I wish I'd found FreeSewing sooner!

Just over a year ago, when I got back into sewing, I bought a bunch of patterns, including a vest, a corset, and a bunch of baby clothes. I had to edit one of the baby patterns in order to make my nephew a denim jacket, because there were none that actually had the shape I wanted (the closest I could find at the store had a zippered hoodie pattern and a long-sleeved t-shirt). I made myself a vest with the men's vest pattern, and last I tried it on it was simultaneously too broad for my chest and too small at the bottom. I haven't actually used any of the other patterns that I bought, but I'm sure they also wouldn't fit me very well because my body shape is like neither men's nor women's standard sizes. I've gotten a bit better at editing patterns, such as the edits I made to the Cypress Dress so it would fit my spouse, but sometimes it seems like it's almost as much work making standard patterns fit as it would be to make a brand new pattern for one person.

Of course, as a sewist who wants to sew for other people, I'd rather be able to sew them for "non-standard" bodies other than my own as well. Altering or making a pattern for one person is hard enough, but doing it for multiple different sizes and body shapes sounds like a nightmare! This is actually a big part of why I never really started Transcending Labels: I wanted to make clothes that fit trans people better, but no category of trans person all has the same body shape, even if we get really specific. I wanted more adaptable patterns, and I wasn't sure how to make them. I have good enough programming knowledge that I would be able to generate patterns, but I'm not good enough at making patterns that they would consistently be good patterns. So I kind of gave up on that dream, until now.

Enter freesewing.org. This is an open source website that generates sewing patterns based on measurements--you can use any (adult) standard size up to 4X to make your pattern, but you can also create a measurement profile for any individual of any body shape or size (and I mean any--people have used them for Barbie dolls and for all manner of actual people) and generate patterns for it. The patterns offered are limited, but if you can figure out the tech stuff you can make your own, too! If you don't want to go through the effort of making your own pattern pieces, you can just combine patterns and, for example, make a dress by using the Bella Body Block and the Penelope Pencil Skirt and just... sewing them together. I still may have to edit patterns to make them look exactly the style I want, but I don't have to edit anything to make it fit, which is 5 million times harder!

Over the last few weeks, I've been sewing the outfits for my wedding. I wish I had found FreeSewing before I started the project. First of all, the pants that I made ended up not really fitting how I wanted them to, even after I had to change them a lot to make them even somewhat fit my body shape--apparently anyone with a 37 inch waist is supposed to be built like a Pixar Mom in the thighs, yet also have very little butt that simply tapers down to your ankles instead of having any curve on the bottom... anyway, what I'm saying is the suit pants I found a pattern for on Mood did not fit me well. Second of all, I probably could have made my spouse's wedding dress with some combination of skirt and top, while printing out a lot less paper (I also unfortunately printed out all of my patterns before realizing that I could trim the excess sizes in Gimp) and making easy changes to the pattern pieces early on.

At first, I was unable to develop patterns on freesewing, because Windows Does Not Like It, but I've found that by using Gitpod per the recommendation of one of the longest-standing contributors, I can do it. I've been doing the tutorial, and while I understand everything that's going on, it has been a bit tedious and I'm not sure how easily I can come up with the control points for bezier curves myself. Fortunately, I can easily replicate pattern pieces from existing designs, and there may be people on the active Discord community that can help me out with new ones. I think at some point I might make a visualizer tool to create and modify a visible SVG and generate a draft function from the results, but the main challenge will be in letting people use measurements and variables. I'll definitely make one to use on my own before I try making one that can be used by others. This is also something I may be able to get help with and testers for once I've gotten to a certain point in its development (although I don't particularly want to ask when I haven't even started on it).

FreeSewing is also the first (and so far only, but I'm sure this will change soon) open source project I've been able to contribute to. So far, all I've done is proofread some tutorials, but since the project uses node.js, I'm sure there are some ways I can contribute to the code over time, and eventually I might branch into proofreading the Spanish translations. Finding a project that I really care about (and that I understand half of what's going on) has helped motivate me to actually figure out how to use GitHub. I mean, I've been using GitHub for years, but I didn't know how to submit pull requests to an organization from your own personal fork. I finally figured that out yesterday, and now I'm officially a contributor!

If anyone has any designs they'd like to see implemented in FreeSewing as a generative pattern, feel free to contact me (including in the comments here) or join the FreeSewing Discord server to ask there. Every question I've asked in the server has been answered in a timely manner, and no one there has made me feel lesser because I'm a beginner. I've gotten a lot of encouragement, even from the founder/maintainer himself, and it feels wonderful to be part of such a helpful and positive community.