Course Pattern Making - Online Lessons

What is the University of Fashion?

The University of Fashion works very differently than most fashion design schools. We don’t charge a separate tuition fee for each individual class you take. Instead, we give you 24/7, on-demand access to all of our many hundreds of full-length video lessons for a low yearly subscription fee.

UoF’s lessons are taught exclusively by fashion school professors and industry professionals, never by amateurs. You’ll see the exact same lectures and "how-to" demonstrations taught by the best fashion schools, but without rigid class times at inconvenient locations. Instead, you decide what, when and where you want to learn.

The University of Fashion offers lessons in all the major fashion disciplines: draping, pattern making, CAD pattern making, accessories, sewing, fashion art, knits, business, product development, lectures, CAD fashion art, childrenswear and more.

Most schools charge a big tuition fee to teach a single fashion subject in a particular fashion discipline, like sewing or pattern making. At the University of Fashion, you will pay a lot less to access every fashion subject in every discipline!

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What is Pattern Making?

While Draping is the three-dimensional method of creating your designs, pattern making is the two-dimensional method. It's also a critical input into the manufacturing process for your designs.

Preview of a Typical UoF Pattern Making Lesson

Pivoting a Front Shoulder Dart to a Side Bust Dart

Lessons for every Skill Level

Beginner

Our Beginner 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) 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 patternmaking tools and 3) introduce you to the terminology used by patternmakers, 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.

Intermediate

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”.

Advanced

Drafting a Women’s Jacket

Using your oaktag torso sloper, we will teach how to draft a women’s princess seam jacket. You will learn where to add the necessary jacket ease, how to shape the pattern, how to extract the princess panels and then how to draft a notch collar, lapel and facing. To draft your suit sleeve, either view our lesson on how to draft a suit sleeve from measurements or our lessons on converting a fitted sleeve to a suit sleeve and how to convert a suit sleeve to a 2-piece suit sleeve. Our jacket construction techniques lesson will guide you through the finer points of sewing a tailored jacket.

The University of Fashion offers many, many lessons in Pattern Making. Check them out by clicking the Lessons tab on our homepage at UniversityofFashion.com.

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