Lectra.

Drawing and cutting the pattern.

The pattern almost complete and ready to cut off roll.

Finished pattern ready to be pulled out (bottom left piece has been removed and placed back in gap)

Alongside our t-shirt project we have been beginning to use several new software to help aid our projects and progression using software to assist our projects. One of these new softwares is Kaledo Style, this enables you to create accurate and professional looking garment flats/technical drawings with ease. You can make the garment completely symmetrical if that’s what you require, but also then transfer onto a working drawing/specification sheet, to save wastage on paper and time drawing out the flats by hand. The end result is much more professional and sophisticated also.

We have also been using the software Modaris which connects with Kaledo Style. you can draw up a technical drawing on Kaledo and then go on to plot out the correct pattern pieces for said garment on an interactive board. Once you have plotted all the necessary pattern pieces for a garment, you can then edit and adjust the pattern pieces on a computer instead of by hand. The fact that you can so easily modify and adjust pattern pieces using this software saves both hug amounts of time and pattern paper. Another good quality of creating a pattern on Modaris is that you can save your design and go back to it whenever you want without worrying about losing or damaging your pattern. Of course all computers can be temperamental at times, this just means you should save your work in more than on place such as on your computer and a separate hard-drive.

After using Modaris to create our patterns, we then started how to use the software Diamino to create lay-plans for our T-shirts. By creating these lay-plans we are able to create a small version as a PDF file to save and then annotate for our files, but also to eventually print on the large pattern plotter which both draws out your pattern pieces and serrates the pattern pieces (with your seam allowances included when created on Modaris) so that when the pattern plotter has finished with your particular pattern, you can simply pull the pattern pieces out of the large piece of paper, without the use of scissors.

All these programs are owned and created by the company Lectra. By using all these softwares step-by-step, you can draw an accurate technical drawing, plot out and edit a pattern to a high level of accuracy and then create a lay-plan for the garment and then print and pull apart the pieces to have a finished, professional garment pattern.