Patternmakers’ professional qualification and pattern making practices in nairobi fashion houses, Kenya

Patternmakers are the technical backbone to the clothing manufacturing process and as such require a solid mastery of the technique. This can be ensured with proper training and experience, yet in Kenya little has been done to ascertain the levels of qualification of patternmakers in the fashion industry and whether these have any relationship with actual practices. This study adopted a descriptive research design to assess the relationship between the patternmakers‟ professional qualifications and pattern making practices within fashion houses in Nairobi. Specific objectives of the study were to: describe the patternmakers‟ demographic profile, describe the categories of clothes produced in the fashion houses, determine types of pattern making practices, assess patternmakers‟ professional qualification, and to establish the relationship between patternmakers‟ professional qualification and patternmaking practices. The study was based on a conceptual framework of education and training with labour market outcomes contextualized within fashion design. The target population was all patternmakers in the fashion houses within Nairobi. Sampling unit was one patternmaker per fashion house using criterion based sampling to reach a total of 44 patternmakers. Structured questionnaires were used to collect the data from each patternmaker. Statistical Package for Social Sciences aided in data analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize variables related to demographic characteristics, categories of clothes, patternmaking practices and levels of professional qualification. Chi-square (χ2) with an alpha level set at 0.05 was used to establish the relationship between professional qualification and the patternmaking practices. The results revealed that the majority of the patternmakers (90.9%) were below 45 years, and had tertiary education and above. Most were female (76%) and more than half of them (69.7%) were earning below 40,000 Kenya shillings per month. All of the fashion houses made dresses; pattern drafting was the most frequently used method of patternmaking, followed by freehand cutting while CADD was the least used. Majority of these patternmakers had at least a diploma or a degree. More than half of the respondents had less than 10 years of experience in patternmaking. There appeared to be a significant relationship between patternmakers‟ training background and use of pattern drafting method (χ2 (8, n = 33) = 20.573, p < 0.008). Patternmakers with higher levels of training tended to frequently use pattern drafting. Also, there was a statistically significant relationship between patternmakers‟ years of experience and use of pattern drafting as a method (χ2 (6, n = 33) = 13.265, p = 0.039). Majority of the patternmakers (90.9%) with less than 5 years experience frequently used pattern drafting. It was however clear that besides the training undertaken, experience had contributed more to the improvement of skills. This study therefore recommends that, men should be sensitized to take up pattern making jobs, patternmakers should be versatile enough to make a wide range of clothing, patternmakers should upgrade their knowledge in patternmaking so as to be at par with technological development, curricula developed for fashion design courses should include all pattern making methods and training opportunities should be availed to those already in the job market. For further research, it was recommended that a research should be conducted on those with several years of working experience in order to gain deeper insight into the profession, research should be conducted on patternmakers in the garment industry, the Micro and Small enterprises sector to establish their qualification and methods of patternmaking used and a similar study should be conducted in other towns outside Nairobi to provide better picture of the fashion industry in terms of patternmaking across Kenya.