm going to do it one more time. Slide through, and then right there, okay? Now, this is good. You can also do the up and down as well. Again, the ball on top, the pointed part on the bottom. So take this, all right? Now, naturally, see? I want to go up like that, all right? But that hurts, so you want to do it like that with the pin down, okay? Now, if you weren't around the instructor, you could probably go the pin up, all right? But with the instructor around, do the pin down, okay? Now, the slide method really works well also with this. Watch. Sometimes, let's just say you're just pinning one part of your form, you know? Remember I told you you can do this, you know? You can just regularly pin. You can also do the slide. That really hunkers it down, so watch. Slide. Now, this is a little tricky. You want to take your finger, your other finger, and there you go. Slide it just like that. I'm going to do it again. Now, you're going to need your finger, fingertip, to touch the pin. So what you want to do is you want to go right into the form, and then try and bring it back out. Help with your fingertip just like that, and there you go. You slide it. This really hunkers it down. See? That ain't going nowhere. So those are your two methods. Like this angle or slip and slide. Okay, now that you know the basics of pinning, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. And get my book, A Passion for Fashion. It's available on amazon.com.