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Layplan

February 11, 2025 - February 11, 2025   


How many designers do not use before they order their fabric? It’s madness.  

Lay plans are a pictorial representation of how all the pattern pieces can be used per sizes (and quantity) on the width of the fabric. This is how to stop that wonderful word, cabbage! Cabbage is the overs of your fabric and production run. Be careful with disreputable units that try and “kiss” the patterns by moving the pattern pieces so close to each other that they potentially overlap in the lay plan.

Have you ever tried on a garment in a shop and it fits perfectly but perhaps there is a slight flaw in the fabric so you select another identical size only to find that the fit is not actually quite the same?  Well that could be because of the manufacturer laying up  a different lay plan and squeezing the patterns together to ensure there is left over fabric for their own garments to make and sell…this is cabbage.

A layplan can help eliminate this by you stating to the factory that your fabric consumption is 1.2 m for the entire order. When I had my own label I used to test the manufacturers credibility by not giving a lay plan straight away and then asking the manufacturer to confirm the consumption.  When we disagreed I would produce the layplan. It’s your fabric, your nest of patterns, your style so why a manufacturer thinks they have the right to take your extra production has always been beyond me! However it happens. There are runners that literally run from one factory to another buying up overs (cabbage) each Friday. They normally pay cash and this is sometimes why these cash then pays the machinists that may not all be full time on the books.  This is very much in the relms now of the underground economy of manufacturing. This is also another reason why Fashion Enter, as a Social Enterprise, do not pay cash to anyone! We have our chartered accountants that deal with every single transaction of the company so I can sleep at night!

Lay plans are generated from CAD CAM programms.  At the Factory we use Vetigraph and we digitise our patterns and grade accordingly. This is a service we offer for our members and its cheaper than traditional grading companies as we are not for profit. When we have digitised your patterns we grade and then use the plotter to print out the lay plan.  You can ask to see a summary of the lay plan for a small cover charge.




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