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Start the development environment

FreeSewing provides the studio, a development environment to help you design and develop patterns.

There are two ways to run this studio:

  • Repository studio: Use this if you intend to contribute your work to FreeSewing
  • Stand-alone studio: Use this if you want to do your own thing, and not contribute to FreeSewing

Repository Studio

Run npm run studio to start the repository studio development environment:

npm run studio

Then point your browser to http://localhost:3000

Your new design will appear in the Local Designs page.

tip

Adding another new design

This is all you need to work on existing designs. If you'd like to add another new design, run:

npm run add

Just make sure to re-start the repository studio afterwards with npm run studio

Stand-alone studio

You will have a new folder that contains the stand-alone studio development environment. (Within this new folder, the design subfolder holds your design's configuration files and source code. You can ignore all other subfolders and files; they are part of the development environment.)

To start the development environment, enter the folder that was created and run npm run start.

npm run start

Then open your browser and go to http://localhost:3000

tip

The development environment will watch for any changes you make to the pattern's source code or configuration. When you do, the pattern will update automatically in your browser.

Adding another new design

This is all you need to work on existing designs. If you'd like to add another new design, run:

npm run add

Just make sure to re-start the stand-alone studio afterwards with npm run start.

note
Yay, you're done!

All you have to do now is design your pattern. Thankfully, we have a tutorial for that too: