Persephone, a sewing pattern engine
A place where an idea becomes something you can make. Persephone brings garment pictures, sketches and typed or written descriptions into one sewing atelier — connecting design, pattern construction, personal measurements and the story of your work.
Creativity, with construction at its heart
Persephone is operated by Timipre MacAulay, a sole proprietor based in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Our purpose is to bring passion, hobby and work into one project centre — whether you are beginning your sewing journey, practising your craft or developing a clothing brand.
The garment idea comes first. From illustrations to connected fabric pieces and personal sizing, Persephone supports the creative process while keeping you involved in the decisions. Review the design, check the construction and test the fit before cutting your final fabric.
Beyond the cutting table, explore the digital closet, sewing guidance and supplies finder, or document your progress in the Dear Persephone scrapbook journal. Your experiments, lessons and finished makes belong in the story too.
We respect creators’ work. Your inputs remain yours to the extent you hold those rights; using a reference does not grant permission to copy someone else’s protected work. Our copyright policy explains these responsibilities and how to raise a concern.
From garment to pattern, in the open
Seven stages- 01
Bring the garment
Start from a photograph, a sketch, a fashion illustration, an existing pattern piece or chart — or just words. A picture is a prompt; nothing is required beyond the garment itself, and whatever you supply is kept with the project permanently as the original reference.
- 02
See it illustrated
Persephone draws clean technical front and back views of the design on the wearer's kind of body — never a generic garment of the same category. If the back was never shown, she constructs and labels one as an inferred back. Nothing is drafted until these illustrations exist.
- 03
Understand the construction
She reads the visible construction: which seams hold the garment together, which details are decoration, which regions of fabric must exist as separate pieces. Every piece exists because the garment's construction requires it — never because a template contains it.
- 04
Draft connected pieces
The garment is divided into sewable regions and each region becomes a pattern piece with smooth sewing curves, named edges, darts, notches, grainlines, cut quantities and fold instructions. Every edge knows its partner: piece, edge, relationship type, measured length.
- 05
Read the pattern back
Persephone then assembles her own pattern on paper: if these exact pieces were cut and the named seams sewn, what garment would they make? That reconstruction is compared against the intended garment, and mismatches are corrected in the pattern itself — never by redrawing a prettier picture.
- 06
Fit it to a body
Choose a standard size from the charts, grade the whole set to it, or enter your own measurements and have the pattern redrafted to your exact fit. Seam allowances, stitch lengths and cut quantities re-measure to whole millimetres at every size.
- 07
Print and sew
Export print-at-home tiles or a nested size run with test squares, registration marks, page numbers, piece names and fold indicators — the same verified geometry you saw on screen, at true scale. A sew-along booklet and cutting layout with yardage come with it.
Everything included
With every project- Technical illustrations
- Front and back views of the design, in its own proportions, before any pattern work begins.
- Illustrated pattern pieces
- Every manufacturable fabric piece drawn clean and labelled — no jagged technical clutter, no raw geometry on screen.
- Seam relationship map
- Which piece sews to which, along which edge, with grading effects shown so lengths stay matched at every size.
- Size charts for every body
- A range of size and fit charts — grade the entire pattern set to any row with one tap.
- Personal fit calculator
- Enter your own measurements, save the fit, set it as your default, and redraft any project to it exactly.
- Seam allowances, computed
- Stitch line solid, cut line dashed, allowance derived and graded per size — including fold and mirror rules for cut quantities.
- Cutting layout and yardage
- Fabric-aware nesting: one-way prints, napped fabrics, stripe and check repeat matching.
- Sewing instructions
- Written from the actual seam map of your actual pattern, naming the real pieces and seams — never generic boilerplate.
- True-scale printing and export
- Print-at-home tiling or full-size export with every marker a cutting table needs.
How she thinks
House rules- Any body
- Persephone works out the intended fit from your reference and draws and drafts for that form — never one fixed mannequin.
- Honest stages
- A step is finished only when its real work exists. Approving an illustration opens sizing settings; unresolved construction checks still prevent final production grading and printing. Review the checks and test-sew before using your final fabric.
- Your reference, kept
- The picture or description you start with stays with the project forever, so every piece can be traced back to the part of the garment that caused it.
Bring a garment. Leave with a pattern.
Begin in the studio →