Pattern Cutting Ruler- I use the Pattern Master ruler because I find the size covers most outfits I make. It's quite strong so it won't break (it's been around the world with me and it hasn't broken, I think that's quite impressive) and it's super easy to do seam allowances with the extra lines on it.

The book has been written for fashion-students, who are beginners in pattern making, but it’s also useful as a reference book for freelance-designers. The perfect book to start with, is Metric Pattern Cutting for Women’s Wear by Winifred Aldrich, which has been around since 1975 and by now has reached its 6th edition. It’s been published by John Wiley & Sons. The close waist shaping instructions confused me. They stated quite matter-of-factly that the total waist dart intake needs to be 12cm. Surely this depends on the difference between your bust and waist? Yes. Yes it does. That 12cm is derived from the standard measurement chart given in the book, so I needed to follow the formula for my own measurements: Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2023-05-26 20:33:04 Autocrop_version 0.0.15_books-20220331-0.2 Bookplateleaf 0003 Boxid IA40952624 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier In addition to some minor tweaks (shoulder slope & dart angle changes), the most notable difference is that I’ve cropped it to waist length and added the close waist shaping from another formula in the book.urn:oclc:record:1392374306 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier metricpatterncut0000aldr_b7m8 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s24jg8387bt Invoice 1652 Isbn 0632036125 Lccn 94178909 Ocr tesseract 5.3.0-3-g9920 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.21 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA409392 Openlibrary_edition Honestly, I was pretty giddy at this point. It felt like a PDF pattern that I’d bought. Obviously it doesn’t look at all professional at this stage, but it seemed surprisingly polished and real. A particularly useful chapter is the one that talks about correcting fit issues. Because lets face it, not everybody has the standard body-shape. The size-charts have been updated to reflect the changes in body sizing during the years. This usually means bigger waist and -hips and a smaller bust. Contents I then used the tiling template from Pattern Workshop to print it out and tape it together (again, other alternatives are out there, I think Pattern Lab may have one):

I also treated myself to the Pattern Workshop course to learn digital drafting techniques using Adobe Illustrator. This was very much a splurge, and although I learned a huge amount from the course, I must say there are very decent free alternatives out there such as Pattern Lab, which I’m using to supplement my knowledge. At any rate, I’ve finished Pattern Workshop, I’ve watched many hours of Pattern Lab’s videos, and I am newly equipped with these fancy-pants skills that let me draft patterns digitally in Illustrator. VERY exciting. People often ask me to recommend some pattern making books, so I decided to write a few introductions. Well, there are already these two articles about the Pattern Magic-series, which I continue to recommend, but now it’s time to introduce something more basic. I chose some books which I want to write about. And speaking of asymmetry, it looks as though my left shoulder is shorter than my right. I don’t really fancy drafting the two sides differently so I’ll need to compromise that shoulder length by getting the average of the two. Next Steps

Metric Pattern Cutting for Women’s Wear gives you the chance to draft patterns to your own measurements. But you can use industrial sizes, too. There are a couple of different size charts: one for teenagers, with a more athletic figure (=high-street fashion), including sizes 6-16. And one for the mature women (=standard), sizes 6-24. Both with the possibility to adjust the measurements by the person’s height: short, medium or tall. There are also different charts for leisure wear with the letter-codes XS-XXL.

The length of the front darts is good but they are a bit too far apart. I guess you don’t really take a measurement of where your apex actually is, so it makes sense to have to adjust that.

Notchers- These aren't a must but they are useful if you want to make your patterns last longer. They snip a 'U' shape in the paper meaning it doesn't rip as easily as notching by hand creating 'V' shapes.