Mission Statement

We strive to create software that will empower people to design and produce their own creations. We want to help ambitious designers start successful small businesses by providing them the tools they need.

A bit of history

• PatternMaker was envisioned in 1992 by Jim Pickrell. He was working in the costume shop at UCLA, drafting chorus costumes, and felt that a computerized patterning system would automate the chore of drafting the exact same pattern 20-30 different times with a different set of fixed measurements.
• He started working on the programming and enlisted his two brothers, Brian and Gary to help him. And so PatternMaker was born as a DOS program.
• The brothers met Leena Lahteenmaki in 1996 and she became PatternMaker’s designer. She was a Finnish attorney with a love of theatrical costuming. She taught herself PatternMaker’s scripting language and programmed the original design collections from her own pattern collection.
• Gary Pickrell re-wrote the PatternMaker code to work inside Windows and assumed the day-to-day management of the company.
• Thea Botter joined the PatternMaker team, along with Eugenie Naber, and helped make PatternMaker one of the largest selling pattern drafting software in Europe
• Leena Lahteenmaki passed away in 2003 after an extended illness. She is greatly missed. But we still maintain http://www.leenas.com in her memory.
• In 2004 Jennifer Smith joined the team, bringing her expertise in theatrical costuming utilizing MacroGen. She is the author of a new technology textbook utilizing classic techniques along with screengrabs and Flash video to teach slash and spread pattern making.
• In 2008, PatternMaker partnered with Marie Clayton and Collins&Brown publishing to release Make Your Own Clothes, a book available from your neighborhood bookstore that features some of our patterns and fully illustrated instructions.
• In 2009 PatternMaker again worked with Collins&Brown taking famed designer Vinilla Burnham’s work and digitizing it for her book, Best Ever Kids Costumes.

PatternMaker today

Is made up of a great group of talented people!

• Gary Pickrell: Managing Partner, general manager and head developer
• Brian Pickrell: Partner and developer
• Lane Holdcroft: Developer
• Eugenie Naber: Head of Sales/Marketing in Europe, developer
• Tara Banfield: Customer Service
• Kim Nish: Sales/Web