Dressmaker: Cutting Table Controls and How to Cut Fabric
Operating the cutting table efficiently in Dressmaker requires understanding scissor controls, avoiding piece collision obstacles, and managing roll navigation.
Finding and Equipping Your Scissors
In Dressmaker, locating and equipping your cutting shears is simple once you know the table layout. Four wordless control icons sit directly beneath the active fabric bolt; hovering your cursor over them reveals their titles. The leftmost icon is Scissors, which equips your shears immediately. You can also pick up the shears resting on the table surface, though using the button is more dependable as you navigate across long lengths of cloth. Right-clicking releases the scissors.
Why Pattern Pieces Fail to Cut
When clicking a pattern piece with shears produces no cut, the piece is experiencing a boundary conflict. A pattern panel refuses to cut if any portion of its boundary overlaps another panel, borders the edge of the fabric bolt, or touches cutout voids created during earlier dresses. Shift the pattern onto an unobstructed patch of cloth until a clean outline highlights the perimeter, then click with shears to cut it out.
Navigating Across Fabric Rolls
Working with larger gowns requires scrolling along the fabric roll. Press A and D, click the round directional arrows in the bottom control panel, or drag on open fabric space to slide across the cloth. When shears are active in your hand, rolling the mouse wheel also scrolls the fabric. The cutting table displays up to 10 metres of fabric at a time. To swap materials, click another textile entry in your sidebar.
Trimming and Discarding Used Fabric
The second icon beneath the fabric is Discard fabric. Choosing this tool equips shears along the lower roll edge, displaying a cut boundary line and a metric readout indicating how much material will be trimmed. Clicking severs everything to the left of this guideline. Be cautious when using this action: once used slices are severed, that meterage is gone permanently and cannot be reclaimed.
The cutting table interface also features two additional utilities: Toggle Seam Allowance (the eye icon), which toggles seam allowance border guides around pieces, and Return all panels to inventory, which rapidly sweeps all unattached paper panels back into your storage drawer.
If you change your mind regarding a piece, dragging it into the table bin prior to trimming the roll cancels the cut and restores your fabric. However, severing roll meterage with Discard Fabric is permanent; dropping panels into the bin converts them back to paper patterns, but lost yardage cannot be recovered.