Drafting Sewing Patterns in CAD

Hi guys, I like to sew and I quite recently had an epiphany that will forever change my approach to sewing.

So I've been working on a very custom project (that I will most definitely share once I'm done with it), and as such, I had to create my own pattern from scratch. Now, how does one go about creating a clothing pattern? Without getting too much into the minutiae of the sewing world, I'll tell you that I drafted it.

I've never drafted my own pattern before, so naturally it took me a great number of attempts to get the pattern just right. More than 10, in fact. To draft a pattern, you need a big piece of paper, a ruler, a pen, and a list of every possible measurement that might become relevant. You also need a calculator, or the patience to calculate all the different proportions by hand. And if you mess up? Time to get a new giant piece of paper and start over.

Anyway, after several weeks of tweaking my design, I thought to myself - Why am I wasting all this time and paper? I have TECHNOLOGY. And so, this past week I set out to make my drafts in a whole new way, via xDesign and SOLIDWORKS.

The first thing I did was open up xDesign and make a sketch. This sketch is exactly what I was doing on my giant paper, but it was significantly faster and much easier to adjust if I needed to. Once I had the main shape, I extruded the sketch just a little bit. Then I created another sketch to figure out where I wanted to place my seam lines, and split the pattern into pieces. Moving each body further apart, I was then able to offset each one to add in my seam allowances. It was all so quick and easy! 

Even making the sleeves was a wonder. For those of you who make clothing, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has trouble fitting a sleeve to the armscye. Adjusting and matching the curve of the sleeve cap to the armhole has never been so easy and precise. All I did was make a spline for each side of the sleeve cap curve and then measure the matching side of the armscye, tweaking my construction lines until they were equal. I was so floored that I had to post about it here, hopefully to inspire others to draft using CAD (if you haven't been doing that already, it's possible I'm very late to the game).

Once the pattern was made and saved, I reopened it in SOLIDWORKS and created a drawing at 1:1 scale. If you have a big roll printer available, you can print your pattern directly from SOLIDWORKS and start cutting it out to get sewing. I only have my letter sized paper printer at home though, so I had to take an extra step and export the drawing to Adobe Illustrator to arrange the pattern pieces on each paper in such a way that I would be able to tape them together after printing. All in all, this was a super positive experience and I will 100% be doing this for all of my future sewing projects where I create my own patterns.

Here are some pictures of the process:

Draft of the base bodice sloper in a sketch:

Half bodice with seam lines, before seam allowances:

Printed and cut out pattern pieces:

Front and back bodice:

Not showing the final product until it's complete, you'll have to guess and/or wait :)

MAKERScosplay ​​​​​​​