My First Pattern Cutting Lesson

On my first day of pattern cutting classes at uni we were told to bring in an orange and a piece of calico…you can imagine our confusion, surely a pencil, paper and pattern master would be of more use?

Turns out our tutor knew better (something that we quickly learned was always true) and she had a pretty simple, but genius, way of showing us exactly what pattern cutting actually is.

Upon arriving at class we were told to wrap up our oranges using calico in the neatest way possible…this was actually a little harder than it sounds!

With some perseverance we all managed to wrap our oranges up. Some used the “scrunching” method, some rolled theirs up and I used a pleating method (which I quickly became obsessed with!)

So my first ever pattern cutting lesson consisted of oranges, calico and lots of sticky pins.

As much fun as it was I took away two very important things from it…

1. That simply put, pattern cutting is really just finding ways of wrapping up the human body in fabric, and...

2. There is always more than one way to do it.