Most Important Fashion Designing Tools and Equipment

1. Fashion Designing Tools Presented By: Indian Institute of Fashion & Design (IIFD) Website: iifd.in Call: 9041766699 0172-4007918

2. Importance of Tools in Fashion Designing Fashion designing is art of creating clothing designs. To create effective designs a fashion designer should have ability to use fashion designing tools in the right way. There are lots of tools that can be used to make drafting, pattern making, sewing and crafting process easy and impressive. These fashion designing tools can help to minimize mistakes, cut down the development time for creation of new designs and make the perfect designs. There are some most usable fashion design tools as defined here that should be in your toolkit to become successful fashion designer.

3. Pair of Scissors A Fashion Designer should have a pair of scissors to make the cutting process easy.

4. Card Scissor Card Scissor: The card scissor is used to cut the cardboard design, to make sewing phase easier.

5. Fabric Shears Scissor Shear Scissor: This type of scissor is little bit heavier than card scissor and mostly used to cut different type of fabrics.

6. Lightweight Scissors Lightweight Scissors: This type of scissor is light in weight and is used to cut clothing materials just like silk, lining etc.

7. Tailor’s Chalk Tailor’s Calk: This is a chalk like material used to mark alteration points on fabric in dressmaking and tailoring. The marks can be easily washed off when no longer needed.

8. Tape Measure Tape measure is also known as measuring tape and used to measure distance. It is a common measuring tool, flexible ruler which consists of a ribbon of cloth, metal strip , plastic or fiber glass with linear measurement markings.

9. Dress Maker Dummy Dress maker dummy is a three dimensional model which is used to fit clothes on the dress form to judge how garment will look like when it will appear on the body.

10. Pearl Head Pins Pearlheaded pins are perfect for hard sewing, easy to handle, pick, stick. A magnetic pin holder can be used to manage and make the handling of these pins easier.

11. Block Patterns A block pattern is form of pattern designing which is used for industrial production. It is a custom-fitted, basic pattern from which patterns for many different styles can be developed.

12. 2H, 4H, 3H 0.5 mm & 0.3 mm Lead Pencils Different types of pencils like 2H, 3H, 4H or size 0.5 mm or 0.3 mm are used for drafting and creating patterns. 0.3 mm lead pencils are used for accuracy or precision whereas 0.5 mm colored lead pencils are used to increase visibility on the screen.

13. Pattern Maker Pattern maker is a person who makes patterns, creates plans or diagrams used as a guide in sewing, weaving and clothing manufacturing.

14. Fashion Curve Fashion keeps on changing with the context of time, place and wearer. As per study fashion changes are expressed in the form of bell shaped curve also called fashion curve from beginning to end of any type of fashion.

15. Set Square Set square are used to create patterns, draw straight lines, mark in hip-lines, grain-lines, add seam allowances, establish 45 and 90-degree angles, shape armholes, neckline curves, measure around curves, use as a compass and grade patterns.

16. Professional Dress Stands Professional dress stands are used for the purpose of high end display or fashion design. There are different type of dress stands like bust forms, female dress forms, men's clothing forms, maternity clothing display forms etc.

17. Half-Scale Dress Stands Half scale dress stand is a mini form of dress stands, where the scale is 1:2, or half the size of a full size 6. Working on a smaller scale allows to create garments in less time and with less material! This can be used to experiment the garment designs before the full sized garment is made.

18. Adhesive Styling Tape Adhesive tapes is a combination of a material and an adhesive film which is used to bond or join objects together. These skin friendly double sided tape strips can be easily placed anywhere onto fabrics or skin to hold your outfits in place and leaves no residue.

19. Cotton Stay Tape Stay tape is similar to bias tape. It is mainly suitable for lightweight and delicate fabrics including knits. Some common uses include stabilizing shoulder seams on knit garments, creating roll lines of lapels on lighter weight fabrics, preventing necklines from stretching out of shape.

20. Sewing Pins As a profession fashion designer or sewer you need some sewing needles in various sizes which can be easily changed depends upon the weight of the fabrics that you use.

21. Pattern Notcher A pattern notcher is a common tool used for pattern making and sewing where notch in a paper pattern are created. The main purpose of using notches is to align pattern pieces. Notches are much usable than marks as they allow marking of fabrics inside the pattern area.

22. Spot and Cross Pattern Paper This dot and cross paper is one of the most important aspects used for pattern making of clothing and other crafty applications. it is mainly a lightweight paper printed with light blue dots and crosses with the space at 2 cm interval. It helps you to easily determine the distance within the pattern by calculating number or spots and crosses in that section.

23. Plain Pattern Paper Plain pattern paper is usually with a gloss finish to allow magic tape to come off without tearing, light enough to see commercial patterns placed underneath.

24. Scotch Magic Tape Scotch Magic Tape is mate finish original invisible tape used to fix all the little imperfections at offices, schools and home. It uses 3M adhesive technology to provide strong, secure and permanent seal to bond tightly with the paper and disappear without trace.

25. Pattern Weights These pattern weights are the perfect sewing accessory to be used in fashion designing. These becomes more handy when you deal with lot of fabric or do not want to damage delicate fabric like silks or laces with too many pin pricks.

26. Cutting Mats Cutting mats are made of thin, flexible and soft materials. It is ideal for covering a workspace and protecting it from cuts, scratches, knicks and allows an architect or designer to use rotary cutters and straight knives without risk to the surface underneath.

27. Sewing Machine A fashion designer can’t be complete without sewing machine as it is the important fashion designing tool used for finishing work. Usually fashion designers use industrial sewing machine.

28. Contact Us Indian Institute of Fashion & Design (IIFD) IIFD is the most reputed fashion design college is Chandigarh, India which offers various type of job oriented degree and diploma courses in fashion designing, interior designing and textile designing. iifd.in 0172-4007918 9041766699 info@iifd.in SCO -479-80, 2nd Floor, Sector: 35-C Chandigarh, India