Dressmaker Commissions Guide: All Requirements and Solutions

At first, commissions in Dressmaker seem straightforward. A client asks for a floral, cute, and romantic dress, so you pick a floral fabric, add five decorative flowers, sew everything together, and the game still tells you that the requirements have not been met. Usually, this is not a bug. Dressmaker tracks several different things at once: dress styles, the percentage of a specific fabric or color, construction quality, accessories, and budget. Each of these systems works differently.In this guide, we'll explain how to read a commission card and tell in advance whether your dress will pass the final check. Since Dressmaker currently has no official Russian localization, the Russian version of this guide uses literal translations for most game terms and includes the English name in parentheses on first mention.

Quick Summary: How to Complete Dressmaker Commissions Every Time

If you reduce the system to one simple process:

1. Read the entire commission card, including Max, Avoid, and Use only restrictions.
2. Set the client's measurements accurately on the mannequin.
3. Get as many of the required style points as possible from the patterns first.
4. Choose fabric to cover the remaining styles, colors, and required material percentage.
5. Use large panels for percentage-based requirements.
6. Use accessories to fill small style gaps, but do not expect endless copies of the same decoration to keep adding full value.
7. Align the pattern pieces with the correct grain direction and sew carefully to reach the required Quality.
8. Check every line of the commission one more time before submitting the dress.

Once you understand this, the system stops feeling random. The main thing to remember is that Flowers 60, Silk 25%, and Quality 80 are three completely different problems. The first is solved through design, fabric, and accessories; the second depends on the actual area of the material used on the dress; and the third comes from your work with the mannequin, pattern layout, and sewing machine.

How to Read Commission Requirements

After speaking to a client, the commission appears in the sketchbook. The conditions your finished dress must meet are listed on the left. To complete the commission successfully, you need to satisfy every line. A beautiful dress that meets five requirements out of six still counts as a failed commission.A commission card may include:

• Quality, which reflects how well the dress fits, how accurately it was cut, and how well it was sewn;
• styles, such as Flowers, Cute, Romantic, Elegant, Gothic, and Professional;
• a maximum value, such as Cute no higher than 20;
• a minimum fabric percentage, such as at least 50% Velvet;
• a minimum color percentage, such as at least 40% Green;
• a forbidden color or a list of allowed colors;
• a required accessory, such as a brooch, bow, tassel, and so on;
• a minimum trim length;
• a budget that you should ideally stay within.

Before buying fabric, go through the commission card from top to bottom. Pay particular attention to the words Max, Avoid, and Use only. In Dressmaker, it is entirely possible to make a dress too cute and fail a commission because the client asked for Cute to stay below a certain value.

How Flowers, Cute, Romantic, and Other Styles Work

Style requirements are simply numerical scores. If a commission says Flowers 60, the finished dress needs at least 60 Flowers points. Romantic 45 means you need 45 Romantic points or more, and so on.

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Style points can come from several sources:

• the selected bodice;
• the skirt;
• the sleeves;
• the collar;
• the fabric;
• accessories and trim.

That is why it is better to start a commission in the sketchbook rather than in the fabric shop. Changing patterns in the sketchbook is free, so try different bodices, skirts, and sleeves until the garment pieces themselves already provide a good portion of the required style points. Only then should you choose your fabric. For example, if you need Flowers 60, it is usually more efficient to pick a skirt or bodice that already adds Flowers and combine it with a floral fabric than to try to make up all 60 points with decorative flowers alone.

Why Accessories Stop Adding as Many Points

You will almost certainly run into this at some point. Accessories do add style points: a silk flower may increase Flowers, a bow may add Cute or Playful, and other decorations can help with Glamour, Elaborate, and similar styles. However, repeated accessories have diminishing returns, so each additional placement contributes less than the previous one.This means the logic of needing 20 more Flowers and adding four flowers worth 5 points each does not work as simple addition. Eventually, the bar barely moves at all.If a style score gets stuck:

1. do not buy ten more copies of the same decoration;
2. go back to the sketchbook and check your patterns;
3. replace one of the fabrics with a material that has a strong bonus to the style you need;
4. change a major garment piece rather than relying only on a small decorative detail.

That is why a dress can be literally covered in flowers and still fail Flowers 60. The way it looks and the mathematical style score are not the same thing.

How Fabric Percentages Are Calculated

Requirements such as Silk: at least 25%, Velvet: at least 50%, or Lace: at least 40% have nothing to do with the fabric's style points.

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The game looks at the area of the finished dress panels. If roughly half of the total panel area is made from velvet, you will end up with about 50% Velvet.Important:

• the amount of fabric you purchased does not matter;
• the number of pieces does not matter;
• what matters is the actual area of the panels made from the required material.

