Article: DU 402: The Art of Pattern Making

May 7, 2026

DU 402: The Art of Pattern Making

Before a single piece of fabric is cut, someone has to draw the blueprint — and that drawing, those curves and lines and notches, is called a pattern. When I quit my job to start FITTED in 2014, the first thing I did was enroll in a pattermaking course. Not design, not a besuinss of fashion course; pattern making. This article covers the three main ways to break into pattern making, and shares some practical tips along the way.

← Previous: DU 401 — How Denim Is Made | Next: DU 403 — How to Make a Pair of Jeans →

By Eric Steffen

The Blueprint

Every pair of jeans that has ever existed started as a pattern. Before a single piece of fabric was cut, before a single seam was sewn, someone sat down with paper and pencil and worked out the geometry of how flat cloth becomes something that fits a three-dimensional human body. That drawing — those curves and lines and notches — is the pattern. And everything that happens downstream, every fitting decision and construction choice, flows directly from it.

I started making patterns in 2013, the year before I left finance to start FITTED Underground. I have revised, redrawn, and refined those patterns hundreds of times since. I am still learning from them.

This article is for anyone who wants to understand how patterns work — and for anyone who wants to make their own. If you're in the second group: the best advice I can give you is to start before you feel ready. The pattern will teach you things that no article can.

Three Ways In

There is no single correct path to a working jean pattern. There are three, and each one is legitimate. The right choice depends on where you are in your journey.

Option 1: Deconstruct and Draft

This is where I'd tell almost any beginner to start, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Find a pair of jeans — vintage shop, your own closet, wherever — that closely mirrors the fit you want to achieve. Take it apart at the seams. Press each piece completely flat with an iron. Then trace every piece onto card stock or pattern paper, marking as you go where the seam allowances fall.

What you end up with is two things at once. First, a working pattern — one that you know produces a fit you like, because you're looking at the physical evidence of it. Second, if you strip the seam allowances out of those pieces, you have a sloper: a clean, neutral base pattern with no design ease built in, just the essential geometry of the fit. A sloper is one of the most valuable things a maker can have. It becomes the foundation for every other pattern you'll ever develop — adjust the rise here, widen the leg there, and you have a new fit without starting from scratch every time.

The underrated advantage of this method is educational. Deconstructing a well-made pair of jeans is like taking apart a watch to see how it works. You'll see how the pieces relate to each other, where ease has been built in, how the curves at the crotch and hip are actually drawn. No algorithm teaches that as viscerally as holding the pieces in your hands.

Option 2: Commercial Patterns

The major commercial pattern companies — Vogue, McCall's, Butterick, and Simplicity, collectively known in the sewing world as the Big 4 — all produce pants and jeans patterns that are widely available and relatively affordable. Butterick, the oldest of the four, has been producing standardized paper patterns since 1863, when Ebenezer Butterick invented the graded multi-size pattern and, in doing so, made home garment-making accessible to people without formal training. That's a legacy worth acknowledging.

Commercial patterns are a reasonable starting point if you want a guided introduction to construction sequence and pattern anatomy before you start making your own decisions. The honest caveat: they are engineered to fit a statistical average across a size range, not any specific body. Almost everyone who has worked seriously with commercial patterns has spent as much time adjusting them as they would have spent drafting something closer to purpose-built from the start. They're a useful learning tool. They're rarely a finished solution.

Option 3: Draft from Scratch

The most involved path, and the one that gives you the deepest understanding of what a pattern actually is. Drafting from scratch means starting with a full set of body measurements — waist, hip, thigh, inseam, rise, and more — and using a mathematical algorithm to translate those measurements into the curves and proportions of a pattern.

It's the method I used when I first started in 2013. I'm not going to walk through the full algorithm in this article — that goes beyond what words alone can teach and is better learned by doing. But I will cover the key decisions and common pitfalls in the sections below. If you're serious about drafting your own pattern, find the algorithm, take your measurements carefully, and start cutting. The rest comes from repetition.

The Selvedge Pattern: Different Rules

Before getting into drafting specifics, it's worth pausing on a constraint that's specific to selvedge denim — because it changes how the pattern has to be drawn.

Selvedge fabric is approximately 30 inches wide. Wide-goods denim is approximately 60 inches wide. That difference in width isn't just a number — it means that for every meter of selvedge you cut, you have half the usable fabric you'd have with wide goods. And selvedge takes significantly longer to mill on a shuttle loom than wide-goods denim does on a projectile loom, which means it costs more per meter to begin with. Waste is expensive. Maximizing yield isn't optional — it's fundamental to making selvedge denim economically viable at the maker scale.

The primary tool for maximizing yield is a straight side seam.

When the side seam of a jean pattern is straight — truly vertical, no curve — the front and back pattern pieces can be nested tightly against each other on the fabric, with almost no wasted cloth between them. Any curve in the side seam introduces wasted space that can't be filled with another pattern piece. On a 30-inch bolt, that waste adds up fast.

There's also an aesthetic reason: with selvedge denim, the finished edge of the fabric runs along the outseam of the jean. That edge — the selvedge ID, often woven in a color that signals the mill it came from — is part of why people love selvedge. A straight seam keeps that detail clean and deliberate.

The straight side seam constraint becomes significant at larger sizes. As the pattern gets wider, the pieces begin to push against the limits of the 30-inch bolt. Above a size 38 waist, drafting a well-proportioned selvedge pattern becomes genuinely difficult, and sometimes impossible depending on the fabric width. It's one of the reasons you don't often see selvedge jeans in larger sizes — not because makers don't want to produce them, but because the geometry of the fabric makes it hard.

