Check the entry exists

This route starts at the sketchbook's plus sign → Create New Dress. If your game shows that, you can make off-rack dresses — free designs with no customer brief and no requirements card. If you do not have the entry yet (very early game), skip to the last section: this route does not apply to you yet.

Sketchbook page for an off-rack dress with an empty requirements card, pattern slots and a Draft Pattern button
An off-rack design page: the requirements card is blank because no customer set one. An empty card is how you know you are on a free design, not a story order. View full screenshot.

Free and leftover fabric

The point of the exercise is spending nothing new. Players document two sources: leftover lengths already in your fabric inventory from earlier orders, and a free burlap the store offers. Burlap carries weak and even negative style tags, so the dress will not score high — the goal is a saleable finished dress at zero outlay, not a masterpiece. Check the price shown in the store before you assume anything else is free.

Design, finish, sell

  1. Draft a simple pattern that fits the fabric you already have; short, few-piece designs waste least.
  2. Cut and sew it like any dress, finish and take the photo.
  3. On the completion screen choose Sell — not Complete Commission (there is no order) and not Gift Dress (that spends the dress on relationship, not cash).
  4. Read the actual offer and your balance after the sale. Then reserve enough for the next commission's materials before celebrating.
Dress Complete dialog with separate Complete Commission, Keep working and Sell dress buttons
The completion choices on an official screen: Sell is its own route, separate from delivering a commission. Keep working returns you to the dress if you want a higher-quality piece first. View full screenshot.

Keep the three numbers apart: the customer's budget line is their ceiling, not your advance; the quote is what the shop offers for this dress; the balance is what you actually hold. No documented source supports a fixed profit formula or a guaranteed sale speed, so treat each sale as its own quote.

If you cannot create yet

Players who ran out of money before unlocking Create New Dress document a conditional fallback, not a clean fix: one sold the wrongly-coloured commission dress back and redid the order to recover cash, while also reporting the mid-commission state felt fragile. If you consider that, check the current sale quote and the order's state first, and expect to redo the dress properly afterwards. It is not guaranteed lossless, and it does not auto-complete the order. The reliable prevention is cheaper: match the brief before buying fabric — fabric & tags — and keep a cash cushion for the next order.

Further reading:Expanding On The Tutorial (Steam guide) · Steam player discussions · Official Dressmaker store page