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Cloth Overview 575
Darts used to be a common part of women’s
everyday clothing, especially in blouses and
dresses. However, darts are not needed with loose
garments or stretchy clothing. Today, they are used
mostly in formal wear and tailored garments.
Clothing Design and Techn ique s
One way to create clothing is to lay out a pattern
and put it together with Garment Maker. Garment
Maker is a modifier that is used to make seams,
lay out cloth panels and define fabric densities.
You c an use Garment Maker to create seams for
the pattern either in a t raditional, flat layout or in
a visual, easy-to-use 3D layout.
Intherealworld,clothesaremadebycutting
outshapesfrompiecesofclothandsewingthem
together along seams with thread. Garment Maker
emulates this approach. First you must create a
pattern t hat will define t he shapes of the panels.
Clothing patterns typically use shapes that we
don’t encounter in everyday life. Those of us
who aren’t an experienced clothing designers
might have a hard t ime creating these shapes from
scratch. It’s often best to start out with a pattern
made by somebody else. Cloth includes a variety
of p atterns for shirts, pants, jackets and s o forth.
You can a lso buy software t hat will generate these
patterns in DXF format.
One progr am that does this is PatternMaker,
available from w
ww.patternmaker.com.When
you want to move beyond editing the patterns
included with Cloth, it’s often helpful to use such
applications to help create p atter ns and familiarize
yourself with the process .