patterns – Cats MeWOW Designs

Hello! Have you wanted to make a dress or outfit that is completely unique but has little to no pattern drafting experience? Is there a specific design that keeps you up at night but you just don’t know how how to make it a reality? In comes a website called sewist.com. The idea of this website intrigued me as I always have big dreams of dresses and things that I want to make but I’ve been sewing clothing for less than 2 years and still have so much to learn. What I liked about this website is that you have total and complete control of everything about the item. I’m going to use dresses as an example. You can pick if you want it fitted, the sleeves, the neckline, darts, skirt, do you want ruffles, the length of the skirt, waistline, and more. It uses AI to create a pattern based on the items that you select. Then you can purchase the pattern from them and it supposedly comes with instructions. Just to put this out there, this post is not sponsered in any way by the site. This is my personal opinion and experience with it. My goal is to make others aware of the pros and cons of this tool. So let’s talk about this.

Interface

It has a very nice beginner and user-friendly interface. It is simple so you don’t get overwelmed and confused by unuseful graphics and it’s easy to just click on the things that you like.

Options

For the basic items to start with they have a good variety of options. At this time for Women’s clothing they have Dress, Top, Skirt, Pants, Jumpsuit, and Lingerie. For Girl’s Sizes they currently just have Dresses and Skirts but Tops are coming soon. That said if you are looking for men’s patterns they do no carry those. Once you actually started selecting what you want after picking the main type of item the options are actually very impressive. I was surprised by the amount of neckline and sleeve options. Some of them I had never seen before. Each option has a drawing to give you an idea of what you are looking at.

Personalization

Once you get to the part where you have selected all of your options it gives you a preview of what you dress looks like. But you can actually personalzie the preview even more by adding the colors that you are going to use or selected a pattern from their preinstalled library. This helps you visualize it even more. You can also decide if you want to add seam allowance or not.

Sizing

This one kind of goes right along with personalization. One of the things that I love about this website is that it is size inclusive. I am a mid-size queen. In normal sizes I wear around a 14ish but could go one smaller or bigger depending on the design. I find it incredibly hard to find sewing patterns my size as everyone wants to make them for the thin girls or if I’m lucky they list me as a 4XL. Every body is beautiful and I’m not ashamed of my curves. However I do get frustrated easily with this lack of inclusivity. This website is different though. It goes from 4XS all the way up to 9XL. This means that no matter what size you are, you can design somethign that makes you feel confident and to me that is the most beautiful thing in the world. You can also have the sizing personalized even further by entering your measurments and then the AI will make the pattern to fit your specific body. If you do this option, keep in mind that if you sizing goes between two sizes they will pick the bigger size. You can also use the size chart to determine your size. For the users in the United States be sure that you click the inches buttons on the side panel otherwise the size chart will be in centimeters. You can also include multiple sizing optiongs if you are making the same dress for several different people or if you want to sell the pattern.

Pattern Instructions

I found the instructions complete with basic information on how to put it together. It does have a picture of your finished design in the instruction files and but when it comes to necklines it just has basic facing pictures and things however it is written in a way that is easy to follower. I also love that it’s not just limited to english speakers. You can download the instructiongs in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian.

Price

Last but not least, we are going to talk about price. To me this is probably one of the most important things. Patterns can be very expensive especially if they are bought from the store. I don’t know about you but I’m all about trying to save money. Can you guess how much it costs for the pattern. $3. Yes you saw that correctly. Only 3 US Dollars. You can also download a Preview for FREE so you can make sure that it’s set up in a way that you want. There is another site called Tailor Nova that offers a similar program but it is I believe $13 for the pattern at each size. However I was incredibly impressed by everything that it offers. That said if you want an additional sizing of the pattern it is $3. So if you were putting it up to sell and you wanted 10 different sizes for example, it would be about $30 ($3 x 10 patterns). To me that is still a fantastic deal.

Things I Don’t Like

I want to give you a fully transparent review and there are a couple of things that I really wish were different. For example, when selecting your pieces you have to remember and visualize what you already selected as there isn’t a Preview that updates on the side as you select things. That is one of the things that Tailor Nova has and I found incredibly helpful. Another thing that I don’t like is that you can’t upload your own picture to use in the finished preview. You are limited to the short supply that they already have in the system.

