Patternmaking in Fashion Design

There is a shortage of patternmakers in the fashion industry. For anyone interested in having a career in the fashion industry, becoming a fashion patternmaker is a wise decision for a number of reasons:

-it’s great pay
-you won’t have much competition to deal with
-you could get to work closely with professional fashion designers
-you’ll be doing the very important bricks and mortar work in fashion design

Without fashion patternmakers there would be no fashion designs being made into clothes. So if you’re thinking about getting into the fashion industry by the way of patternmaking you can either teach yourself patternmaking following any of the methods below;

Buy designer clothing patterns at sewing supply stores and study the pattern blocks

Go to your local library, or bookstore online or offline and order the patternmaking teaching manuals such as Connie Amaden Crawford’s ‘Patternmaking Made Easy’ she teaches you how to produce 22 of the most important pattern blocks, or ‘slopers’, that all other blocks are made from.

Get your hands on some fashion patternmaking software like the CAD kind from Etelestia or Wild Ginger’s ‘Pattern Master’ software.

You can get started even faster with a low tech innovative product like the Lutterloh patternmaking system and easily learn how to use their ‘Golden Rule’ system. It’s a great place to start because they’ve got a online free learning video on how to use the Golden Rule. Basically, how it works is you take your bust and waist measurements that you’re making a pattern for and use those measurements to develop a ‘connect the dots’ outline based on one of the many interchangeable pattern block templates. To create your own unique fashion pattern blocks you would just customize the necessary pattern blocks Lutterloh provides in their pattern books.

You can take a quality online fashion patternmaking or online fashion design course that includes patternmaking. Both Etelestia and Epro fashion schools provide such courses.

Or you could go the most conventional route and take a complete fashion design course at the Art Institute, Vancouver Community College or any other local college that holds good repute in the fashion industry for the quality of their courses and turn out of industry ready fashion design graduates.

Either way, if you choose to learn or become a fashion designer/fashion patternmaker you’ll get a chance to exercise your drive, determination and passion for fashion in doing so. Make sure you learn everything you can get your hands on, dream big and get to know people in the fashion indsutry. Once you’ve acquired the skills you can look into becoming an intern at your local or nearest fashion house to get your experience in. You can also provide your skills online as a patternmaker for fashion designers and clothing manufacturers.