Hello. Luca, pattern maker, from sicily (Italy)

[Luca]

Hello to everyone.
My name is Luca and I come from sicily. I am an apprentice pattern maker and garment technician in my family's tailor shop, with my father Giuseppe who's a master tailor prototypist (and pattern maker also) in men bespoke clothes, women dresses, wedding dresses, and (recently) shirts.
We do our job embracing technology and lean manufacturing practices; despite my father being a traditional tailor in his early years, he improved the way to draw and sew clothes step by step. Nowadays we are the only tailor shop in italy to use CAD to get patterns (Valentina CAD), to provide a wide range of clothes types and even to sell digital customed patterns to factories.

You can see our works at: https://www.instagram.com/sartoria.giuseppelavore/

I hope I can find help here in this forum about tailoring, and to give help to everyone about my know how.

Bye
Luca

[Schneiderfrei]

Welcome Luca,

You show very beautiful garments on your website.

We have too few Italian folks on our forum.  Your input would be great.

G

[Luca]

Thanks Schneiderfrei. Nowadays, I think, knowledge about tailoring/garment construction can come from every part of the world.

Definitely I will contribute with my "southern italian style" advices 

[Schneiderfrei]

Excellent.

[Steelmillal]

Welcome Luca. Y'all do very nice work. I agree the blend of modern and traditional technology makes good business sense, as does effective marketing and supporting local supply chains. Best, AL

[TTailor]

Hello Luca,
Can you tell us more about the CAD (Valentina) program you are using?

[hutch--]

Hi Luca, you certainly have some very nice work done in your photos.

[Luca]

Thanks to all, we put a lot of efforts in making refined clothes, thanks to my father 45+ years experience.

About Valentina CAD (all our clothes since the beginning of 2019 are made with it), that's the first parametric software for pattern drafting. This means, in a simply explanation, that you draft point and lines not in x,y coordinates but with your own rules (like those you read on pattern books) and your input measurements, so your pattern is "responsive" to all modifications and it can automatically grade by changing input measurements.

Oh, last but not least, it's totally free. It is also a project still in development, so I am constantly in touch with main programmers to give advices (many are already implemented as features) and I manage the italian translation and the ENG facebook group.

here some links:
https://valentinaproject.bitbucket.io/
https://www.youtube.com/c/ValentinaProjectTutorials/videos
https://www.facebook.com/groups/869943036780637

[TTailor]

Thank-you for that information.
Is this the same program as Seamly 2D? I had some issues trying to download Seamly to an imac, so I didn't follow up with it.
I also have been trying out a vector based program (Inkscape) which is similar to Adobe Illustrator, just to see if it was viable but it is quite frustrating process. It is a rather steep learning curve, but I was hoping to try out a system that was slightly more like hand drafting (as much as a computer can be)
Do you print out the patterns you create onto paper with a large scale plotter? Or are you using them differently?

[Steelmillal]

I use parametrics almost daily for engineering design. My first thought was the extra cost of a 36" plotter and projected payback to justify expenditure for small shops. Plus "use it or lose it" skills could suffer badly and in some cases never be learned to fluency. I'm curious if your Dad would see a similar danger. I heard a first hand account story a few years ago of local teenagers unable to operate books of matches in a junior high school science lab! Scary, that...

[Hendrick]

I tried Valentina, think it is a fantastic project, especially because Lectra and such licenses are prohibitly expensive for smaller shops. They are actually only good for mass production. I managed to import Lectra and positronica files into Adobe Illustrator via DXF formats, that are actually an Autocad file-dialect. This works very well and you can check what may be the problem with a pattern and correct it. Also, I noticed that a lot of younger designers avoid the professional cad programs and experiment in Illustrator because they use it for their illustrations already...

[TTailor]

Way back over 20 years ago, the theatre was approached by a company selling pattern making software of some sort.
Printing was an issue, although I am sure that could have been solved.
We would have needed ten to twelve computers one for each cutter/pattern maker $$$$ and we all would have needed training on it. We need to be able to make garments with a lot of customization, both for size and styles, and we dont re use our patterns much. We don't have a lot of situations where grading would be useful either. So it wasn't useful in our work situation.

I can see it being useful for clients you make multiple garments for, you can store ans send the patterns digitally, or if you want to sell patterns it seems like a good idea.

I am going to download Valentina, and give it a go, because I am curious to see if I can make it work, and also learn something new.
But I love to draw, so the hand drafted pattern will always be something I will use.

[Luca]

Thank-you for that information.
Is this the same program as Seamly 2D? I had some issues trying to download Seamly to an imac, so I didn't follow up with it.
I also have been trying out a vector based program (Inkscape) which is similar to Adobe Illustrator, just to see if it was viable but it is quite frustrating process. It is a rather steep learning curve, but I was hoping to try out a system that was slightly more like hand drafting (as much as a computer can be)
Do you print out the patterns you create onto paper with a large scale plotter? Or are you using them differently?

Seamly 2D is a fork of Valentina. The project started 10 years ago under the Valentina name, but in 2017/2018 due to creators divergences they decided to separate their paths; Susan Spencer, the american, goes with Seamly. Roman Telezhynskyi, ukranian and lead programmer, goes with Valentina.
I follow both communities, but since Val has the lead programmer and it's more responsive to bugfix and add new features, I decided to do my works with it. At the time of writing, both softwares are similar, but the beta version of Val is definitely more advanced than Seamly.

I use inkscape too. It's a great software but not as a pattern drafting one. The reason because it's useful for me is that Valentina still doesn't allow to manual arrange patterns in a layout as I need it (similar to industrial anti-waste layout).
Anyway soon Valentina will update with a manual layout tool.

I print patterns with a 36 inch HP plotter, then i cut with rotative or alternative professional cutter directly onto fabric

Here a picture of one of my layout

[Luca]

Way back over 20 years ago, the theatre was approached by a company selling pattern making software of some sort.
Printing was an issue, although I am sure that could have been solved.
We would have needed ten to twelve computers one for each cutter/pattern maker $$$$ and we all would have needed training on it. We need to be able to make garments with a lot of customization, both for size and styles, and we dont re use our patterns much. We don't have a lot of situations where grading would be useful either. So it wasn't useful in our work situation.

I can see it being useful for clients you make multiple garments for, you can store ans send the patterns digitally, or if you want to sell patterns it seems like a good idea.

I am going to download Valentina, and give it a go, because I am curious to see if I can make it work, and also learn something new.
But I love to draw, so the hand drafted pattern will always be something I will use.

We too were approached in 2000s by Lectra for their software. You can imagine how it ended :-)

About Valentina and its peculiar drafting system, you don't have to think only about grading for multisize and multiple clients; actually the way the software allows you to draw is the key to obtain a single real bespoke pattern (as I do, being my family's business a small one, based on single client each time)

[Luca]

I use parametrics almost daily for engineering design. My first thought was the extra cost of a 36" plotter and projected payback to justify expenditure for small shops. Plus "use it or lose it" skills could suffer badly and in some cases never be learned to fluency. I'm curious if your Dad would see a similar danger. I heard a first hand account story a few years ago of local teenagers unable to operate books of matches in a junior high school science lab! Scary, that...

Well, about the first comment, surely we thought about buying a 36" plotter and the way to justify its cost; but at the same time, despite the fact we work in a place where business are very poor, if we haven't bought that buttonhole machine 20 years ago (an expensive machine) I wasn't here writing today. Sometimes you need to do a slightly big step with technology to achieve the next level; the same was for us about the Plotter.

About youe other comment, my enslish is not that good to understand well what do you mean, sorry