Sewing Clothes Without a Pattern

Sewing clothes without a pattern is actually easier that you might think!

I love to make my own clothes. From choosing the style to choosing the fabric, as well as knowing that I’ll end up with something that fits well and that suits me, it’s also a lot of fun!

Yet when I use commercial patterns, I find myself experiencing a whole load of problems. The sizing makes no sense, they’re confusing, you’re restricted to the styles on offer and they’re often designed with a particular body shape in mind.

So a few years ago, I decided to have a go at making some clothes for myself without using a pattern.

Several dresses later, I had realised that it is perfectly possible to make clothes without using a pattern, providing you keep it simple.

It’s like baking a cake. If you know how to make a simple cake, or a batch of biscuits, it’s fairly easy to whip one up without referring to the pattern. And if you want to make a different version with different flavourings, providing you vaguely know what you’re doing and don’t over complicate things, then that’s easy to do too.

I have several tutorials on Tea and a Sewing Machine showing how to make clothes from scratch without using a commercial pattern.

My favourite is this one for my Cherry Blossom Dress. I made it to wear for a wedding. It’s a circle skirt with a simple bodice attached and an invisible zip at the side (in the tutorial I show an easy way to do these too!). I love it so much I’ve worn it every week for the past 2 summers! I even made myself another version in different fabric!

This is a tutorial for another dress that I also wear a lot. It’s made from jersey, so no zips or fiddly fastenings, and it’s so comfortable it’s like wearing pyjamas!

There’s also this tutorial for making a circle skirt, which is a great place to start if you want to try making clothes without a pattern.

This is a tutorial for making a skirt with godets.

I’ve also made clothes for my boys without using a pattern either! Here’s a tutorial for some toddler dungarees.

And here’s another tutorial I wrote for the Minerva Crafts Bloggers’ Network, showing how to make a shirt without a pattern.

I’ve also written an ebook about making clothes without a pattern! You can find out more here.