Interpret a product design brief and draft patterns that reflect the design and technical specifications
The role of a pattern cutter involves interpreting a product design brief and drafting patterns that reflect the design and technical specifications. During the fashion and textiles pattern cutter apprenticeship you’ll use various pattern cutting methods to create patterns, such as adjusting and shaping a standard pattern block, modifying a non-standard pattern base taken from the company library, or creating a pattern using ‘modelling’, which involves draping and pinning fabric over a mannequin and hand-cutting the fabric to form the pattern base. Pattern production software packages are also commonly used to create sewn product patterns, though in smaller businesses pattern cutters still produce patterns manually or use a combination of both manual and computerised systems.