FOSSPicks
Sewing pattern designer
Seamly2D
It might initially appear that the worlds of clothes and computers have very little in common. But it doesn't take much investigation to realize almost the opposite is true. Sewing, knitting, and crochet are all popular pastimes, regardless of your background, and in many ways the dextrous sequence of patterns they require is analogous to programming. This was even true over a century before the first computers, in the 1820s, when Jacquard's loom wove silk patterns at an industrial scale using cards with human-programmed punched holes to encode and reproduce a pattern. Since then, computers and clothing have had a long history together, and it's now time for open source to start influencing designs too.
This is what Seamly2D does, making fashion and clothing design accessible to anyone with a computer. Seamly2D is to clothing design what FreeCAD is to mechanical engineers, and like FreeCAD, Seamly2D is a desktop application using the Qt GUI framework. It's also a project that has recently won a place in GitHub's Accelerator program, which offers $20,000 and 10 weeks of guidance for each project, plus workshops "with an end goal of building durable streams of funding for their work." Seamly2D describes itself as a "parametric CAD for engineering documents," which sounds complicated, but those engineering documents are clothing designs and they need to be parametric to fit the infinitely variable human form. This doesn't mean that using Seamly2D is easy. It has a learning curve closer to FreeCAD than Figma, but it doesn't require traditional programming skills. Designs are instead crafted from a familiar palette of tools and functions from three different modes of operation: Draft, Piece, and Layout.
The Draft mode is where designers will spend most of their time. It's this mode that has the most icons in the tools palette on the left, and the tools range from the ability to create points and lines at fixed and variable angles, with variable lengths, to curves and arcs with similar properties and simple operations for duplicating, moving, and mirroring groups of points already created. This is the software equivalent to drawing on plotter paper. There's also a property editor on the right for viewing and entering exact values for the points you can't approximate with a mouse, as well as the Inkscape-like features of line colors and weights. There's deep functionality here to help with seams and fitting, and getting good results will take time and patience. Fortunately, there's an active community who will help, a good manual, and various video tutorials to get you started.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for two weeks.
-
RingReaper Malware Poses Danger to Linux Systems
A new kind of malware exploits modern Linux kernels for I/O operations.
-
Happy Birthday, Linux
On August 25, Linux officially turns 34.
-
VirtualBox 7.2 Has Arrived
With early support for Linux kernel 6.17 and other new additions, VirtualBox 7.2 is a must-update for users.
-
Linux Mint 22.2 Beta Available for Testing
Some interesting new additions and improvements are coming to Linux Mint. Check out the Linux Mint 22.2 Beta to give it a test run.
-
Debian 13.0 Officially Released
After two years of development, the latest iteration of Debian is now available with plenty of under-the-hood improvements.
-
Upcoming Changes for MXLinux
MXLinux 25 has plenty in store to please all types of users.
-
A New Linux AI Assistant in Town
Newelle, a Linux AI assistant, works with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.
-
EU Sovereign Tech Fund Gains Traction
OpenForum Europe recently released a report regarding a sovereign tech fund with backing from several significant entities.