Cutter

Cutter allows users to create basic patterns for shoulder and waistline garments. Although it does create patterns as promised, it offers little guidance along the way.

The interface is sparse and somewhat intuitive. The program's functions are somewhat obvious just by virtue of the fact that there are so few of them. You choose what kind of garment you want (jacket, pants, dress, and so on), enter the measurements of the person it's being made for, and the program creates a printable pattern. The built-in Help file is brief, and though it does offer helpful tips for measuring people, its usefulness is limited by the fact that English clearly was not the author's first language. The program does not offer much in the way of features. It promises to create simple patterns and that it does, with as little fuss as possible. Users can customize the patterns to some extent, specifying, for example, the types of sleeves and collars they want. The patterns can be rendered in four different scales, from 1:4 to 1:1, although we had trouble getting the 1:1 to render the pattern at all.

Cutter comes as a zip file that is accessible after extraction, with no installation needed. The trial version allows users to print only a skirt and pair of pants; the full version must be purchased in order to print other patterns. We recommend this program for users who are already familiar with the creation and use of sewing patterns, as very little guidance is offered to users who don't already know what to do.