Math for Fashion Designers 200 (Fall 2025)

If the truth were told, every fashion design student would skip all of the boring details and get right to the business of making fabulous garments, but the math behind the success of the project is essential and cannot be avoided. While there is nothing wrong with creative desire, the math must be right.

After teaching years of patternmaking and sewing classes at Bauder fashion college, I realized that there needs to be a fundamental, prerequisite class that shows the student how to read rulers and apply measurements. This class combines basic math with flat patternmaking procedures. All of sudden, the light comes on for the student and measurements have been demystified.

Have you ever wondered why you had to take geometry in high school? Well, this class prepares you for some of the highest paying jobs in the fashion industry. People who understand IT as it applies to CAD/CAM in fashion design are beyond essential to their companies.

This class not only demystifies how fractions and decimals are applied, but it also shows you how geometry is used. A pattern is simply a closed contour like any other shape that can be plotted using geometry. This is how CAD works. Computer Aided-Design software is only as good as the values that are entered into the dialog, so it is imperative that the student understand how, when, why and which to whole numbers and/or fraction in decimal format to enter as well as the significance for the y and x axis in grading.

I hope that you choose to add this valuable skill to your design toolbox!

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