Inspired by the Great British Sewing Bee 2015, I’ve been looking for men’s patterns.
You might think there’s nothing for men learning to sew for themselves, between making a cushion cover and tailoring a suit, but in fact there are many options.
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Learning to sew menswear
If you’re looking for a “learn to sew” project book for men, the Merchant & Mills Sewing Book has a sequence of bags and home dec all suitable for both men and women (clothes patterns in this book are difficult to understand, M&M single patterns are good).
Burda Academy have an on-line video course on making menswear, which includes download patterns for notched collar and barbour jackets, pants.
The Sewing Guru is a tailor who has many video courses on making shirts and suits.
Sewing classes at Craftsy are mainly oriented to women’s styles, but there are many classes on making shirts, tees and fleeces, pants, tailored jackets. The techniques are unisex, even if the patterns used to demonstrate them aren’t.
Similarly with Palmer-Pletsch DVDs on shirts, jackets, pants, jeans.
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Patterns
When you’ve learned the basics of how to sew, where can you go ?
Sections here with links to pattern sources for :
Casual wear
Costumes
Activewear and Outdoor gear
Shirts
Suits, vests, coats.
These are all paper patterns unless noted.
Plus a final section on making your own patterns.
There are about a dozen quick-sew patterns for men in this list.
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Casual wear
Some of these sites as not sorted for men/women.
Burda
Burda Style download patterns
Butterick
Colette Patterns – Walden for men
Green Style Creations
Hot Patterns
Jennifer Lauren Handmade
Kwik Sew
Lekala (download)
Make My Pattern (Belgium)
McCall’s
Merchant & Mills
New Look
Seamwork (download)
Silhouette patterns
Simplicity
Schnittquelle (Germany)
Stof & Stil (Denmark)
Thread Theory
Wardrobe By Me
5 out of 4 patterns
Many of the download patterns at Burda Style previously appeared in Burda Style pattern magazine.
Occasionally there are stylish patterns for men in Italian pattern magazine La Mia Boutique
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Costumes
Here’s a taster of what’s available, which is sorted for men.
The following sites give more choices. Most of these sites aren’t pre-sorted for men/ women.
Burda Style download patterns
Butterick
Folkwear
McCall’s
Simplicity
There are several specialist pattern companies for historic styles.
Choose the era you are interested in at
The Great Pattern Review
That doesn’t link you direct to the pattern.
Here’s their list of links to sources.
Here’s a page of free download historic patterns.
The Great Pattern Review site also has a ‘futuristic-fantasy’ section.
For cosplay costumes for specific characters, you can usually find ideas on specialist sites for the character.
There are some ‘online only’ cosplay costume patterns from McCall’s : Cosplay by McCall’s.
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Active wear
Here’s a guide to tips on sewing outdoor gear which aren’t in most conventional sewing books.
Burda Style download patterns (scroll down)
Controlled Exposure
Daisy Kingdom
Green Pepper
Jalie
Round Earth Publishing – martial arts
Shelby Kaava
Storm Mountain Designs
Outdoor gear
Pennine Outdoor (mainly tents and sleeping bags)
Quest Outfitters (tents, bivy bags, backpacks)
Rainshed (mainly special purpose bags)
Suitability (fabric gear for horses)
Many free patterns for bike bags available on-line.
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Shirts
Burda
Burda Style download
Islander Sewing Systems
Kwik Sew
Vogue
(and check the Casual wear sites)
Suits, Vests, Coats
Burda
Burda Style download patterns
Vogue
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Make your own clothes patterns
Ready-made full size basic pattern blocks for men (average body shape) from Shoben Media :
hoodie, shirt, pants, vest, jacket, coat.
Custom fit patterns
Don’t expect a perfect fit from these tools unless you’re lucky. They only cover about a quarter of all fitting issues. But they may give you a better fit than patterns for ‘average’ body shape.
‘Connect the dots’ tracing from a master pattern, by Sure-Fit Designs :
Shirts and casual jackets (easy to make any height-collar-chest combination).
Pants for men booklet used with pants pattern.
Pattern making software
Wild Ginger PatternMaster Tailor Made
Formal Pattern Drafting books
Patternmaking for Menswear : classic to contemporary by Kim & Kim
Metric pattern cutting for menswear by Winifred Aldrich
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Other options :
Vintage patterns
There are many vintage pattern sites. Good places to start are :
ebay
Etsy
The Japanese produce marvellous pattern books, with full size traceable pattern sheets. So long as you don’t mind they’re in Japanese ! with many good line drawings of construction. A fun challenge, but not for beginners. Sizes are small. Body sizes are given with the book information, in cm. Multi-size patterns, so they may be quite easy to grade up.
These are the books for men’s clothes at my favourite source, which shows many sample pages.
Simply Pretty
Free patterns – with very variable quality of pattern drafting and instructions.
Sadly there’s no obvious good source focussed on men’s patterns.
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It’s worth checking a pattern at Pattern Review, to see if anyone has helpful advice. (I find it quickest to search by pattern number.)
Pattern Review
Man’s clothing may not show the almost infinite variations in style elements that there are in women’s clothes. The differences are more in subtle details.
You do have to search thoroughly if you want something stylish, but there is a lifetime of possibilities to explore !
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Links available April 2015
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