Apparel and Home Furnishing Product Development (Garments, Made-Ups, Furnishings)
What this domain tests
The path from idea to bulk production - tech pack, sampling stages, grading, tolerances - and the arithmetic of home furnishing products such as curtains, bed sheets and cushions.
Development sequence
- Tech pack / spec sheet: style sketch, fabric and trims, measurement chart with tolerances, construction notes, label and packing instructions.
- Sampling: proto sample → fit sample → size set → pre-production (PP) sample → top-of-production. Each stage needs buyer approval before the next.
- Grading: increasing or decreasing a base size by a size-interval chart to create the size range.
- Tolerances: acceptable measurement variation, e.g. ±0.5 cm on chest, ±1 cm on length.
Home furnishing specifics
- Indian bed sheet sizes: single roughly 60 × 90 in, double roughly 90 × 100 in; pillow cover about 17 × 27 in; cushion 16 × 16 in.
- Curtain fullness is 2 to 2.5 times the rod or window width; header and hem allowances are added to the cut length.
- Shrinkage allowance must be added for cotton furnishing fabrics that are washed.
Worked example
A window is 60 in wide; fabric is 44 in wide; finished curtain length is 84 in. Fullness at 2× gives 120 in of panel width; 120 ÷ 44 = 2.7, so 3 fabric widths are needed. Cut length = 84 + 8 in for hem and header = 92 in. Total fabric = 3 × 92 = 276 in ≈ 7.7 m. Forgetting the fullness multiplier or the hem allowance is where most marks are lost.
Traps that cost marks
- Skipping the fullness ratio and cutting panels equal to window width.
- Omitting shrinkage and pattern-repeat allowances.
- Confusing a proto sample with a PP sample.
- Quoting a measurement without its tolerance.