 Thank you all for coming to this presentation. It's one that I noticed in the schedule I was very excited about. There was a lot of math and a lot of complexity to pattern making. And people often forget how complex and how much technology has been driven by trying to solve this and how much of the execution is still by hand. So we have a very special talk tonight. Now I wanted to remind you all to continue to hydrate. I know that we always encourage you. But just think, where is your hydration source right now? It's trying to keep you alive. Are you allowing it to keep you alive? You might want to think about it, especially as the night continues. Also, there's opportunities to be an angel. All across this conference is the best way to really get to know how things work and contribute. I mean, we are all collectively volunteering to make this happen. And so find a way to give back. It's really rewarding. And in some cases, actually, literally rewarding. They'll give you a shirt, and you can get some food vouchers and that kind of thing. Also, they made special patches just for two of the most important, you might not think, but the most important angel tasks, which is waste and parking. So those patches are quite nice and the only way to get them is to sign up to be an angel and contribute in that way. Yeah. So we will jump into the talk now. So our event tonight is free showings, sewing patterns based on code. We have Alexander here. This is an opportunity to learn about this open source platform. And Alexander is, as described by this introduction, an enthusiastic contributor. So you're going to get to know a lot of things about this project, which has a lot more implications for you and your life and how you wear clothes and how you might wear clothes. So enjoy. Thank you. Hi, I'm Alexander. As told, I'm a 10-year-old from the Netherlands and here to represent free sewing. So this is simply said, it's a platform that turns your measurements into a sewing pattern made for your body that enables you to make clothes for your body that fit you well. Free sewing aims to become the Wikipedia of sewing with not just sewing patterns, but also sewing guides, programming guides, GitHub guides, community guides. So let's just jump right in. Yes, awesome. OK, so let's start at the very beginning, a sewing pattern. It's basically a piece of fabric that you sew together to become a garment. In the fashion industry, these patterns are based on the ideal body, which is usually a skinny white woman or a high-fashion model of the catwalk. And sewing patterns are based on this body and therefore clothing that you buy in stores as well. So we will talk more about that, free sewing, strengths and flaws, components of a free sewing pattern, and upcoming plans. Let's see. So like I said, the ideal body, a mannequin on which sewing patterns are drafted on, and you buy these based on the ideal body, the ideal body that doesn't exist. And this ideal body also differs between designers, so it makes it even harder to find the right size for you. And these garments are then categorized into two genders, menswear, women's wear, little room for inclusivity. So some garments are simple, like a face mask. It's just four pieces of fabrics. You add some elastic straps, and you have a face mask. With a pattern like this, you can get away with making just a few sizes, and it will fit most people. Of course, especially in a pandemic, it's important to have a mask as visceral. But since it's only one measurement that you take into account, you can get away with just making two sizes, and most people will fit them. Let's see. But then you have more complicated patterns, like dress shirts, which can easily take more than 10 measurements. So something like this is harder to make for multiple sizes. And what clothing stores do is they just make the pattern based on their mannequin, and they grade it up and down. But this isn't how bodies work. This doesn't accompany plus size bodies, for example. And sewing patterns, actually, if you already sew clothes and you buy a sewing pattern, these are also often based on mannequins. So even if you sew your own clothes, you may still run into this problem. Between stores, sizes also vary wildly. As you can see, size eight different stores have different ideas of what that looks like. And there's another problem. Vanity sizing is what this is called. It's clothing stores, they label their garments as a smaller size, because they know their consumers will feel flattered by wearing something that's a small size. And this makes it even harder, these two things, to find clothes that fit you. And it goes beyond finding your size as well. What clothing stores do, or the fashion industry in general, is trends exist to make more money. They know if consumers feel out of date, they will buy more clothes. This is mainly the case with women's wear. So with fashion trends being pumped out every few months or even every month, clothing stores don't get the time to make sure their garment fits properly. So they would rather just turn our clothes quick, fast, more than make sure they fit properly. So it's not just a sizing issue. It's also the clothing stores know that they're selling garments that don't fit properly. And this hurts them too, because the most common problem or