blender, sketchup, inkscape where to start and which one

[Irulan]

You might poke around here
Www.fashion-incubator.com
This blog is written by pattern maker who is a leading consultant to both the fashion industry and "design entrepreneurs". She has tons of info (I mean TONS!). Maybe you can find some suggestions there. I assume that CAD is out of the question, and you don't say what type of patterns (clothing, multi size, craft...?)

[smilingcat]

Thank you for the link. She looked it up.

For now, I've downloaded and installed latest version of inkscape on my win7 computer and on my partners computer. There are lot of good tutorials at inkscape site and elsewhere so I think she'll use that instead. Her patterns are for purses, lunchbags, cases for ipad, android phones, tablets... She used to be a manufacturer until the Chinese imports ruined her industry and her along with it. How does one compete with a bag selling for $10? (wholesale) when you are paying $10/hr and having to pay for insurance, and all the other overhead. So she's back to being a "mom and pop" kind of business. And changing from home and gift industry to a more practical items. Consolation of this is that, I'm not taking vacation time, when I had a job, to do NY gift show at Jarvitz center, nor Atlanta, Dallas, LA gift shows... All the wholesale shows are so sad these days. She has kept several of her machines, walking machines and several Jukis, to her 12 needle embroidery machine its industrial not home machine, to cutters with 12 inch or so tall razor blade, clicker press...

BTW, inkscape doesn't have uninstall... GRRRR!!! At least, I still have over 440G left on my drive.

[Irulan]

aha - sounds like she knows what she is about for sure. So many people don't.
Some people have been extremely successful through etsy.
Here is an example
they make really cool bike tool bags,
http://www.soulrun.com/Welcome.html
etsy appears to be down at the moment.