Pattern design tutorial

Hello there, and welcome to this FreeSewing pattern design tutorial. My name is Joost, and in this tutorial I will show you how to design a bespoke sewing pattern, start to finish.

This tutorial is divided into three parts, allowing you to speedrun or entirely skip certain parts depending on your interests or prior experience:

Part 1: Prerequisites

The first sections of this tutorial, Part 1, deals with the prerequisites. Installing node, setting up the FreeSewing development environment on your system, and so on. If you are familiar with the JavaScript ecosystem, I can summarize that entire section in this one-liner that sets up the FreeSewing development environment on your system:

Shell prompt
npx @freesewing/new-design

Part 2: Parametric design

In Part 2 I will show you how to design a parametric sewing pattern with FreeSewing. We’ll create a part, add a bunch of points, draw lines and curves, and so on. All the basic skills required to create a sewing pattern in code.

This is probably a part you do not want to skip, unless you have prior experience with FreeSewing and are looking for a refresh on some of the more advanced features covered in the next section.

Part 3: Beyond the basics

There is more to FreeSewing patterns than meets the eye, and in Part 3 I will cover some of the ways you can add further value to your designs.

This includes things like translation, supporting laser cutters, avoiding the need to printing with so-called paperless patterns, as well as how you can configure your pattern to integrate with FreeSewing.org, or your own frontend.

You can follow this tutorial start to finish, or skip ahead and back, the choice is yours.