The Whole Point!

Our mission here is to recognize the skill of pattern designing, to educate and provide research for professional development and to explore contemporary applications. We hope this leads us all over the place; there is no end to all the fascinating pattern design approaches and how they come to be. Most of all we want new generations to follow their curiosity, create new forms and learn from the best in history.

This takes us into clothing for the most part but enclosed forms, containers of all sorts, are part of the scope -- more on that in 2011. Finally, we hope that the art and fine skills of pattern designing continue to impart confidence, creativity and yield personal success for those who recognize the importance of beautiful fit and design.

Ten years into the new century, we are now more together and getting serious about the 21st Century.   Change is everywhere, along with much new brilliance.  We are at once coping, inventing, living fuller, expressing  -- no longer having to think about the here and now -- we are living it and doing so by using all of our skills in more places, every day.

This is a new website for a new time and through it we hope to present the best work in new pattern directions and the best knowledge of the past -- the two are always the magic mixture, invaribly producing minds that stir, blend, fuse and produce a whole new zeitgeist for the next decade.

New pattern ways are emerging . . .you can look forward to: 

• Zero-Waste Cutting - Sustainable fashion, a new and unique industry in which the pattern rules. 
• Containers - patterns of boxes, lanterns, handbags 
• Digital Graphics - pattern cutting engineered to the surface design
• Molding and Forming - patterns developed from molded forms
• Animated Draping - new CAD and 3-D programs 

Thoughts or ideas? Send us an e-mail.

Our Online Philosophy . . .

As the online world explodes and there is more and more, one has to take a stand on some things so to remain clear and grounded. Our approach to being an online presence is that we do not accept advertising. I know, it's dollars slipping through our fingers, but honestly our purpose here is to offer good products and information that help people be more skilled pattern makers, designers and craftspeople -- it isn't to try to get you to buy stuff from who knows where -- so no ads.

We try to create many of our own products and offer those products in the pattern world that we use ourselves.

We also print and reprint books and booklets -- actually that's where this whole thing started -- since 1980 as Antiquity Press!  Now we print-on-demand (POD) which means that when we get an order for a book, we print it.  For a new book we may print 5 - 10 extra to be ready and we try to ship the next day so we have to be ready.  It makes a huge amount of sense to POD since no one has the resources to tie up cash in inventory any more; however, the downside is that each costs more.  Just know we are pricing the products at that delicate balance between customer affordability and staying in business -- it's a dance.

We want to make our site as user friendly and as best a fit for our followers as possible so if you have a great idea or think we should be doing someting different or or better, just tap out an email -- we want to know! 

Thank you for checking in here and please let others, especially students, know about your discovery!