reason that people return their clothes is because of a bad fit. And it takes a lot of money for these companies to cover those costs. And if you return a garment, it doesn't even get resold. It just gets thrown away. So it costs a lot of money, a lot of pollution. But clothing stores would rather just do that and keep up with trends than actually properly make clothes at least in the fast fashion world. So a good fit is important if you want to look here best. But it can be very expensive to buy made to measure clothes or to get your clothes tailored. So what can you do? Free sewing is where it comes into play. The founder, Yoast, he wanted to make made to measure patterns more accessible, because it can be very hard and can take a lot of time to make patterns that fit your body. So with a platform like Free Sewing, it becomes easier to make clothes that fit you, that actually properly fit you, and that are of good quality because you can make them yourself unless you fuck up. And you can make clothes in your own style as well. You don't have to rely on whatever is trendy at the moment. Or you don't have to rely on some niche site in the faraway corners of the internet. You can just make it yourself and make what you want to wear. But there is a lot more wrong with the fast fashion industry than just sizing. We have exploitation, pollution, environment, problems, climate change, mental health. It's not just sizing. But this isn't a talk about the fashion industry. But this is important to keep in mind because does Free Sewing tackle those issues? It tries to, at least. But it's very ambitious to expect people to go and make their own clothes, of course. Because it takes a lot of time and effort resources. But making made to measure patterns accessible to the world, it's a good start. It makes it more accessible for people to mend their clothes when there's a hole in it instead of throwing those clothes away or tailoring your own clothes that you already have into things that actually fit you. And it also enables sewists to make clothes made to measure patterns. Maybe they don't know how to draft a pattern to someone's measurements. And they can just use Free Sewing and then make and sell these made to measure patterns. It even makes it more accessible to stores. Someone in our Discord server or chat room has been occasionally sharing updates of his projects. After summer, he's opening a pop-up store in London where people can get measured. And right then, right then and there, a shirt will be made based on those measurements. And this system is based on Free Sewing system. So here are some other things that I think the world could pick up on from Free Sewing. So first up, inclusivity. Instead of dividing patterns between menswear and women'swear or masculine or feminine, Free Sewing is gender-neutral. Or it tries very hard to be. We also don't, when we ask for measurements, we don't do men, women. It's genderless as we ask with breasts or without breasts. Because breasts do impact the fit of a garment significantly. So recycling parts. With Free Sewing, you can just take one part, use another pattern. Whereas if you're a sewing company, you can't really get away with doing that. You're expected to make new patterns. And you can even remix an existing pattern into a new one. And this is completely OK. Nobody will call you out for that. Third up, there is no worries of trends. There is not a, there isn't a hungry audience waiting for a brand shiny new pattern every month. We don't have to worry about fitting into these boxes of modern sewing patterns or this or that. So it's designers, they can make what they're passionate about. They don't have to worry about all those things. So the patterns that get made, they're made in people's free time and are made out of passion. So because of this, Free Sewing also has a lot of historical patterns aside from just every day once. And we even have patterns for stuffed animals now. So you know the IKEA shark that's really popular. If IKEA lets you down and discontinued that, you can just make your own because we have a new one. Now it's a new pattern. And Free Sewing won't let you down. But there are a few limitations to Free Sewing. So although it's a great start to make patterns based on measurements this way, some patterns still have trouble to support some types of bodies like plus size ones or those that use a wheelchair or a different posture or children. Measurements can take all these factors into account. Because whereas in the fashion industry, a pattern designer drafts their clothes on an ideal body that doesn't exist. Here, a pattern also has to be dropped on a body, which is often, in Free Sewing, the designer themselves, which may be hard to take other bodies into account that way. So although it's a great start and a lot of patterns can support a lot of bodies, measurements don't fix all sizing issues. Then second up, measurements itself can be a problem as well. Because you need to take the measurements yourself. And you may not have a measuring tape or a friend to help you. So it's easy to get measurements wrong. And that will also get the pattern to drafts wrong. So that is one limit of Free Sewing. Aside from that, Free Sewing relies completely on volunteers, which is great. It's not a problem. But it does