Sewing Patterns: Essential Tips for Perfecting Your Design
Time to read: 3 minutes
Are you ready to start designing your own pieces but aren’t sure where to start? Whether you're an experienced or budding fashion designer or ready to launch a new brand, this blog will walk you through the essentials of sewing pattern design and how to use them in mass production.
The Basics of Sewing Pattern Design
A sewing pattern is a template used to cut fabric pieces that will be sewn together to make a garment or other textile items. While traditionally printed on paper or card, modern sewing pattern design is most usually done digitally in the industry. They help ensure that your finished product has the correct fit, make, and design.
Why Accurate Sewing Pattern Design Matters
Proper sewing pattern design makes the sewing process more straightforward and less prone to errors. They provide a visual guide for cutting and assembling fabric, ensuring that all pieces fit together correctly. A production-ready pattern is crucial for achieving a professional finish in your production run.
You can’t have a sample made without a sewing pattern, as there’d be no template to follow when cutting out your fabric before sewing!
A well-drafted pattern, with correct markings and labels, helps the sewer to construct the garment or product correctly. And (if made by a skilled professional), excellent sewing pattern design ensures the least amount of fabric is wasted after the pattern is cut out. This more than pays for hiring a pattern-making professional!
Patterns also help with future product development. If you have a best-selling product, you can use the pattern for it repeatedly to create multiple items with the same or a similar design and fit.
How To Read A Sewing Pattern
Understanding how to read a pattern is an important part of mastering sewing pattern design, so you can understand the various symbols, lines, and instructions that guide you through the cutting and sewing process.
Pattern Envelopes or Cards
The pattern envelope contains information about the pattern such as the pattern number, size range, and a description of the design. It also lists the recommended fabrics and trim needed for the style. This helps you determine how much fabric to buy based on the measurements you’ve taken. Since most companies are digital these days, you aren’t likely to get a real envelope anymore, but it’s still useful to understand the same info! If you’re getting digital patterns made professionally, ask the pattern maker for a digital pattern card instead.
Pattern Pieces
Each piece is labeled with information such as its name, size, fabric, and the number of pieces to cut. You'll also see various lines and symbols that indicate cutting lines, grainlines, and notches. Pattern pieces often include seam allowances, which are the extra fabric around the edges that you will use to sew the pieces together.
Instruction Sheets or Tech Packs
Instruction sheets provide step-by-step directions for assembling the garment. They include illustrations and detailed explanations for each step. The instructions also include information about the order of construction, the sequence in which you should sew the pieces together so that the garment is assembled correctly. Typically in today’s fashion industry, instruction sheets have evolved into full tech packs, which contain all relevant garment/product information.
Helpful Tips for Production
You can choose to have patterns made by a factory, a freelancer, or another sewing company. But my most “expert” tip is to consider who will own (actually digitally/physically possess) these patterns after they are completed.
Ideally, you’ll want to own them once completed. But if you’re having your factory make them (for free) as part of a bulk production order, you likely won’t. Nor will they own the design rights in the eyes of the law. Not ideal for the longevity of your brand if you want to be able to reproduce this style in the future.
However, if you’re trying to start on a shoestring… it might be a sacrifice worth at least considering.
We hope this blog gave you insight into sewing pattern design and how it is used in production. Don't hesitate to book a discovery call with us if you need help with production patterns or getting a better bang for your buck in development.
Author Bio
Tech Packs Co founder Belinda is a technical fashion designer from London, now based in Los Angeles. Belinda had her first job in fashion at the age of 15, fixing swatch cards together. Since then, Belinda has been designing & creating tech packs for more than a decade... for household name brands and independent designers alike.