What is the first thing to do in Dressmaker?

Take a commission from a townsperson, measure them, plan the dress in the sketchbook, buy fabric, cut on grain or bias, preview on the mannequin, sew, decorate, and deliver. That loop is the whole game’s core, per the official description.

How do I earn money in Dressmaker?

Delivering dresses earns reputation and coin, per the official description. You can also design finished dresses yourself and sell them off the rack from your shop window — a feature the developers added specifically so players could make their own designs to sell.

What does sabotage do in Dressmaker?

The store page says you can "satisfy (or sabotage!)" townsfolk, but publishes no mechanical detail — and neither do the developers’ announcements. Sabotage effects are Unconfirmed; anything more specific would be a guess.

Which fabric should a beginner buy?

The game publishes no per-fabric stats, so there is no official answer. One review notes the game encourages buying at least five metres per dress so a design can be completed as intended — a useful rule of thumb when stocking up.

How do I get 100% quality on a dress?

The achievement "99 Problems But A Stitch Aint One" confirms that dresses have a measurable quality percentage, but no official source publishes the exact inputs. Plan carefully in the sketchbook, cut deliberately, and decorate with intent.

Do I need to play the itch.io prototype first?

No. The prototype was a free itch.io release from 2025 and is a different, earlier build; the Steam version stands on its own with its own tutorial and unlock progression.

Dressmaker Beginner Guide: The Commission Loop Explained

Dressmaker beginner’s guide

Dressmaker hands you a dress shop and lets you run every step of it yourself. This guide walks the complete commission loop exactly as the official sources lay it out — the Steam description, the developers’ own announcements and Steam’s achievement data — and says so plainly wherever the game keeps a secret.

Facts checked September 29, 2026Reading time 6 min readEvidence cited per claim

Illustration made for this site — not game art.

Your first commission, start to finish

Townsfolk come to you with occasions and personal tastes, and you deliver dresses. Every step below is player-controlled, per the official description and the developers’ announcements.

Take a commission

Townsfolk commission dresses for events on their social calendar and for their own tastes. Ten named customers — Adora, Alice, Dorothy, Edith, Fiona, Marie, Priya, Prudence, Rose and Vivian — each have a major-commissions storyline, per their achievements. Since patch 403 you ring the bell to summon the next customer.

Measure the customer

Each character is measured and the mannequin adjusted to fit them, with pattern pieces drafted from those measurements — the developers made a point of showing that a bespoke dress is made to fit the body, not the other way round.

Plan in the sketchbook

Design and colour the dress in your design book first: pick the pieces, pin fabric swatches and appliqué ideas there before you spend a single coin on cloth. Component names in the sketchbook are clickable, so you can inspect a piece before committing.

Buy fabric

The shop stocks a wide range of fabrics — over 450 of them, plus over 350 accessories. The official description names cotton, linen, wool, silk and velvet; per-fabric prices stay Unconfirmed until the game publishes them.

Arrange and cut the patterns

Lay out the pattern pieces and cut on the grain or the bias — the cut you choose shows in the finished garment, and each panel can be cut from a different fabric. A panel preview in the inventory shows where each piece goes on the mannequin (added in patch 410).

Preview on the mannequin

Check the assembled pattern on the mannequin before sewing. This is your last cheap chance to catch a layout you dislike.

Sew it together

Feed your fabric through the sewing machine and assemble the garment panel by panel. Thread colour is yours to choose — click the spools in the sewing scene to change it (patch 410).

Decorate

Add buttons, bows, appliqué and lace trims — placement is completely free, so finishing touches are where a dress becomes yours. Trims are measured in metres, and some lace items needed a patch before the game recognised them as trims (patch 403).

Deliver and get paid

Hand over the dress to earn reputation and coin. If a customer accepts the commission, you get paid even when the dress fails (patched in 403). Delivered quality matters: one achievement is earned by hitting 100% quality on a dress.

Beginner advice that will not steer you wrong

These follow directly from the confirmed mechanics — no superstition, no invented stats.

Satisfy the brief before you improvise

Commissions exist to satisfy the customer’s occasion and taste. Read the request, plan the dress around it in the sketchbook, and only then add your own flair.

Watch the style tags

Dresses and requests interact through style tags, so matching the requested style is the reliable route to a happy customer. Exact tag values are not officially published — treat the tags as directions, not numbers.

Mix fabrics panel by panel

Each panel can be cut from a different fabric, so a silk bodice over a wool skirt is a legal move. What each fabric does mechanically is Unconfirmed — experiment on off-the-rack pieces first.

Grain or bias is a visible choice

The official description is explicit that how you cut shows in the finished dress. If a silhouette looks off, revisit the cutting table before blaming the sewing machine.

Decorate deliberately

Decorations are free-form, and one achievement (Harder than it Seams) asks for over 300 accessories on a single dress — so excess is possible. For paying customers, aim for quality: 100% quality on a dress is its own achievement.

