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Need your input for PatternCon!

So I haven't made an announcement yet, but I will be teaching (in-person!) at PatternCon 2025 in Charlotte, NC this August! (-screams anxiously.-)

This is an inaugural event that my patternmaking teacher Tricia (Creative Costume Academy) has been dreaming of starting, and it's finally happening this year. It's going to be a two day convention of sewing folks and pattern enthusiasts, with workshops, lectures, vendors, etc, etc.

So what am I going to be doing??

I'm offering two workshops:

1) Sloper for Costumes and Cosplay

YES, I am finally distilling my entire "how I make costumes from a sloper" method into a 3-hour workshop. I'll be walking everyone through my analysis and R&D process, and leading exercises to show people how to apply these practices to their costuming. It's A LOT.

2) Bust Support Through the Ages

Another opportunity to channel all the research I've done for TT videos into something fun and informative-- a time traveling trip through 2000 years of bust support in Western fashion! I'm starting in Antiquity and ending in 2025. This one is just a lecture/stand-up comedy routine but. Again, a LOT.

I haven't really talked too much about this yet, but ultimately, I would love to lean into teaching/speaking engagements, so this is a big opportunity for me! I tried to pick topics that were versatile so that whatever materials I develop (slide decks, scripts, activities, etc) can be repurposed for other mediums (Youtube videos, online courses, webinars, etc). Trying to work smarter!

So here's what I need from y'all...

If you showed up to either of these sessions, what would get you excited? What questions do you have about these concepts and what would you hope to learn/take away from the experience?

Tell me below or email me directly! I would love to hear your opinions.

And YES, I will be filming both sessions and making them available for Costume Nerd Club members 😇

If anyone is interested in attending PatternCon, it's August 16-17 2025.

You can purchase tickets here.

(It's a pretty penny but worth it if you are in this place in your journey)

3 comments

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Violet Starlight

Jun 20

How exciting for you! I think this type of workshop would interest me if I was attending! Specifically the sloper aspect and how I know it's beneficial to creating more specific patterns and fits for my body. The individualization is what would interest me greatly as that is hard to do with big-store patterns. I think some of the questions I'd have would be like: "What material works best for making your own sloper?" "Can slopers be adjusted easily with weight gain or weight loss?" "Can you adapt a sloper to be used in conjuction with say pre-set patterns?" I don't have much experience with like bust adjustments or providing bust support to my costumes yet, so I'm not sure I'd want to participate in that workshop. However, I think I'd be interested if it was after the sloper workshop? It fits into the idea that Bust Support is like the "next level" or the next step in understanding good costuming, if that makes sense. I hope that you have a great convention and you're a good teacher and inspiration - your TikToks are really valuable. Have fun at the Con!

Koholint

May 30

I would love, love, LOVE to attend Pattern Con but I suspect my job is going to impede my ability to attend 😩 That timing is unfortunately prime work travel time, but I’ll keep scoping out my schedule to see if I can make it or not!

As for your questions… let’s see.

For the sloper workshop: I honestly would be excited just to even attend this one. My perspective is from someone that has already dabbled heavily in this topic, so I’m mostly interested in absorbing other techniques and learning more pro/industry/customary ways that this topic is approached. I’m self-taught and have learned a lot through textbooks, so I don’t have any perspective on the “real” way people do such work in the field. 😅 I know that’s not very helpful; but maybe it’s some food for thought to consider the audience you intend to appeal to? I’m not super familiar with Pattern Con itself, either , so I don’t know if the intention is to appeal to neophytes or those with some notches already on their belt… but this is just my two cents from someone already familiar with the topic and would attend just to absorb and/or take notes. Also with this kind of topics… the more hands-on, the better!

For the bust support workshop: I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of feedback here! I’d personally approach it like a university lecture and would be there to take notes and learn, possibly in a more “casual” way than with the sloper workshop. I think what I mean to express is that the sloper workshop sounds technical and hands-on, so I’d take different notes and be engaged differently than for an educational lecture, if that makes sense?

I’d love to attend both of them of course! And hopefully at least some of my feedback is helpful, lol. For more POV on my thoughts, I also love teaching/lecture opportunities, and have done several “panels”, (as they call them at anime conventions). I personally struggle with topics to present though because of the aforementioned “intended audience” thing… most anime cons, at least, have a lot of baby/beginner-oriented topics and very few that are helpful to anyone somewhat seasoned. I intentionally try to appeal to the more seasoned folks because of how little exists out there, but it hasn’t been easy to make anything I find worthwhile or useful, haha 😭 I just don’t know if the anime con scene isn’t right for that, or if it’s an issue with my topics, etc… it’s a big struggle!

Sumalee Eaton

Jun 02

Replying to

Thank you for your thoughts, great insights! I'm glad to hear that both topics are exciting. I do so much planning and outlining for stuff sometimes that I start to doubt whether the topics are interesting to anyone but me, heh.

It would be great if you could attend, but I get it! I have a feeling she will be doing this every year. re: intended audience

So attendance of PatternCon is open to all levels, but I'm assuming that most of the folks will be avid sewists who all have some level of patternmaking under their belts, and are possibly familiar with Tricia's CCA methods (like maybe not members of her courses but have been following her on social media and that's how they know about PatternCon?). So I'm very much planning this as a "you already know about slopers, now let's get hyper-specific and walkthrough how to apply them to a costume you want to make" sort of thing. So in that way, I think it would actually be perfect for someone like you (and like me!!), who has been making their own patterns but wants that extra exposure to someone else's method for enrichment/inspiration.

That said, I don't think it will be super great for newbies who have not worked with a sloper. Comments on my TT video introducing this class concept seem to imply that people immediately thought we would be drafting a sloper in this workshop, which is definitely not the case, so I guess I need to be more clear about that.

I'm going to use all the costumes I've made from my personal sloper (Alicent, 18th century gown, Barbie shift dress, Jocelyn from A Knight's Tale, etc) as examples of how versatile the sloper can be, and then I'll have them use their own costume idea/design throughout the exercises, which will include analysis/breakdown and some half-scale sloper manipulation. So as an attendee, you'd basically walk away with a plan for making a costume from a sloper, along with some "proof of concept" half-scale patterns to use as reference for your full scale pattern? Sound good or stupid? 😭

Re: Bust Support

This is where audience comes into play once more because I have a feeling a lot of these attendees will be very interested in fashion history but not actually super knowledgeable, so this will be more of a silly, humorous overview, with some detailed looks at how different garments were patterned.

So I'm framing it as a "tour" we're taking together, with "pit stops" in specific eras to talk about the pattern shapes of foundations and main garments.

Re: your panels/workshops

This is interesting-- have you offered any patternmaking or fitting classes at any cons? Because I totally hear you on the over saturation of baby/beginner classes, and I know in the cosplay community I've seen people offer classes on advanced techniques with painting/finishes, leather, embellishment, etc, but probably what the community could use the most are accessible pattern techniques? (because most people I see are still draping and using taping methods to get super fitted pieces? And many of them have proportions similar to a dressform, which is far from the majority of people?)

What do you think? Based on your post on grading patterns and knowing you have a drafting method mastered, I wonder if people would be interested in that? Could also be a door for me as well at a wider range of cons/conferences if there's an audience.