Final Word

Would I use it again? Absolutely! I loved using the designer. I input my measurements and height and it came out perfectly. I like how size inclusive it is. The different options that you can add to the design and that they keep adding even more options. This is definitly not a scam. When I first saw this the old say came to my mind “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.” So I was worried but for $3 dollars I was willing to try it and I was not disappointed. I can’t wait to design more items in the future and browse the collection that others have made as well. If you are interested in designing your own patterns, give this a try. Did you know about this tool? Have you used this or Tailor Nova? Let me know in the comments. To finish off, I’m going to post a picture of the dress that I made using this tool. Let me know what you think.

Hello! I hope that everyone has had a great week! I am so excited to share with you a pattern review of the newly released Confetti Frock by Lydia Naomi. This was released in the middle of the week and I’m so excited that I was able to pattern-test it before the release. Let me tell you. This is the cutest and most comfortable dress that I probably own right now. Don’t take my word for it take a look at these pictures.

Just look how cute that is! There is a couple of details that I really love about this pattern. First of course the sleeves. Lately, I have been into big voluminous sleeves and these are no exception. They are gathered at the top and have a hidden elastic in the bottom to make them super full. Second, I love the length. The ruffle at the bottom is optional but since I’m 5’8″ I need to have long dresses and with the ruffle, it made a nice tea length for me. Something that I was not expecting to like was the zipper. If you look at the image on the left you can see the seam where the invisible zipper resides. I am wholeheartedly a back-zipper kind of person. The zipper of this dress not only goes on the side and into the sleeve but it is still perfectly comfortable.

Some of the things that I love about this particular pattern is how complete the tutorial is. Not only are there pictures and written instructions on every step but there is also a video for each style. One of the styles is as pictured above and the other style has spaghetti straps. In order to be successful you MUST read the Read First file completely before doing anything else. This tells you how much fabric you’ll need, the measurements of the finished garments, sizes, and notion lengths such as the elastic, twill tape, zipper, etc. Some other important information that is tucked into that file is how to do a full bust adjustment. The pattern is for a b/c cup but the adjustment shows you how to make it bigger or smaller as well as how to make it longer and shorter. This is absolutely essential. Please do not skip this step.

Another essential step is when you print out your pattern make sure to use Adobe Acrobat so that you can print out only the size that you need via the layers tab. There are darts and such in this pattern so it gets confusing with all of the sizes if you do not do this. There are quite a few pages, I can’t remember exactly but I want to say around 32 so just be prepared for that.

The dress itself has a very snug fit and is made with a woven fabric with no stretch. With that in mind, I actually went a size up as my weight loves to fluctuate and I wanted to make sure that I would always be able to wear it even if I was a couple pounds heavier. (Just for reference my normal dress size is 14/16. According to the chart, I was a size 20 and sized up to a 22 so be sure to check out the sizing chart.) Because I sized up, I didn’t do the bust adjustment but that might be something I try next time. In the photos above I actually sewed an extra piece of fabric where the cups tie together to keep it more modest. However with the official release she added in the Read First file how to make an adjustment to close the gap which I am incredibly thankful for.

All in all, I really recommend this pattern as it is cute and perfect for spring/summer. It’s very comfortable as well and allows you to be unique. I actually upcycled fabric from old bedsheets to make this dress so get creative with it! If you are interested in trying it out you can buy the pattern from her website: https://www.lydianaomi.com/ or her Etsy store https://www.etsy.com/shop/LYDIANAOMI. Also if you are interested in seeing her tutorials on how to make Style A and Style B check out her YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/@LydiaNaomi. What I love about her YouTube channel is not only does she have video tutorials for her products but she also shows how you can alter clothes that are currently in your closet to fit you and gives great tips for sewing. So show some love to this amazing artist and support her small business. If you do try it, let me know what you think in the comments, or if there is another pattern you would like me to try, link it below! I hope you all have an amazing rest of your week!

Tag: patterns

Is Sewist.com worth it? Is it legit?