Answer the bell

Customers arrive when you ring for them (patch 403). If the shop feels empty, the bell is the answer — and while a delivery is pending, prioritise pigeon-delivered commissions to work towards Birds of a Feather, Frock Together.

Pet the kitty

The store page says so, and who are we to argue.

Selling off the rack

Commissions are only half the shop. You can display finished dresses in your shop window and sell off-the-rack designs directly — the developers built this deliberately so players could design their own dresses to sell, or save up for an extra elaborate one. It is how practice pieces and experiment dresses become coin without waiting for the right customer to walk in.

Two patches, and what they fixed

The game shipped on September 21, 2026 and had two patches within four days. Both are worth knowing about, because each one changed a step of the loop above.

September 22, 2026
Build 403 — the day-one fixes
The bell arrived: you now ring it to summon the next customer. Failed commissions pay out if the character accepted the commission. Lace trim items that were not tagged as trims are tagged correctly now. Plus a cut-off cursor in the cutting-room tutorial, a back button in the store tutorial, a single keyhole bodice fix and wide-aspect-ratio shop buttons.
September 24, 2026
Build 410 — quality-of-life pass
Component names in the sketchbook now read as clickable. Hovering a panel in the inventory shows where it goes on the mannequin. You can change the thread colour in the sewing scene by clicking the spools, the mouse wheel no longer rotates panels while the cursor is over the inventory, and a tutorial softlock is gone.

The official roadmap

The launch announcement set out what the team is working on next. Small updates fix bugs and add fabrics and accessories along the way; the bigger items below are in development and undated. Nothing here is paid DLC as far as any official source says.

Online challenge mode

A mode where you can compare your dress designs with other dressmakers and vote for your favourites. No release window has been given.

Transparent fabrics

Transparent fabrics were cut from the launch version; the team says layered transparency with double-sided meshes needs more work to look right.

Proper controller support

The developers describe the game as running fast on the Steam Deck, but they want to give it proper controller support rather than relying on the default emulated layout.

Mobile and Nintendo Switch ports

The team is planning mobile and Switch ports, which they say have been requested constantly on their social channels. No dates, no platforms beyond those two.

Where these facts come from

This site is built from three official sources: the Steam store listing, Steam’s global achievement statistics and the developer’s own Steam announcements. Everything they state is quoted or paraphrased with the source cited; anything none of them states — per-fabric stats, hidden achievement conditions, what sabotage changes — is marked Unconfirmed rather than filled in. Nothing here is sourced from community wikis or datamining, and generated illustrations are labelled as such.

Official Dressmaker on Steam (app 4019220) — The official store listing, read September 29, 2026. Source of the release date (September 21, 2026), the $14.99 price, Windows/Mac support, language support (English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese with full audio), the single-player/casual-simulation classification, the named fabrics (cotton, linen, wool, silk, velvet), the decoration types (buttons, bows, appliqué, lace trims), the sketchbook, mannequin, grain/bias cutting, window-display and "satisfy (or sabotage!)" mechanics, the official system requirements, the interface feature flags (Mouse Only Option, Playable without Timed Input, Custom Volume Controls, Steam Cloud, Family Sharing), the Steam Deck compatibility rating shown on the store page, the review summary (Overwhelmingly Positive), the six bundles the game ships in, and the Screenhub pull quote.

Official Dressmaker — developer announcements on Steam — The Dressmaker team’s own announcement feed on Steam, read September 29, 2026. Source of the content roadmap from the launch post (September 21, 2026: an online challenge mode, transparent fabrics, controller support, and planned mobile and Switch ports), the price post (September 7, 2026: $14.99 with regional pricing and a -10% launch discount, approximately 35 hours of story commissions, over 150 dress pieces, over 450 fabrics and over 350 accessories, and more free content to come), the monthly development posts (per-character measuring and pattern drafting, custom fabric shaders, the off-the-rack feature, nine of ten characters illustrated, each with an over-the-top personality, and the team credits), and the two post-launch patch notes (Build 403 on September 22, 2026 and Build 410 on September 24, 2026).

Official Dressmaker — Steam global achievement statistics — Steam’s official global achievement stats for app 4019220, read September 29, 2026. Source of the full 32-achievement list, each achievement’s official description (where one is published — hidden achievements show none), the global unlock percentages quoted across this site, and the achievement icons displayed on the achievements page. The percentages are live and drift as more players unlock; the figures here are the ones Steam showed that day.

Press review Screenhub — Dressmaker review (five stars) — Leah J. Williams’ five-star review for Screenhub, published September 15, 2026 — the review quoted on the Steam store page. Source of the order of operations on a commission (measurements, design book, emporium, cutting, sewing on the mannequin), the brief-and-style-score system, the five-metres-per-dress guidance, the cutting and sewing mini-games, the note that sewing mistakes reduce dress quality, and the progression from opening dresses to tiered gowns.