make things inconsistent sometimes. Free Sewing doesn't grow the same way the average sewing pattern company does. So let's jump into the technical aspects of a Free Sewing pattern. Because after all, that's what this conference is about. This is a graph of everything that goes into a Free Sewing pattern. So it's made the same way you would make a sewing pattern on paper. You draw lines, very simply put. In this case, paths. And with for sewing, you draw those lines with JavaScript and coordinates. Coordinates points here. Yeah, points. And these coordinates, they depend on what the measurements the designer chose and the options the designer chose, config. And of course, the measurements the user puts in and the preference that the user puts in, settings. Then what's left is store. This is where a designer can store information. So multiple parts of one pattern can use that information. And snippets. If you make a lot of pens, for example, pens patterns, you're not going to make a button, a graph, every time. You're not going to code that every time you make pens. So snippets are small, often reused parts of a sewing pattern that you can just easily get out there. So then points, paths, snippets make up one part of a sewing pattern. For example, the sleeves. If you make multiple parts, there's your Free Sewing pattern. So these patterns are scalable vector graphics, also known as SVGs. Most of you probably already know what that is, but I'll explain it quickly for those who don't know. So you don't actually draw a line made up of a row of pixels. Because if you resize that, change it around, it will get blurry and unusable. Instead, the line is based on a starting point and an end point, which will always make just a nice crisp line. And you can just add control points. The line will change, but it will still be crisp, sharp. So these SVGs can be downloaded into PDFs by the user. It can also be rendered into the browser with React. So in open source communities, it's easy to tunnel vision into code contributions and progress, and not other ones like documentation. But with Free Sewing, you really can't get away with that with lacking on these non-code contributions. Because if you don't have the sewing instructions, you can't sew the pattern unless you're an expert. And you may have a perfect technical drawing, but if you don't know what it looks like on a real human person, then you're also missing information. So this is what also goes into a Free Sewing pattern. So of course, Free Sewing plans to grow. Contributors that don't know code can also help with the previously mentioned parts. Because I think Free Sewing is a great way for people to get familiar with open source projects, but without having to do code. So I think Free Sewing is the perfect combination of art and code. I think the two can really thrive here. So Free Sewing plans to grow. And one of the things we've been focusing on is making patterns more inclusive, like the flaw I mentioned that some bodies are still not supported by some patterns. We're figuring out ways discussing how to fix this. And we've been making progress, but there's still a long way to go. And then another type of inclusivity as well, we're trying to get away from gendered language as much as possible. Free Sewing has a new version on its way, version three. A big focus of that is a better user experience. So not only a fast and intuitive site would be nice, but also to improve how people can use our patterns. Because sometimes things aren't clear on how to use it and with better clarifications. And there's a lot more coming in, version three, that's too technical for me that I don't understand. And then last, we also want to show more appreciation for contributors. For different types of contributions. We've already made a huge step by adding the All Contributors page to GitHub, which shows all the contributors and all the things that they do. But we're also trying to make contributors more visible on the site itself. So if you go to a patterns page, it's not just designer and their name, but there's also information there. So that was Free Sewing. Don't hesitate to stop by if you have any ideas. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much for your talk. Now I want to encourage people to line up at the microphone in the middle to ask questions. But first I want to check and see, well, okay, I guess we don't have, you don't have a signal question, but I do have a question that was asked by some of members of my village who really wanted to come. Are there ways that this approach deals with the natural asymmetries in the human body? Yeah, that is also one part. For example, shoulder slope can be very asymmetrical in most people, that's the case. So there are guides on that, but that is also part of the supporting different bodies. It's asymmetry, yeah. Great. Would you like to ask the first question? Yes. Great project. Great talk. Thank you. I was wondering, have any of you already been experimenting with simulating different types of fabric, for instance, with the cloth material in bender, or sorry, blender? That's a good one. We've been talking about it, but it's mostly been like a far away idea that we could do, but it's very hard to actually put into code and have users use it. But yeah, fabric is very important