Learning pattern drafting is actually fairly easy.\n<\/p>\n
I am not meaning this to imply that it is easy in any way to create a good professional sewing pattern. The practice required for professional level skill takes, well, professional-level work. You have to design to a wide range of body types, making a sewing pattern that will be flattering on the largest range of figures possible.\n<\/p>\n
I don’t know how to do that.\n<\/p>\n
Professional design ability also means that you know how to create a very wide range of design elements suitable for not only current fashion trends, but in encouraging other fashion looks.\n<\/p>\n
I don’t know how to do that, either. I am not by any means a professional clothing designer.\n<\/p>\n
What I can do is take a set of measurements, make a sloper, and then design something relatively basic from that. The results are so much nicer than a commercial pattern (custom usually is) that fancy design elements are almost unnecessary. Never underestimate the beauty of well-fitting clothes.\n<\/p>\n
The thing is, I’ve noticed that people who are used to commercial patterns will sometime freak out<\/strong> at dart width and placement on something they’ve created for themselves, especially women who wear quite a large cup size, or have a bust measurement a great deal larger than the waist measurement. If you’re used to the two inch dart on a commercial pattern designed for the “average” B cup young woman with perky breasts, that seven inch dart for the F cup designed for the woman of a certain age who hasn’t resorted to surgery looks downright freakish when drawn flat on the fabric. It’ll make you scared to cut the pattern out.\n<\/p>\n But after you sew<\/strong> it\u2026 Ahhh, what a thing of beauty a custom designed pattern is. Narrow shoulders? No problem. Ever had a armscye hit exactly at the shoulder joint? It really improves the look of the garment. A bust dart that actually shapes the fabric to your<\/strong> body and ends where your nipple actually is? It makes a much smoother line. A garment that has the waist where your waist actually exists, and flares out appropriately to the real<\/em><\/strong> wide point of your hips?\n<\/p>\n You can’t get<\/strong> that stuff in ready to wear, and even have to do a lot of pattern redesign to get it in a commercial pattern.\n<\/p>\n