The Fashion Design Toolkit: 18 Patternmaking Techniques for Creative Practice
Ebook
Overview
With The Fashion Design Toolkit you'll learn how tried-and-tested techniques like gathers, pleats, tucks, and twists can help you adapt patterns and create your own original garment designs. Tracy Jennings walks you through 18 patterning tactics to inspire fresh ideas, demonstrating how embracing pattern drafting skills can lead to innovative and effective collections.
Each technique is illustrated in a variety of contexts, showing how and why it has been used by other designers, so you can use the history of each tool as inspiration for your original collections. Ethical practice is woven throughout the book, with tips on how to implement techniques in an environmentally sustainable way.
The 18 essential techniques are divided into 5 categories:
Establishing Fit and Flare: Darts, Slash & Spread, Seaming, Insets
Channeling Fullness: Gathers, Ruffles, Pleats, Tucks
Fashioning the Fluid and Unstructured: Arcs, Flounces, Drapes, Twists
Engineering Fabric and Form: Contouring, Structure, Textile Designs
Focusing on Concepts: Adaptation, Reduction, Zero Waste
Online resources include a downloadable pattern block, which is available in US sizes 4–18.
www.bloomsburyonlineresources.com/fashion-design-toolkit
Demonstrates how 18 core techniques, such as darts, inserts, twists and folds, can be used to create beautiful garment designs or adapt existing patterns.
280 color images show each technique used as part of a range of different designs, illustrating the flexibility of each concept and encouraging readers to experiment in their own collection.
Patterning principles are presented as "techniques" that can be transferred to any number of designs, patternmakers take their first steps to becoming fashion designers as they adapt existing patterns to incorporate new elements.
Ethical practice is woven throughout the book, with tips on how to implement techniques in an environmentally sustainable way.
A basic pattern block will be available for download, so readers can get started quickly on their designs.
Introduction
1. Darts
2. Slash and Spread
3. Seaming
4. Insets
5. Textile Designs
6. Gathers
7. Ruffles
8. Pleats
9. Tucks
10. Arcs
11. Flounces
12. Drapes
13. Twists
14. Contouring
15. Reduction
16. Adaptations
17. Structure
18. Zero Waste
Edge Finishes
Index
- Title: The Fashion Design Toolkit: 18 Patternmaking Techniques for Creative Practice
- Author: Tracy Jennings
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 248
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350101586, 9781350101562, 1350101567, 1350101583
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350101586
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T12:07:11Z
Tracy Jennings is a professor of fashion at Dominican University, USA. She teaches courses in apparel design, clothing construction, textile science, and computer-aided design. She incorporates years of experience as a patternmaker and designer of women's career wear into her classes. Her research interests include aspects of fashion and design related to creativity, technology, and sustainability.