Pattern Making

A good pattern is an essential part of the fashion collection, obviously. The best way to begin developing your label is to first develop your basic slopers. Slopers are basic patterns which are used as a basis to create any design you can think up! It is important to decide the measurements you will use for your patterns and create these basic patterns to reflect those measurements. It is extremely helpful for a designer to know and have a good understanding of patterns and how they are made. I have worked with "designers" in the past (not saying names) that had no idea about patterns or how they were created. These types of designers are a blessing and curse for the professional pattern maker. Blessing because since they do not know what they are doing they can often be overcharged and taken advantage of (although i would never do that to anyone)........Curse because the designer more times than not has no idea what they want and they think of designs that are not possible to create the way they would like. If you want to be a good designer get a good education and understanding of patterns...I mean an architect has to have some understanding of how a house is built to be able to design it right?...it's no difference. KNOW YOUR SHIT. People will not be able to take advantage of you and you will be legit.

There are also some great books to learn about patterns, aside from school:

1) Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Joseph-Armstrong ( fabrics w/out stretch a.k.a. wovens)

2) Design and Patternmaking for Stretch fabrics by Keith Richardson (stretch fabrics)