Making the Bodice Block Class: Drafting with Your Measurements

Between us, we've spent more than 55 years in the fashion industry, and we started The Pattern Making Class for a simple reason: people kept asking us to teach them.Scott has been pattern making and garment technical-ing across Australia and internationally for 30 years, working with brands like Sussan, Myer, Finders Keepers, Brooksfield and Cameo the Label, and coordinating multimillion-dollar production out of China. Glen graduated from RMIT and spent 21 years lecturing there across second, third, fourth and Masters level Fashion Design (Honours), all while running his own design practice. Working in the pattern room at Chanel early in his career shaped the way he thinks about cutting to this day. In 1999 he won the Melbourne Fashion Festival's Young Designer of the Year for his label ROLLASON, and later for street label RUDEBOY.Together, we run RB Patterns, Melbourne's leading freelance design and technical consulting studio. Our clients have ranged from Country Road, Wrangler, Camilla & Marc and Portmans to independent labels like A.Emery, Cable Melbourne and Perri Cutten. We've also designed uniforms for the National Gallery of Australia, ACMI and Emirates. So when we're teaching, we're not teaching theory. We're teaching what's on our cutting tables that week.That's really why we started The Pattern Making Class. Fashion school takes three to four years, and not everyone has that kind of time, or needs it. What people actually need is focused, practical, industry-current skills. So many of the home sewers, fashion students and industry professionals who came to us for private tuition were frustrated by the same thing: pattern making taught with outdated rules, or not taught with enough rigour to actually get them making real clothes. We built TPMC to close that gap.We love teaching because we get to watch that shift happen. Someone comes in unsure how a bodice block even works, and a few weeks later they're drafting their own designs with real confidence. We've taught hundreds of students now, from complete beginners to working industry professionals sharpening their skills, and there's nothing quite like watching someone go from "I don't understand this" to "I made this."Something people might not expect: we don't just teach pattern making, we still do it every day for a living. Between classes, we're drafting for major retailers and emerging designers, grading production runs, and solving fit problems for real garments headed into real stores. It keeps us sharp, and it means what we teach in the studio is exactly what's happening in the industry right now, not what was happening in it a decade ago.We built The Pattern Making Class around one idea: you shouldn't have to choose between learning fast and learning properly. With us, you get both.