Pattern Making

These lessons will teach you how to draft a series of pattern slopers, also known as blocks, and then how to design a variety of styles using these blocks as your foundation. We recommend that you begin with our basic “Straight Sleeve Sloper” lesson and then explore our other sleeve variations. From there, move to our “Basic Straight Skirt” lesson and then to our series on circle skirts. Next up: Bodices. You can either download our free-to-paid-subscribers Women’s Basic Bodice sloper in U.S. sizes 2-16 (found in our “Pivot Front Shoulder Dart to Armhole Dart” pattern making lesson), or use your own draped bodice, to learn how to manipulate darts and create an assortment of neckline styles. From there, move to our series on drafting various collars. Do our “Basic Pant Sloper” lesson last. These beginner lessons will help you 1) create a valuable sloper library, 2) master the use of your pattern making tools and 3) introduce you to the terminology used by pattern makers, e.g. “squaring off”, “trueing”, “blending lines” and the “slash & spread”. Once you have completed these beginner lessons you can move on to our Intermediate lessons, and then on to our Advanced lessons.

These Intermediate videos will teach you how to draft patterns from body measurements and how to complete more complex lessons such as drafting a raglan sleeve, kimono sleeve and how to draft knit slopers.  If you’re relatively new to patternmaking, start with how to draft a  “Basic Bodice Sloper” and then our dart manipulation lessons which will enable you to create the slopers that you will need for our “Kimono Sleeve” and “Raglan Sleeve” lessons. These will be your foundation for our lesson on how to “Convert a Bodice Sloper to a Fitted Torso Sloper”.