Book Review: Couture Zéro Chutes

It’s my pleasure to review Couture Zéro Chutes by Charline Durpoix and Mylène L’Orguilloux, which was published last month. The title translates as Sewing Zero Waste, and the book is a collection of six base patterns which can be combined or modified to produce many more styles.

Charline Durpoix is a sewing influencer, known in the French community for her style and humor.

Mylène L’Orguilloux is a zero waste patternmaker with technical flair, and an educator. Her website is RE.FORMONS NOUS (“let’s reform ourselves”) where resources for this book are housed, including a forum to ask questions if you get stuck.

This book is more than just a pattern book, as the introductory pages encourage us to think creatively about making clothes, waste, cutting layouts and colour.

The six base patterns in the book are a t-shirt, shirt, wrap top, elastic waist pants, wrap pants and pleated skirt. Although they’re base patterns, they aren’t basic, and have details to give a high quality finish. For example, the shirt has a concealed front placket and side splits with facings.

The patterns are in 12 sizes, to fit from Bust/chest 86cm-Waist 71cm-Hips 92cm to B142-W130-H148cm (= B34″-W28″-H36″ to B56″-W51″-H58″)

Couture Zéro Chutes is written in French. However, with the wonders of technology, it’s easy to translate using an image translation app. I used Google image translate on a pc which did a passable job, backed up with my old high school French dictionary 🙂

It wouldn’t be a proper review if I didn’t make something from the book

It was hard to choose, but I made the elastic waist trousers.

For fabric: some pastel green slubby linen a friend gave me, which I think is a fairly old piece of fabric; it’s only 103cm wide, which is a clue. I dyed it with some black tea in a bucket overnight, and it came up a modern avocado shade, and much softer in handle. Unfortunately the tea was loose leaf, and I had to hang the fabric on the line and hose it off, but it smelt lovely when I ironed it!

The book doesn’t have any tables of fabric requirements. Instead, it has downloadable mini pattern pieces which fit a to-scale grid. As the pattern pieces are modular, they can be moved around on the grid to fit your particular fabric width. You can also use the grid if you’re colour blocking and using several different fabrics. The beauty of this is that you can use any fabric width, and check to see beforehand if you have enough. I didn’t use the grid because I forgot about it – I did it straight on the fabric.

The actual pattern pieces are traced from pattern sheets in the book, like a Burda magazine. The seam allowances are already added. Like Burda, any other (square-shaped) pieces are drafted separately using measurements provided. All the book’s measurements are in centimetres. As well as the trouser pattern pieces, there was a stitching template needed which was accessed via a QR code in the book. It’s a pdf which had to be taped together (4 pages).

The trousers have cool design lines and there are some clever uses of pattern shapes. Like many zero waste patterns, space is required for cutting out, because the cutting layout is the pattern.

There were a lot of pattern pieces, and it paid to be organised with labeling them. I kept the pattern pieces pinned to the fabric until sewing, or I wouldn’t have had a hope as my fabric is the same on both sides.

The trousers took 2.27m, which is economical considering the linen was only 103cm wide.

After cutting out, I still had 1.30m of fabric, which might be enough to cut a matching top. I very much like the idea of a two piece jumpsuit. Anyway, I put that idea aside for now.

The sewing part went fairly smoothly. All the pieces went together fine. It is no small feat to make a zero waste pattern in twelve sizes with this many pattern pieces.

I did come unstuck with the pockets, user error on my part. I sewed them, then couldn’t work out why the centre front panel didn’t fit even thought there was a notch to line up the pocket with. Backtracking to the previous step, I recalled someone asking about this on the forum. The left and right pocket bags are different depths. This isn’t drawn attention to in the instructions, but if you happen to be reading this with a view to making the trousers, D9 and D12 form the bottom of the right pocket and G9 and G12 the left pocket. Anyway, I didn’t unpick and my trousers now have symmetrical pocket bags of the shorter depth, but actually this turned out to be just right.

The hems of the trousers are finished with a deep facing, to be turned up into a cuff with a button-and-tab detail. I haven’t done the tabs (yet?).

These pants are GREAT! Everything about them is excellent – the pockets, the fit, the length, the comfort. I made size C, and have the exact 100cm/40″ hips necessary for this size. If between sizes, I would go up to the next size. I’m 168cm/5’6″ tall.

How long did the trousers take to make? I organised the pattern pieces and did the cutting out on one day, did most of the sewing a second day, and finished off the waistband and hem on a third day. These are no “5-minute make” but it was worth it.

Verdict: impressed. If you’re an adventurous sew-er and looking for a satisfying sewing experience, then there’s much in this book you’ll enjoy.

Where to buy this book. In France, Switzerland and Belgium it can be ordered in any local bookshop or online.  In Canada, any local bookshop starting from November 1st.  Otherwise, it’s on Amazon.

Cheers!

*In the interests of disclosure, I offered to review this book earlier this year when Mylène told me she was writing it, and Marabout Publishing sent a free review copy.