“Using your individual measurements, a pattern is drafted by scratch using the most exacting of standards. It's very clinical and scientific. Everything is measured with a ruler to the greatest degree of precision possible, much like an engineering drawing, using a drafting square and a scale formula. It's extremely complicated, and everything must be checked and double-checked. There are slightly different methods you can use, but they all involve a lot of measuring and calculation. When you are taught this for the first time, you feel as if you're studying nuclear physics, rather than pattern drafting.”

The bespoke clothing industry and the patternmaking industry make pattern drafting seem terribly complicated and mysterious, and why not? Every pattern drafting method I've ever seen seems terribly complicated to me.

But let's cut them a little slack. Anyone who’s ever had a go at dressmaking would probably agree that the biggest challenge in making a great garment is to make it fit correctly.

Although patterns are made and sold for our convenience, available in a range of convenient sizes, most of us know that this still does not guarantee a well-fitting garment. Firstly, human beings are not mass-produced in bulk. We’re all different and require different sized clothes. Secondly, many of us have found that commercial pattern sizes often cannot be relied upon for accuracy.

And so the single most freeing skill that a sewer or costumer can have is to learn to draft his or her own patterns. To take your own measurements and a blank sheet of paper and draw a pattern that fits you individually frees you to understand the makeup and adjustment of a pattern better, not to mention the scope it gives you to shape the design.

To begin, a basic “block” can be produced. This gives you a standard shape and a standard system that can then be adapted in myriad ways to produce all sorts of garments. Once the block pattern is drafted, you can make up the result in fabric and check the fit. Any changes can be transferred back to your block pattern to save effort later and give you a well-fitted pattern that you can use again and again.

Yes, the traditional process of pattern drafting is complicated and mysterious. Sparsely explained diagrams dizzy us with geometry and jargon. But I'm here today to change all that for you.

With sixteen years of sewing and a Maths degree under my belt, not to mention three year's training as a teacher of Mathematics, I'm well-placed to take the mystery, the jargon and as many numbers as possible out of the process. Baby step by baby step, I'm about to show you how you too can harness the freedom of drafting your own patterns.

Come on, let's make a start!

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