The Two Lines: Setting Up Your Pattern

When you sit down to draft a jean pattern — whether from an algorithm, from a deconstruction, or from intuition built up over years — you begin with two lines.

The first is a vertical line running top to bottom along the paper. This is the side seam. Everything else orients to it.

The second is a horizontal line crossing the paper at the crotch point. This line divides the pattern into two zones: the top block (everything from the crotch up to the waistband) and the leg taper (everything from the crotch down to the hem). If you've read DU 202, this mental model will be familiar — a pair of jeans is really two problems stacked on top of each other, and the crotch line is where they meet.

Here is the most important rule in pattern drafting, and I want to say it plainly: the crotch line is your anchor. It does not move.

When something about the fit isn't working, the instinct is often to redraw the crotch. Resist it. If the rise is too long, shorten the pattern at the waistband. If the leg is too short, add length at the hem. If the thigh feels too tight, address it in the thigh. The crotch line stays exactly where it is, because it is the reference point against which every other measurement is calibrated. Move it, and you lose your reference. Keep it fixed, and you're always working from solid ground.

The two-line setup also serves a practical construction purpose. By aligning the side seam vertically from waistband to hem, you ensure that the front and back side seam lengths match — which they must, since they're sewn together. And by anchoring the horizontal crotch line in the same position on both the front and back pieces, you're setting up the inseam to match as well. The inseam is not one continuous stitch the way the side seam is — the front rise and back rise are sewn separately and then joined at the crotch — but the inseam lengths still need to meet at the same point. Get the two-line setup right, and you're most of the way there.

What the Pattern Is Trying to Tell You

This is where pattern drafting stops being geometry and starts being craft. The algorithm gives you a starting point. What follows is a process of listening — to the pattern, to the fabric, to the body you're fitting — and making adjustments until the thing sings.

There are a handful of technical considerations that come up again and again. Not rules, exactly, but things the pattern is usually trying to tell you when something isn't working.

Where two pieces meet and continue as a line, they should meet at right angles. At the crotch point on the inseam, and at the hip on the side seam, the transition from one pattern piece to the next should be smooth. If the pieces meet at an angle, you'll get a bump or a hollow in the finished seam — a small thing on paper that becomes visible and uncomfortable on the body.

The front piece leans forward; the back piece stays more vertical. The human body isn't symmetrical front to back — the hips tilt forward, the center of mass sits slightly in front of the spine. A well-drafted pattern reflects this. The front piece should angle slightly toward the hip as it rises toward the waistband, while the back piece remains closer to vertical. This is what keeps the side seam running straight down the leg rather than twisting toward the front or back.

The center back seam needs curve. A common fit problem — especially on jeans — is gapping at the center back waistband: the fabric pulling away from the body above the seat. The fix is built into the pattern. The center back seam should be cut at a slight angle or curve so the waistband presses gently against the body at the back. Get the angle right and the waistband sits cleanly. Get it too aggressive and you'll see puckering just below — the fabric bunching as the excess tries to go somewhere. Finding the right curve for a specific body type is one of the things that separates a good pattern from a truly fitted one.

Build ease into the front pockets. When a pocket is sewn in, the pocket bag curves around the hip and leg inside the jean. If the pocket opening is cut to match the body exactly, the pocket will pull tight when the jean is on — hard to get a hand in, uncomfortable when sitting. The solution is to cut the pocket U slightly larger than you think you need. When sewn in correctly, the pocket should stand slightly proud of the jean face: a small puff of fabric indicating that there's room inside. It looks like a flaw. It's actually the sign of a well-made pocket.

These are a handful of the things a pattern teaches you. There are dozens more. Some you'll read about. Most you'll discover by making a pair, wearing it, and noticing where it doesn't work.

The Art Part

The title of this article is not a metaphor.

Pattern making is based in science. The algorithm I used in 2013 — and still refer to today — is a mathematical system. Put in accurate measurements, follow the geometry, and you'll produce something that fits reasonably well. That's the science. That's the floor.

The ceiling is somewhere else entirely.

Getting a pattern to a place where it fits the way a great pair of jeans should fit — where the rise sits exactly right, the thigh has room without being baggy, the seat follows the body without pulling, the leg hangs straight from hip to hem — that takes something the algorithm can't give you. It takes time. It takes the willingness to cut a pair, wear it for a few weeks, and pay attention to what you feel. It takes the humility to throw out a pattern you worked hard on because it isn't good enough. It takes the discipline to make the same adjustment three different ways until you find the one that works.

I have been making patterns since 2013. I am still refining them.

There's a tendency, when you're starting out, to assume that if you've put in the effort, the result should be good. That's not how craft works. Effort is necessary but not sufficient. What separates a pattern that works from a pattern that's genuinely great is sustained effort — the willingness to keep listening to what the pattern is telling you, to keep adjusting, to keep cutting and sewing and wearing and evaluating, iteration after iteration, until the thing finally does what you want it to do.

That's the art. And it's why, in all honesty, the best advice I can give someone who wants to make great jeans is this: start now. Start with a pair you love. Take it apart. Trace it. Cut it in a cheap fabric. Put it on. Write down what's wrong. Fix it. Cut it again.

The pattern will teach you everything. But only if you start.

What Comes Next

DU 402 covers the blueprint. DU 403 covers what you do with it — walking through the full process of constructing a pair of jeans from cut fabric to finished garment.