Private beta · Mac and Windows

Draft your blocks from your own measurements, and they redraw themselves when a measurement changes.

Ellwand drafts sewing patterns the way a pattern-cutting book does: square down from the nape by the back length, across by half the bust plus ease. The difference is that every line keeps its formula. Change the size, or pick another client, and the whole draft redraws itself.

Apply for the beta See how it works ↓

Mac (Apple silicon, macOS 12 or later) · Windows (64-bit, Windows 10 or later, new in the beta) · your patterns are ordinary files on your own computer, and stay there

The Draft stage in Ellwand: the written steps on the left, the drafted bodice block on the paper, and the tool palette across the top
Step 2
Square across from 0 to mark 1. ½ bust + ½ ease = 48 cm
Change the size
UK 12 → UK 16, or Jane's measurement sheet. Every step re-works itself; every piece is retraced.

Why it exists

Between the drafting book and the CAD package, there was nothing.

If you draft your own patterns, you have had two choices. Paper, where you know exactly what you are doing but every size and every client means drawing the block again. Or pattern CAD, which is parametric and powerful, and makes you learn a CAD tool's way of thinking before you can square a line.

Paper & pencil

The method you were taught

A ruler, a curve, a tape and a book. It works, and it teaches you why a block is shaped the way it is.

  • Every size is a fresh draft
  • A changed ease means starting over
  • No record of which measurement made which line
  • Printing, grading and projecting are someone else's job
Pattern CAD

Powerful, and a lot to learn

Seamly2D, Valentina and their kind can do nearly everything. The price is a CAD interface: dozens of tools, modes and dialogs, and a model of drafting that isn't the one in your book.

  • Steep learning curve before the first block
  • Too many features in the way of the few you use
  • Drafting in the software's language, not the pattern cutter's
Ellwand

The paper method, parametric underneath

Draft with the same five gestures you use at the table. Ellwand writes each one down as a step with its formula, so the draft is a recipe that re-cooks itself for any body.

  • Mark, line, curve, dart, tape: that's the toolset
  • Every number can be a formula: ½ hip + 2
  • One block for every size and every client
  • From measurements to the cutting mat in one window

The goal is a pattern-drafting app that a sewing teacher can put in front of a class, and a dressmaker can keep a client list in: organised, intuitive, and still customisable all the way down.

Ellwand grew out of a sewing teacher's classes. The brief was simple: everything the big packages can do that a pattern cutter actually needs, with the clutter taken out, in an app that behaves like it belongs on your desktop. Where there is a choice between adding a setting and picking a good default, it picks the default. Where a gesture can finish without a dialog, it does.

The idea

Every mark becomes a written step. Every step keeps its formula.

Try it. This is a skirt-front frame drafted the way a book would do it. Pick a size, or change the length, and watch the steps re-work themselves. That is all Ellwand does, for every line of every block, every time.

60 cm

Steps

    Change a size, or a client's hip, and nothing needs redrawing: the steps are the pattern. In the app the same list drives the pieces, the slash-and-spread designs, the printed handout and the projector.

    Five stages, in the order you'd work on paper

    Measure, draft, trace the pieces, adapt, cut out.

    1

    Measure

    Pick a size from a chart, or a client's own measurement sheet, and set the ease and style choices. The draft on the right redraws as you type.

    • Women's chart UK 4–26, and a curve chart UK 16–36 with US and EU sizes and three cup groups
    • A men's chart by chest size, and a children's chart by age
    • Clients: one measurement sheet each, shared by every pattern
    • Ease in centimetres or as a percentage of the measurement: −5%, say, for a stretch fabric
    • "Not a body" for bags, pouches and home patterns
    The Measure stage: size chips on the left, the draft redrawing on the paper
    2

    Draft

    Draw the block with a mark, a line, a curve, a dart and a tape. Drag out from a point with the ruler and it snaps square, to 45°, towards another point, or square off the shoulder slope. Let go and type how far: 12, Skirt length or ½ hip + 2.

    • Curves bend like a hip curve, with handles to reshape them
    • Darts drag from an edge to the bust point, with sliders for width and length
    • Walk a seam with the tape and compare it with another: sleeve head against armhole
    • Several draft blocks in one pattern: a sleeve beside its bodice, measuring from its armhole
    • Notes, names and marks on points that carry through to the pieces
    • All sizes at once, nested, to check the grading
    The Draft stage with the tool palette and the written steps
    3

    Pieces

    The draft shows faded under the paper. Click the lines round a piece, like running a tracing wheel, and it appears with its seam allowance, the darts picked up on the way.

    • Each edge set to seam, hem, fold or its own width
    • Grainline straight, cross, bias, or along a line of the draft
    • One, two or three notches at any corner or point along an edge
    • Pieces follow the draft: change a measurement and every piece is retraced
    The Pieces stage: a traced piece highlighted over the faded draft
    4

    Adapt: slash and spread

    Turn a block into a design the way it's done on paper, and the block itself is never touched. Click the hem, say how many slash lines and how much to open each one, and fan them out for flare or spread them evenly for gathers.

