Where Do My Sewing Pattern Ideas Come From?

A sewing pattern idea doesn’t always come straight away. Sometimes you have a strong idea in your head that really excites you, and sometimes you are feeling pulled in too many directions by trends, opinions, aesthetics and expectations – which makes things feel unclear. 

I am currently in the process of starting a new sewing pattern and feeling some of these things.  

Part of the process, for me, is remembering that inspiration is only the beginning. It’s hard to remember that I am not jumping straight to the end result; I’m sort of sometimes relying on the finished outcome to pop into my head, so that I can just start drafting and developing it. But that’s not really how the process works.  I need to patiently see what evolves from the ideas that are happening in my head.

So what actually inspires me? Inspiration comes from a lot of different places. When deciding on an interesting collection for my Fashion Design studies, I can be inspired by anything I see; for example, the current project inspiration – mushrooms. But when designing for a sewing pattern, I do like to take a slightly different approach. 

Undertaking some research is where I like to start. I like to take a look at high-street fashion brands to determine what people are currently interested in. I then like to look at current trends in high-end fashion, including runways and couture designs; this is one of my favourite sources of inspiration, as I am really drawn to the level of craftsmanship and silhouettes. Pinterest is great, but I don’t really like to use it for this purpose because I find it more useful to look directly at a collection from different angles rather than in a styled and curated way.  

I don’t look at these things to copy a garment I see, but instead to get inspiration from individual elements that might interest me. At the same time, I want to follow the voice in my head that tells me what I want to design, even if it isn’t the rage right now.

Some of the things I might discover through my research are a particular detail, a fabric, a construction method, a silhouette, a proportion or even a historical reference that I want to explore further. 

I find that I am not always drawn to the most obvious part of the garment. A lot of the time, I really notice a small detail that makes me look twice. 

While looking at fashion for reference, I start to notice patterns in the things that I find interesting. If I keep returning to similar ideas and design details, it is on my list of things to explore further. At the moment, I am really interested in panelled clothing and the way a garment can be broken into sections and then sewn back together to create interesting lines. 

When I have identified something that consistently interests me, I will explore it further and begin developing it into my own idea. To do this, I will go ahead and develop some designs by sketching, combining the research I have done with my own personal taste and aesthetic.

Take panelled clothing, for example. I will probably draw some different items of clothing and start looking at how I might divide that up into different sections, discovering where the seams will sit on the body and what it will look like.

Afterwards, I like to take a look at my sketches, and this helps me decide what to develop further. I am not the best at drawing, but once I have transferred something from my head onto paper, I have an idea of how it might turn out. Sometimes it’s not really what I had hoped, and sometimes I have drawn something completely out of the blue, and it ends up being more interesting than what I thought it would be.

I tend to know exactly which ideas I want to continue with because I am just so excited to explore them further. There might be a detail I want to learn how to create or something I want to experiment with, and I just feel determined to work it out. 

The next step is choosing an idea I’d like to work with. I do have a little bit of a hard time choosing, mainly because choosing one idea for now means letting go of the others for a time. Sometimes things may never come to fruition because by the time I have finished with one idea, enough time has passed that I might not still be interested or new things have started to excite me instead. But once I have finally made my decision, I will move on to the toiling stage. 

This is one of my favourite parts of the process because I can start to see the idea take shape instead of just in my head or on paper. I like to see how it looks on my body, see if it is definitely the pattern I want to work on and see what changes I could make, in both fit and design. 

More often than not, it needs a lot of changes. I will then fix any issues and create another toile. This process can be repeated as many times as needed depending on the complexity of the garment. Because of this, the design will almost definitely be very different by the time it’s released.

I think this is something I’m still learning about myself and my own process. As I said before, I often put pressure on myself to know exactly what I want to make before I begin, even though the actual process of developing a pattern isn’t always that way.

Which brings me back to where I started. I am currently trying to decide what my next sewing pattern will be, and I still don’t know exactly what it is.

I have a few ideas I am interested in, but nothing has quite become the thing I’m really excited about yet. I think I’ll pay more attention to what I keep returning to. Maybe the next pattern will come from one of those ideas, or maybe something completely different will catch me by surprise.

I guess we will see.