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Anonymous asked the following question:

“I am starting a new line of women’s formal dresses and have been trying to line up a pattern maker. I have been talking with a handful of pattern makers and am a bit perplexed at the disparity in services. I am sensitive to the old addage of “you get what you pay for”, especially when it comes to the blueprints of the clothing line. Some pattern makers are requesting about $300/pattern while others are giving me estimates of $1000-$3000. I don’t want to be cheap and end up with a crappy pattern, so I can bite the bullet and pay top dollar if necessary, but I wasn’t thinking patterns were going to be in the thousands.

We require that they have the ability to make digital patterns, but I can’t interview all of them and see their samples as they all live in various states and none of them are Utah, where I am located. Do you have any recommendations?”

I’m not going to say I’m a professional on developing patterns, because I’m definitely not, but I can’t justify someone charging $3,000 dollars for a pattern unless the piece is that unique and will require countless hours to prepare a quality pattern for it. From what you said above you’re doing formal dresses and I’m pretty sure that isn’t out of the norm creating patterns for formal dresses.

I could see the price being reasonable if this was for more than just the pattern and the actual cutting and sewing of the garment being done by an in-house seamstress at the pattern makers shop. I see that you require them to make digital patterns and this could definitely increase the price in preparing the pattern, because that type of equipment is costly.

Maybe if we had more info I could better answer the question. I can’t count their estimate out just because it sounds too pricey without you going into more detail. A little more about the type of dress and other requirements you’re asking from your sources.

Hopefully someone else will chime in with more experience on this subject matter.

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