    • Close a dart into flare, or move it to another seam
    • Add a seam through the darts: a princess line or a yoke, the dart taken into the seam
    • Slash through the bust point for a full-bust adjustment, or through a dart point for a full seat or stomach
    • Extend an edge for a button stand or a deeper hem; mark openings as pleats
    • Slash up to the far edge, to the knee or elbow line, or to a distance: a bell sleeve in one go
    • Every slash is written down on the design, to change or take back later
    The Adapt stage: the front bodice with its shoulder dart closed and moved to the side seam, the block dashed underneath
    5

    Cut out

    Tick which pieces to cut. Then project them at true size onto the cutting mat, print them tiled at home, or send a full-size file to a copy shop.

    • Projector calibrated once against the mat's own grid, so it stays accurate at an angle
    • A projector window on a second display: the table updates live as you edit
    • Move, turn and flip each piece on the fabric
    • A4, Letter or A3 tiles with a test square and an assembly map; full-size PDF; 1:1 SVG for plotters
    The Cut out stage: the pieces laid out with the page tiles drawn over them
    ✎

    And before any of it, a sketch

    The sketch pad pops up over any stage. Draw the design as a flat over a figure that is the size you're drafting, eight heads tall and as wide as its measurements, with three line weights, mirroring, and a library of silhouettes, necklines, collars, sleeves and pockets to drop on and reshape.

    The sketch pad open over the draft, with a figure to draw over

    What's in the beta

    Everything a pattern cutter needs. Nothing in the way.

    The beta covers the whole job, from a client's tape measure to the fabric. These are the parts people ask about most.

    Project onto the cutting mat

    Line a grid up with the mat at four corners and the projection is true to size even with the projector off-centre. Full screen for a mirrored display, or a live projector window for a second one.

    Clients & measurement sheets

    One sheet per client, kept in the library and shared by every pattern. Change a client's hip and every pattern drafted for them follows. The sewing cup size is worked out from the high and full bust.

    Formulas, written as you'd say them

    ½ hip + 2, Skirt length, 5% of Hip, radius of Waist for a circle skirt, dist(2, 6) / 3. Name a value once and use it in any step. Sliders on a formula change its constant and leave the rest following the size.

    Size charts for real bodies

    Women's UK 4–26, graded from the size 12 in Lo's Pattern Making; a curve chart UK 16–36 from Ahead of the Curve with cup groups; men's by chest after Aldrich; children by age; or no body at all. Swap in your own numbers whenever you like.

    Draft blocks and your own library

    A bodice, its sleeve and its collar in one pattern, each measuring from the others. Save any draft as a block, and start every new pattern from your own tested blocks, never from a stranger's.

    Made for the classroom

    Play back replays a draft step by step. Print instructions makes a handout with the measurements, the numbered steps and the finished draft, so a class can follow the same block at their own sizes.

    Ordinary files, on your computer

    Every pattern and block is a file in a library folder you choose (Documents › Ellwand to begin with), named after it, saving itself as you work. Back them up, send them, keep them in iCloud or OneDrive. Your patterns never leave your computer, and there is no account.

    Draft with Claude Full edition

    Connect the app to Claude Desktop and ask in plain words: make a new pattern from my bodice block and add 1 cm to the side seams. Claude reads the steps, makes the change, checks the seams still match, and the app picks it up with Undo ready.

    Who it's for

    Anyone who drafts, or wants to.

    Sewing teachers

    Draft a block in front of the class, play it back, and hand out the instructions. Every student drafts the same block at their own measurements, and sees why each line goes where it does.

    Dressmakers with clients

    Keep one measurement sheet per client and one block per style. A new client is a new sheet, not a new draft. A re-measure after a fitting flows through every pattern you've made for them.

    Home sewists who adapt

    Start from a block at your own measurements, move a dart, add flare, do a full-bust adjustment, and project it onto the table. Or learn to draft your own block from a book, one written step at a time.

    Private beta

    Being tested by a small group of sewists until January 2027.

    Ellwand isn't on sale yet. If you'd like to try it, say a little about what you sew. Sam reads every application and sends a download link to the testers taken on.

    Whether or not you test it, there's an Ellwand Discord server for people who make clothes and like thinking about how patterns work: show what you've made, talk drafting and fitting, and ask about the app.

    I'd test on (tick what you have):
    Read the user guide
    • Testers: the user guide covers every stage with screenshots.
    • Feedback is sent from inside the app, which adds the version and the stage you were on for you; Sam's reply shows up in the app. Or write to feedback@ellwand.app.
    • Your details are kept only to run the beta, and deleted when it's over: what's kept, and why.
    • Updates arrive inside the app. The beta edition runs to 31 January 2027; your patterns stay yours, as files, afterwards.
    • Needs a Mac with Apple silicon on macOS 12 or later, or a 64-bit Windows PC on Windows 10 or later. The Windows version is the newer of the two and has had less testing.
    The Ellwand mark: a tailor's ell rod laid across a cutting-mat tile

    The name

    An ellwand was the rod a tailor measured cloth by.

    A rod one ell long: the Scots word for the stick that cloth was measured against at the market, which every town was once required to keep. The app's mark is one of them, laid across a cutting mat: a measuring stick that knows its fractions, which is more or less what the app is.