What You Need to Know to Make Home Sewing Patterns

I do a lot of work with the home sewing market. Truth be told, my home sewing clients hold a special place in my heart. Most of these companies are very organized and go into working with me knowing what we both expect from each other to deliver an amazing product. The bulk of the work I do for them is grading because most are very hands on and prefer to fine tune their core product themselves. Sometimes I’m asked to help develop the patterns, other times I’m asked to give yardage counts. The services can vary, but over the years, working with so many companies has shown me different and better ways of doing things and there are a lot of common threads the hold true for producing a line of home sewing patterns. I even have my own small brand which affords some extra expertise on what is needed. I’m not giving away trade secrets here, but just some insight on what it takes. 

You need to know Adobe Illustrator

I think this falls into the number one requirement category. Adobe Illustrator is your new co-worker and you need to be pretty savvy. If you can’t work with this, you are already at a major disadvantage and are facing big expenses to hire the bulk of the work out. You will need Adobe Illustrator for perhaps drafting your pattern, but at the least for when you get the graded pattern. A graded pattern that comes directly out of a CAD system, exported as an Adobe Illustrator document is very plain. You will need to change the line qualities, add labels, sizing info, branding, etc..

You will also need Adobe Illustrator to create your sewing directions. Some people may use Photoshop or another similar program, but regardless, you must have the technical skills to utilize the programs that you build your pattern on. 

You need a sizing chart

You’ve created a pattern and come for grading. Happy to help out! But I need a sizing chart to refer to and so does your customer. Your customer will be carefully analyzing their body measurements vs the ones you provide and them comparing to finished garment measurements. Home sewers are very thoughtful and purposeful so they don’t waste their time and materials on a project that won’t fit them. It’s up to you to set the standards. If you don’t have a sizing chart you can start here to draft one up. If you are having me grade your patterns, just ask me for my two cents. A second opinion never hurts. 

You need to be confident in your pattern drafting and fitting skills

It’s not enough to create a cute style and put it out for sale. As I mentioned above, the expectations of home sewers is very high. It’s always nerve wracking put your work out there. Even myself, a professional patternmaker with 20 years experience gets a little nervous to hear the feedback roll in. Your pattern is not going to fit everyone, but it should fit a pretty good segment of your customer base. 

If you want to be inclusive, expect to do two size ranges

Being inclusive is very important. However, it should not be treated as though it’s an extra ingredient to add to your pot that you just toss in without thinking through the outcomes. Taking a size 10 pattern and grading it all the way up to a size 30 and then all the way down to a 00 will usually yield some pretty weird results. This does no favors to your customer who deserves a fit that is intended to be customized for them. Sometimes I run across a style where I tell the designer that I think the proportional translation will work across a wide range. Awesome. However, as a general rule, the more sizes that go up or down from the base size the pattern distorts from its original shape during the grading process in subtle ways. A range from 0-30 is better done as two separate patterns to keep the integrity of the fit for each size range. 

Prepare to test your pattern

Pattern testing is a critical part to your product. It’s important to have extra sets of eyes vetting your sewing directions and pattern because it has to be clear to understand how to put together. There are different points of view to be considered. Trust me on this.  I write technical directions for factories to follow all the time, but when I have fresh eyes on my sewing directions someone always spots something major that I overlooked because I’m so deep in it. You may have to pay a technical editor to help you out or supply payment to testers, but it will be worth it. 

If you are using testers, be prepared. Give the testers a clear standard of what kind of feedback you need from them. Make it easy to complete a form and give a reasonable deadline. There are lots of other considerations for testing, which has been discussed in the sewing community at length, so I’ll just leave it here as something for you to look into. 

The number of testers to enlist is up to you, but keep in mind it’s going to be a lot of data, back and forth emails, and coordinating. Keep it manageable. I heard of someone enlisting 40 testers for a t-shirt and I nearly had a panic attack at the thought of managing that!

A home sewing business is definitely achievable once you know the investment and the deliverables that you need to hit. Let me know in the comments below if there are any other technical considerations that you are wondering about.