A small silk collar will therefore not give you 25% Silk, even if you technically used a separate piece of silk fabric. A skirt covers much more area, so replacing one large panel can raise the percentage more than several small pieces combined.The easiest rule is this: if a commission requires a large percentage of a particular material, use it for the skirt or large bodice pieces. Save small sleeves, collars, and decorative sections for fine-tuning the final percentage.

How Color Percentages Are Calculated

Color works in much the same way as fabric type: the game looks at the area of the cut panels.If a commission requires Green: at least 40%, at least 40% of the dress area must come from fabric carrying the Green color tag.

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Pay attention to the fabric tags in the shop, not just to how the print looks. A bright floral pattern may visibly contain green, red, and yellow, but the game calculates colors according to the material's internal tags.If a fabric has several color tags, its area is divided between those colors. As a result, a multicolored print may not be enough on its own to satisfy a requirement such as Blue 50% or Pink 40%.Accessories do not count toward color percentages. A red bow will not help you meet a requirement for 50% Red.

What Use Only Certain Colors Means

Sometimes a client does not ask for a percentage and instead restricts the palette outright, for example Use only: Grey, Black, Brown.In this case, every fabric you use must contain only allowed colors. If you choose a grey-and-red fabric, the Red tag will already violate the requirement even if there is barely any visible red in the pattern.

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The same applies to Avoid: Black. Any piece of fabric carrying the Black color tag can cause the commission to fail.Before cutting, always check not only the fabric's main name but also its full list of properties.

How Quality Is Calculated

Quality is separate from Flowers, Cute, and fabric price. It is a score based on how well you actually made the dress.For a normal commission with client measurements, the final Quality score is calculated approximately as follows:

• 30% from correct fabric direction during cutting;
• 20% from fit and how accurately the mannequin matches the client's measurements;
• 50% from Sewing Accuracy.

The sewing machine therefore has the biggest impact. You can place every pattern piece perfectly on the grain and still lose a lot of Quality if the needle keeps drifting away from the seam line.Before you begin, make sure the mannequin is adjusted to all three of the client's measurements. During cutting, align the grain arrow with the fabric direction. When sewing, slow down especially on curves. Straight sections are much more forgiving if you move quickly.

Why Flowers 100 Fabric Does Not Give the Dress Flowers 100

The number shown on the fabric indicates how strongly that material contributes to a particular style when it makes up a significant part of the outfit. The final style score, however, is calculated from the entire combination of patterns, fabric distribution, and accessories.This means that using a fabric with Flowers 100 on one small piece will not make the entire dress Flowers 100. This is another reason not to confuse style points with fabric percentage. Dressmaker uses different calculations for these requirements.In practice, the best approach is to cover your main style requirements with a combination of patterns and fabric, then use accessories to add the last few missing points.

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What to Do When a Commission Requires Both Fabric Percentages and Several Styles

Suppose a client wants:

• Quality 75;
• Flowers 60;
• Cute 30;
• Romantic 45;
• Silk at least 25%.

You do not need to find a single fabric that does everything. Start by selecting patterns with Flowers, Cute, and Romantic bonuses. Then use silk on at least a quarter of the larger panels to satisfy Silk 25%. The remaining area can use fabric with stronger style bonuses. Once the dress is assembled, add a few accessories to fill in whichever style bars are still slightly short.This approach is cheaper and more reliable than buying expensive silk for the entire dress only to discover that it has completely wrong style properties.

How to Check a Commission Before Buying Fabric

The most important rule in Dressmaker is to solve as much as possible during the free planning stage.While working in the sketchbook:

1. write down every minimum and maximum requirement;
2. choose patterns that support the required styles;
3. check which scores are already covered before adding fabric;
4. only then go to the shop;
5. filter materials by the tags and colors you need;
6. check percentage requirements before the final cut;
7. leave a small part of the budget for accessories and possible rework.

Do not rush when cutting expensive fabric. While you are still changing the design, mistakes cost nothing. Once the fabric is cut, they cost money.

What to Do If a Dress Is Rejected

Do not immediately start over. Dressmaker lets you rework a finished dress and resubmit the commission, and some of the materials you already purchased can still be reused. Open the requirements and look for the specific line shown in red.If you are missing:

• a style score, change the fabric or pattern, or add a few suitable accessories;
• a fabric percentage, replace a large panel with the required material;
• a color percentage, use the required color across a larger area;
• Quality, the problem is in fit, cutting, or sewing;
• a required accessory, simply add the requested decoration;
• a maximum-value requirement, remove pieces or fabrics that are pushing the restricted style too high.

Most importantly, do not try to fix every problem with accessories. They are useful for adding the last few style points, but they cannot fix color percentages, fabric percentages, poor Quality, or incorrect fit.

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