We are recording today on the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish and Kwakwakiwak peoples, including Slaywatu's, Squamish, Musqueam and Komok's First Nations.

Hello and welcome to Love to Sew! I'm Caroline, the owner of Blackbird Fabrics, and I'm Helen, the designer behind Helen's Closet Patterns.

We're two sewing buds who love to sew our own clothes and want to encourage you on your sewing journey too.

Join us for today's topic, getting started with pattern drafting!

Hi, Helen! Hi, Caroline! How are you?

I am doing so good. I'm so excited for today's topic. It's going to be amazing to introduce some of our listeners to the magic of pattern drafting.

Yeah, this topic is right up your alley, and I'm really excited to take in and learn more. I think you're going to be the guide, and I'm going to be the...

What's the right word? Learner? Learn-y?

It's going to be fun though. Yes, I think it's going to be very fun. I will try to be the guide.

Pattern drafting is honestly still pretty new to me. We have a pattern drafter for Helen's Closet, so I don't draft the patterns myself for the business.

I have in the past, and I've learned how to at the start of my business, but I've since handed it off to the pros.

But I'm really excited to share what I know, plus all of the amazing research that our assistant Lisa has done for this episode.

So hopefully it's going to be a good intro point for anyone out there who's interested in learning how to draft patterns.

Yeah, and okay, Helen, I think you're not giving yourself enough credit because you've been working with patterns for a pretty long time.

You so, so much, you try out all kinds of patterns from all different companies, and you stare at patterns all day long with your company.

So I think that, like, well, maybe you don't draft patterns very often, you're pretty familiar with the topic, I would say.

That's true. I have intimate knowledge of patterns. We'll put it that way.

Yeah. Okay, well, before we dive in, we have some listener mail from Mara.

Hi, Helen and Caroline. I made my own wedding dress last year, and I'm shamelessly obsessed.

There are almost zero resources in the sewing world for making your own wedding dress, especially a formal one with a lot of structure.

During my research phase, I used blogs and YouTube channels about wedding dress alterations to learn how they're constructed and what works and what doesn't.

The blog fit for a queen was my favorite. Her blog is an absolute roast of modern wedding dress design and workmanship.

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