Check which page you are on

The pink tab of the sketchbook holds dress designs, one page per dress. If the page in front of you has an empty requirements card — no customer name, no Quality or style rows — you are looking at an off-rack design, not your story commission. The dress in the screenshot below has no requirements at all because off-rack dresses are free designs; a story order always carries its card.

Sketchbook page for an off-rack dress showing an empty requirements card, pattern piece list and a Draft Pattern button
An off-rack page: the requirements card on the right is blank because a free design has no customer brief. If your story dress “disappeared”, first check whether you are staring at this page instead. View full screenshot.

Flip back to the story dress

  1. Open the sketchbook and stay on the pink tab.
  2. Use the page-turn at the bottom-right corner of the journal page to leaf back through earlier pages until the requirements card shows your commission's name and rows.
  3. If you are at the cutting table, the dress thumbnail routes back to its journal page — use it to confirm which design you are actually working on.

Once the right page is in front of you, the documented interface detail worth knowing: to change a pattern piece, click the piece's name, not the arrow beside it. The name opens the alternatives list for that slot.

Sketchbook pattern page listing bodice, collar, sleeve and skirt slots with the guide author's note to click the name, not the arrow
A pattern page with the author's annotation: click the piece name to open alternatives for that slot. The page shown lists Princess V Bodice, Open Shirt Collar, Capulet Sleeve and Petal Peplum Skirt at about 5.24 m of fabric. View full screenshot.

Jump in through character history

The sketchbook's yellow tab lists every customer. Opening a customer shows her profile and a Dress History: each past commission is listed with its original brief line, and selecting an entry jumps to that dress's page. When you remember who ordered the dress but not where the page went, this is the fastest route back — and it doubles as the way to re-read an old brief.

Sketchbook yellow tab showing the ten-customer list with star ratings, and the selected customer's profile with a Dress History list of past commissions
The yellow tab: ten customers on the left, the selected customer's Dress History on the right — here Marie's, with Respectful Funeral, Perfect Picnic, Goat Mediation and Spring Fete. An “Off Rack Dresses” button at the bottom of the list leads to the free-design pages. View full screenshot.

Resume work on the recovered page

Two shortcuts documented on the journal page save a detour each time you return to a dress:

  • The shop icon in the top-left corner of the journal page takes you to the fabric store and back, so you can buy a missing material before pressing Draft Pattern instead of backing out of the sketchbook entirely.
  • In the fitting room, the customer list has a Load Measurement button: it loads that customer's saved body measurements onto the panel, so a returning customer does not need to be measured again from scratch. Loading the numbers is step one — you still adjust the mannequin dials to match them for each new dress.
Journal page with the top-left shop icon circled by the guide author as a shortcut to the fabric store
The circled shop icon on the journal page is a documented shortcut to the fabric store before you draft the pattern. View full screenshot.
Fitting room with the ten-customer list open and the Load Measurement button circled, body measurements on the panel
The fitting room customer list with Load Measurement circled: the button loads the customer's saved body numbers (here Rose's) onto the panel — the mannequin itself still shows “???” until you adjust it, which stays a separate per-dress step. View full screenshot.

What this does not fix

Page-flipping and Dress History recover a dress that still exists in the sketchbook. They do not repair a corrupted save, restore a dress you sold or deleted, or guarantee that a menu looks identical on every build. If the page genuinely is gone — not merely out of view — treat it as a save issue, not a navigation one. For what the off-rack page is actually for, see off-rack cash recovery.

Further reading:Expanding On The Tutorial (Steam guide) · Into Indie commission walkthrough