Dressmaker, from your first stitch
Dressmaker drops you into a shop in Twillford with a mannequin, a sewing machine and a queue of townsfolk. The loop is measure, design, cut, sew, decorate, deliver. This guide covers what the game explains badly, with every tip sourced from community playtesting.
The loop, with the parts the tutorial skips
- 1
Measure
Measure each client once. On later visits a button under confirm reloads their saved numbers.
- 2
Design
The yellow line is the target, the dark green bar is what you already guarantee, the striped green bar is your possible range. Gold trait highlights are good, red are bad, gray do nothing. You do not need to hit every requirement at the design stage: fabrics carry a lot of the score.
- 3
Cut
Grain direction feeds quality. Pieces can land upside down, so rotate before cutting. Scrap an uncut piece to recover fabric.
- 4
Sew
Clean sewing plus on-grain cutting is your quality score. Sewing assist in the options has no penalty, just slow down for corners.
- 5
Decorate
Accessories add value and satisfy requirements but barely move style tags. Hide ugly required pieces deep in the skirt.
- 6
Deliver
Commissions pay an advance and a completion bonus. Off-the-rack dresses, unlocked after your first three commissions, always profit.
Deep dives
Controls, all in one place
Cutting, sewing, mannequin and accessory keys, including the ones the game never tells you.
Tag scores: the cheap-fabric meta
Why 10 gold cotton outscores 80 gold velvet, and how the skirt 40 / bodice 35 weighting works.
Making money with off-the-rack dresses
The sell formula, and the burlap-plus-gemstones build players use to print gold.
Trim, without the pain
Pin technique, cuffs, backtracking, and the 50 metre achievement.
Ten facts worth learning early
- /Burlap is free and the only fabric tagged Uncomfortable. It drags most other tags down, so use it for prototypes and money dresses, not for picky clients.
- /For 18 of the 22 style tags, the best-scoring fabric is on sale from the start, usually a 10g cotton or wool. Expensive velvet mostly looks nicer.
- /A fabric's tag score is weighted by dress part, not by area: skirt 40%, bodice 35%, sleeves 15%, collar 10%. Rules written as “at least X% of a fabric” go by area instead, where the skirt dominates.
- /Off-the-rack dresses unlock after your first three commissions, through the sketchbook. Selling them always profits because the formula multiplies materials and time by your quality and prestige bonuses.
- /Measure each client once. Later visits let you load saved measurements instead of re-measuring.
- /Scrap a cut piece with the seam ripper (yellow tool) to recover the fabric, but only if you have not cut the piece off the bolt yet.
- /Quality comes from grain alignment and clean sewing. Sewing assist is in the options menu and has no score penalty.
- /Hold Shift to keep placing the same accessory. Shift-click an already placed accessory to copy it.
- /Ugly required accessories still count if you hide them deep in the skirt.
- /Pigeon requests pay friendship, and friendship unlocks patterns faster. Do them early.