Making a flat sketch from a photograph

The flat sketch is a garment's identity document. Until it exists, nobody, not the factory, not the pattern maker, not the buyer, is looking at the same thing you are.

What a flat sketch has to show

• Front and back, laid flat, no body and no mannequin, at the same scale.
• Seam lines, including the panel seams you cannot see from a distance.
• Topstitching, as a broken line, because it is sewn and it is billed.
• Closures: buttons, zip, snaps, with their positions.
• Edge finishes: hem, rib, facing.

What it does not show: shadow, cloth, drape, colour. A flat sketch that tries to be beautiful becomes unreadable in the plant.

Starting from a photograph, and why that works

A photograph of the garment, worn or laid out, already contains most of the information: proportion, where the panel seams fall, the collar type, sleeve length. Turning it into line work means removing the body, the light and the cloth, and keeping only the construction. That is a translation task, and translation is exactly the sort of thing an image model is good at.

What it will not do for you: decide the ease, choose the grainline, settle a construction. Those are pattern-making decisions and they belong to the pattern maker. On this platform the AI does the design and visualisation work and a human pattern maker cuts the pattern. That split is deliberate.

The method, in three moves

• Photograph the garment flat, in daylight, without creases and without a hard cast shadow. A laid-out photo beats a worn one.
• Get the line drawing, front and back, and check that every seam visible on the garment is on the drawing.
• Annotate by hand what the photo could not say: the cloth, the weight, exact closure positions, and tolerances if you know them.

After the sketch

A flat sketch is not a pattern. It becomes a tech pack when you add the measurement table and the tolerances, and it becomes a pattern when a pattern maker cuts the pieces. Here that step is $29, $59 or $129 by piece count, published before payment.