As a professional in the fashion industry working for Gap, Inc., I found the knowledge I gained at Apparel Arts to be quite comprehensive. It helped me to fine-tune my patternmaking skills and eventually get promoted to a senior supervisory level in my career. I can’t thank Suzy enough for sharing this invaluable information with me so I could move forward in my career.
-Susan McIntyre, Senior Product Technician, The Gap, Inc. or Susan McIntyre, Technical Design Manager, Putumayo Clothing Co.
After designing and manufacturing clothes for eighteen years, I went to Apparel Arts thinking to hone my skills.
I learned much more with this course. Now I can respond to a new fabric not with fear, but with ideas, with the intrigue of playing with it, manipulating it, then making a pattern to accommodate the drape, hand, texture, and stretch of the new fabric.
Suzy’s method and text are a joy, not intimidating to a visual person, a step-by-step, easy way to learn to design without limits.
-Giselle Shepatin, Giselle Shepatin Designs
I switched careers in my early 30′s from commercial photography to pursuing fashion design with Suzy at Apparel Arts. I wasn’t interested in accruing exorbitant debt at a four year design college or even gearing up for an intensive program like Parsons in NYC. I already had a bachelor of arts degree and had worked professionally for eight years. What I needed was a program that would cut to the chase, a program that would funnel my energies into pattern-making and designing clothes sooner than later.
The program at Apparel Arts drops you into the fundamentals of design immediately. As an instructor, Suzy is challenging and focused, and an excellent communicator.
The intensity of the program provided me with the technical and analytical skills for clothing construction and pattern-making and also helped me to decide if my career change was worthwhile. I appreciate Suzy’s in depth analysis of the clothing making process, she’s insightful and very detailed oriented. Her program is challenging, especially the intensive pattern-making courses. If you’ve signed on to become a designer, you’ll be stretched in ways necessary for the challenges ahead. However, if you would just like to be really proficient in making clothing, you will also benefit from her program. I feel confident that I’ve acquired a core base of design skills which will grow with me as I continue to develop my creative process.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this program to those interested in either honing their skills as a clothing maker or the individual who’s interested in making fashion design their career of choice.
Tamara Cervantes Dorman
After decades of depending on commercial patterns, the Apparel Arts program opened a whole new world of designing and sewing to me. I can now translate any picture of a ready-made garment into a pattern that fits perfectly.
-Barbara Allen, Sewing instructor
Clear, complete, comprehensive. That’s the best way to describe the patternmaking course at Apparel Arts. I have tried many methods, but this one gives me consistently good results no matter the body type or style.
-Sharon Blair
Faculty, Apparel Design
Art Institute of Portland
Studio SKB
The pattern drafting method I learned at Apparel Arts taught me how to design any clothing style to fit me or anyone else. With different fabrics, I can design with my imagination as my only limitation. I have been sewing almost my entire life, but only now do I feel that I can complete a garment that is truly exactly what I want.
-Susan Yee, Former Student
The patternmaking knowledge I gained at Apparel Arts is fantastic. It gave me the foundation I needed to launch an independent pattern company, Go Patterns, with a fellow Apparel Arts graduate Allison Page.
-Madeline Rogers, Go Patterns
Apparel Arts gave me a fundamental education of the concepts needed to create clothing from design to production. Understanding this process has been essential to my success in the fashion industry and in starting my apparel company, black label san francisco.
-Rita Dilorenzo, Black Label, San Francisco
Apparel Arts’ patternmaking methods are accurate and comprehensive. With thecombination of easy to follow steps and technical sketches, her book is a valuable resource that I reference regularly.
-Michele Janezic, Apparel Manufacturer Janezic
I took the program from Suzy Furrer in 1998. The knowledge I gained has been invaluable in furthering my goals in my career, from creating couture garments for private clients, teaching fitting, patternmaking and tailoring classes, to writing articles for Threads magazine, and to starting a company, Go Patterns, a commercial pattern company.
The depth and breadth of knowledge that Suzy Furrer possesses is amazing and inspiring and I’m so excited she has decided to share it with the world. I work with this information regularly and truly feel that the information provided will give you the knowledge, skills and confidence to truly be able to craft the garments of your dreams.