Textile Insight

March / April 2018

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34 • Textile Insight ~ March/April 2018 textileinsight.com OUT OF CONTEXT IT IS TIME FOR SIMPLE, LOW COST PATTERN making software. Many years ago software was written that allowed a single pattern maker to sit at a keyboard and replace what had before taken a handful of specialists days to create. Original patterns, graded sizes and fabric markers were being printed in the corner of an office rather than drafted on a table in the factory. The changes digital patternmaking brought to sewn goods manufacturing were universal and immediate. Those software companies created their own kingdoms with unique standards, lan- guages and procedures. The peripherals became hostage as well; each program required digitizing boards to transfer hand- made patterns into a mathematical form for the software to manipulate, and the multiple plotters and printers required to print out single master patterns, nested size sets and the all-important markers* used by the factories to cut production runs. Choosing digital pattern making software was an expensive and committed choice for any company to make and was beyond the reach of the small-scale operator. Then nothing changed. The monster pattern software companies that dominated the industry decades ago are still around and charging the same starry eyed prices that they commanded in the Clinton years. The programs are old, frail, hard to use, and in almost all cases come with a steep yearly "subscription" fee that amounts to extortion in the eyes of many of today's users. This annual fee alone is more than twice the price of Adobe's Creative Suite, a far more powerful and versatile tool. Buying the wrong pattern making program amounts to "purchasing a $10,000 door- stop" to quote one industry insider. This single technical roadblock is prevent- ing companies and individuals from making sewn goods in the USA. Workshop sized makers can't scale up and small compa- nies with a single market foothold struggle to expand their offerings because they are unable to manipulate a product's patternwork as easily as they can control every other aspect of their digital lives. Old algorithms are cheap algorithms. AutoCAD, graphics, publishing, and pho- tography are all being challenged by low cost and community based software. What Google Docs did to Microsoft Office is being echoed across specialized industries and leveling the digital socio-economic playing field. We need open source pattern making software that leads to a new wave American based sewing. Access to basic software will allow for more made-to-measure apparel, incentivize small batch cut and sew opera- tions and allow for endless crowd sourced creativity. Just as Gimp and Inkscape have transformed the graphics world, open plat- form pattern making software will fuel a generation of self-taught entrepreneurs and designers. *the marker is a printout for production cutting that contains all the pattern pieces in a given fabric. The fabric is stacked on the cutting table and the market is placed on top with all the sizes needed, laid out at the correct fabric width and positioned as efficiently as possible in order to conserve yardage when cutting the different parts needed to make that style. Disclaimer: Mr. Gray doesn't use software that costs more than his car and he is grateful that MS Word remains compatible all the way back to the '97 Slick Willy edition. His opinions and floppy drive are his own, and the Publisher may not share them. O Crowd Sourced Sewing by Kurt Gray How open source software can fuel American made sewn goods.

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