Design
Professional Pattern Grading for Women's, Men's, and Children's Apparel
by Jack Handford
Professional Pattern Grading for Women's, Men's, and Children's Apparel summary
Jack Handford’s Professional Pattern Grading for Women's, Men's, and Children's Apparel was first published by Plycon Press in 1980. It is a technical patternmaking text devoted to grading: the systematic enlargement or reduction of garment pattern pieces so one base pattern can be converted into a coordinated size range. The original 1980 edition is catalogued at 254 pages; a later Fairchild/Bloomsbury edition documents the work’s continuing organization around women’s wear, design variations, menswear, and children’s wear, with step-by-step treatment of bodices, skirts, sleeves, pants, collars, shirts, jackets, trousers, and other pattern pieces. This Booknomics analysis focuses on the logic of grading—coordinated movement, proportional change, matching seams, and preserving design intent—without reproducing proprietary diagrams or instructional pages.
Key ideas
Grading changes size, not design identity. The goal is to move pattern points so the garment becomes larger or smaller while retaining the intended silhouette and relationships among pieces. A grade is distributed across the pattern. Size differences are not added uniformly around the perimeter; different areas receive different horizontal and vertical movements. Matching pieces must remain compatible. Bodices, sleeves, collars, waistbands, skirts, trousers, and other components must still sew together after grading. Reference lines control movement. Grain lines, center lines, waistlines, hip lines, and other construction references help keep size changes systematic. Corners and curves need coordinated treatment. Necklines, armscyes, crotch curves, collars, and shaped seams cannot be enlarged by a single crude scale factor. Design variations complicate the grade. Princess seams, raglan sleeves, yokes, pockets, gore skirts, and shaped style lines distribute change differently from basic blocks. Menswear and childrenswear require their own size logic. Grading rules must reflect the body and sizing system for the intended population rather than reuse one universal increment. Manual grading is a geometric discipline. Even when software automates movement, the operator needs to understand why a point moves and how that change affects adjacent seams. Nested sizes are a verification tool. Overlaying graded sizes can reveal irregular jumps, broken curves, or inconsistent movement. Modern digital systems do not remove the need for judgment. CAD can execute grade rules quickly, but poor base patterns or incorrect rules are simply repeated faster.
Practical application
Nested-size audit: Take one simple bodice or trouser block and plot three sizes together. Check whether each important point moves in a smooth, consistent progression. Seam-pair test: After grading, compare every paired seam that must sew together rather than checking pieces in isolation. Rule-source check: Record which measurement chart or brand specification each grade increment comes from.