for patterns, of course, and we also take that into account. But yeah, that is something that we are looking forward to in the future. Thank you. Hi. I was wondering how big the community and the database of pattern is at the moment. Sorry, can you repeat that? How many are you contributing to the project at the moment and how many patterns are available on the website? Sorry. If you have a rough idea. Sorry, I don't understand your question. The size of the community, if I'm getting this right, the size of the current community using this. Sorry. Yeah, it's in the Discord there are a few thousand people, I think, but it's not as big as the effort-sewing company or effort-sewing communities. It's still pretty small. Thank you. Next question. All right, thank you. I am talking about two left-hands. There's no way that I'll ever accomplish something like this. Have you seen any integration into automated ways to actually get these patterns on? Yeah, so that's a good one. That's the mention of that guy who's doing a pop-up store, for example. So it would be nice if stores could do this. That would probably be one of the solutions to exploitation in the fashion industry as well. But free-sewing is mostly about the patterns itself and users who can use that or stores. Thank you. I'm standing on my toes. So this relates to the measurements. Have you already investigated if you could perhaps use 3D scanning? So somebody takes a picture of the person all around and use that to generate a 3D map of the person and get all the measurements. Have you looked at that? Thank you for the question. That would be one of the things that could really help with the struggle to support different types of bodies. But it's really hard to actually do that and put it into practice with what we already have. But it's definitely something for in the future to take inspiration from. Maybe work towards. There have been people actually who have... and the server who have mentioned that before. So maybe. I actually have two. They're very small ones. Is there also a tutorial on how to measure properly because you mentioned... That is there as well. Now I'm forgetting the other one. I had to do with... Oh yeah, I remember it again. It's probably also a very generic one. I'm completely new to sewing. But if you don't have a printer or if you only have one that can do 3D... No, A4, sorry. Is that going to be a problem? Thank you for the question. That's a good question. We have a Tyler that converts the pattern into A4s but also other sizes. And there's also a pattern... It's a paperless version which shows all the distances of the pattern. I can maybe use visual aid for this. So there's a paperless version that says this is this long, this is that long, this is that long and you can just convert it into paper yourself. Thank you. You say it's difficult to take measurements and it's always a bit confusing indeed because you're working in your own body. Something that really works for me, I don't sew a lot but something that really works for me is just take something that fits well and measure that size. For t-shirts, I once put pins in it and just copy that. That would work as well, yeah. The thing is to take clothes is that they're clothes. But yeah, if you would pin that to your body that would be one of the ways to make it more easy for people. But the average person that has trouble with measurements are people who are not familiar with measurements so also not really familiar with pinning to your body, for example. Thank you. One last question for you from the same folks who really wanted to come. What is the iteration model for trying to improve either as a designer who's contributing or one who is cutting to use these patterns to get overtime to target better fit? What the main goal is, you mean? How do typically do people improve the patterns so that they work better in the future from the community and from feedback? Oh, code. Yeah, so patterns get improved when people come to us in the server and they say, this doesn't fit me, this doesn't work for my body and the designer and the person, they look at what's going on and how to fix it, how to improve it and just doing it a lot also helps improve. Excellent. Thank you very much. And we have just time for one last final question. Very quick, a small question. The percentages on this slide are those that you fill in yourself or those calculated based on your measurements? On this exact slide. Because for myself I wouldn't know how many percent chest ease I would need, if that makes sense. Yeah, so these are the standard versions, so it's also that you can make the percentage smaller and the ease will become less, so it will become tighter. So it's just the standard percentages for a pattern that you can also make smaller. Does this make sense? These are the defaults, does that make sense? Yes. All right, cool. Thank you. Thank you very much for your questions and thank you very much for your talk. Thank you. If you have further questions, please chat with Laxander off to the side and we'll get ready. I have stickers over there, sorry. Oh yes, and there are stickers up here, very important that you saw teased in the presentation. So please continue to ask questions and learn about this amazing resource that's being developed and contribute.