Pattern Cutting Prices

How Much Does Pattern Cutting Cost ?

47. We at The London Pattern Cutter, provide top class pattern cutting services to the UK clothing industry. We use very skilled specialist pattern cutters with many years experience.

Freelance pattern cutters in the UK generally charge £30 to £60 per hour, depending on their skill and experience. Some charge an hourly rate. Others charge by the day or by the job. The pattern cutter could give you an estimate for the job, or a quote.

Pattern cutting prices  range from £40 for something like a simple T shirt  pattern,  to £500 for a complex pattern like a technical jacket or a designer dress. . Some patterns that require more development could cost significantly more. The price depends partly on how much information is given to the pattern cutter, as insufficient information may result in more trial and error.

A highly skilled tailoring pattern cutter may charge £300 – £500 for a tailored jacket pattern. Tailored jackets are particularly complicated due to the large amount of pattern pieces involved.

If you are looking to develop a technical garment, like a cycling top, then it could cost significantly more than £400, as it would require the skills of a senior pattern cutter, and a lot of time for the sample development, due to trial and error.

The time it takes to develop your pattern largely depends on how much useful information you can provide to the technicians.

We are not the cheapest, but  certainly  not the most expensive. We only use experienced, skilled  pattern cutters. Our pattern cutting prices are very competitive.

Pattern cutting prices are a significant part of the cost of sample development, so the client needs to know that they are getting good value for money.

 

Specialist Pattern Cutters.

Specialist pattern cutters generally can demand a higher rate than generic pattern cutters, although  pattern cutters who can turn their hand to anything are also highly valued. Most pattern cutters will tend to specialise after a while, but experienced freelancers should be able to do just about anything.  .

 

Menswear Vs Ladieswear.

In most areas of general fashion there is little difference between the price of menswear pattern and ladieswear patterns. Sometimes ladies patterns can be more expensive because there can be more variety in styles, and more design content, and because of the complication of bust suppression.

Ladies couture garments can involve many hours of pattern cutting work, including all the fittings and toile making.

On the other hand mens tailoring  patterns can tend to be more expensive than ladies, because of the more complicated structure of  mens tailored garments.

 

Childrenswear.

Childrens patterns can be very simple, and there is a large degree of scope regarding shape and size. They are also easy to work with due to the pattern pieces being so small. There are however,  very few experienced childrenswear pattern cutters around.

Much of the cost and difficulty involved with  childrens  patterns is in the grading. To grade properly you need to be both a grader and a pattern cutter, as you need to make the same design in several different sizes to ensure that it is interpreted the same way in all sizes.

 

Experience.

It is essential for any UK clothing company, serious about bringing their designs to the market, to  have  good professional patterns and samples to present to the factory.

The most important thing is that whoever makes your patterns will be  expert in that genre, otherwise it will be a waste of time and money. To produce  high quality patterns takes  time, skill and experience.

It is not possible to give an accurate price for a pattern without a reasonable amount of information. Pattern prices  vary depending on the complexity of the design, and the experience of the pattern cutter. A tailored jacket, or an evening dress is going to cost far more than a T shirt.

Some functional garments require a lot of development. This may mean making three or four samples, with all the pattern alterations that entails. These tend not to be high fashion garments, so the styles could be around for many years.

In this case, we would probably  charge an hourly rate rather than a per style price.  Or one price for the initial pattern, with one set of amendments included.

Followed by an hourly rate for any further work. The importance here is to make sure that we have sufficient information to begin with, so as to avoid costly trial and error.

 

Factory Ready Patterns.

Our pattern prices are normally for fully finished, factory ready patterns complete with instructions, to enable the factory to make an accurate sample.

While we will do everything that is necessary, we will not however do work that is not necessary or cost – effective and just adds to the cost (unless you insist on it and are prepared to pay for the extra work involved).

We do not normally for instance make “toiles” with functioning pockets or zips etc. as this is rarely cost effective. We will usually just draw style details on to the toile.

To me, these things are just a waste of time and money. If you do require a more functioning toile for the factory, then we will be happy to provide this of course. But then it may be just as well to make a sample.

 

Sample Making Service

We  provide a sample making service, although sometimes it is more cost effective for the factory to make the sample as they will have to make one anyway at some point. Some factories  ask for a sample before they can make their own sample though.

Most Freelancers seem to charge by an hourly rate, and if we are working In-house we would have to do the same. But we find that most Clients prefer to have a fixed price, so we try to provide a fixed price for each job.

 

 Basic Prices

Although we have a list of basic prices by type, some garments can be difficult to price this way. Dresses for instance can vary significantly. Other types can more easily be priced, such as shirts, trousers or jackets.

We do charge extra for card patterns than for paper patterns as there are more post and packing costs involved. We normally suggest having the initial patterns in paper though, while graded patterns would normally be in card or digital files.

 

Example.

We had to develop  a range of jockey silks that required a lot of work in order to finalise the initial block, which would then be used to create the individual styles.

Each style was a complex arrangements of seams and colours.  So we charged a fixed price for an initial pattern along with two sets of alterations to begin with. There were then two more sets of alterations before the template block was finalised.

 

Price List.

If you require a price list, just email or  phone  with a brief description of your project, whether it is just for one style or a whole collection. While these guide prices should be fairly accurate, they are not written in stone, so they may ultimately be higher or lower depending on the complexity of the design. Once we have accepted a project, we should be able to lock in a price for most jobs.

 

One-To-One Pattern Cutting Classes.

If you would rather work with a pattern cutter, either to learn how to do it yourself, or to better be able to direct the finished patter, we run one-to-one pattern cutting classes in London.

 

Fashion startup workshop prices

Of the many fashion industry related workshops and classes that we run, our  bespoke one-to-one  Fashion Startup Workshop is the most popular. These workshops are  generally run at our base in Greenwich, although we can also arrange a central London venue if required.

 

 

EMAIL – [email protected]