Soooo, my DragonCon posting is so behind because job loss coinciding with helping my family out has meant little online time for me. I’m kinda abandoning the notes I took, but I did want to post about this awesome thing that came up in multiple costuming panels this year.
I’ve been costuming for 9ish years now. I like costumes that take a little concept work. That means that frankenpatterning and pre-bought then modded items just aren’t cutting it as my skills have grown. I’m still using those techniques, but I also need to be able to draft patterns. Learning to do that without a teacher is difficult, so I went looking for computer programs, and holy shitballs they’re EXPENSIVE. If you want quality software to help you out, it’s gonna be hundreds of dollars. If you pay for the cheap stuff, you get a program that’s nigh unusable. That is until recently.
Enter a computer analyst who likes to costume and wanted something cheap and easy to use (I forgot her name!). She wrote Valentina, an open source program for pattern drafting. I’m still learning how to use it, but it seems very user friendly so far, and it’s basically exactly what I searched for oh so long ago. As I mentioned, it’s open source, so if you like to code and sew, you can add to it. It’s also free to download and use. So please go check it out. I’m really excited about it.
