---
authors: 1
caption: 'This release really is a sea-change'
date: '2019-08-25'
intro: 'Welcome to version 2 of FreeSewing, the open source platform for made-to-measure sewing patterns.'
title: 'Announcing FreeSewing v2.0'
---

Welcome to version 2 of FreeSewing, the open source platform for
made-to-measure sewing patterns.

This release culminates more than a year of work, and comes two years to the
day since FreeSewing first went live. Today, we once again raise the bar for
what you can expect from modern-day sewing patterns.

<!-- truncate -->

## 🦄 Harder, better, faster, stronger

[\*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDpmVUEjagg)

We are _extremely_ excited about this release, which is not just merely a new
major version with some breaking changes, but a complete rewrite in
JavaScript/Node.js. We won't go into the nitty gritty here, but if you'd like
to know how we've done it, check out [the developer
docs](https://freesewing.dev) or [FreeSewing on
GitHub](https://github.com/freesewing).

## ✨ Live preview

FreeSewing has always had a reputation for publishing sewing patterns with tons
of options for you to tweak. Which is great, but can be a bit overwhelming
because you only got to see the result of all those tweaks at the very end.
But those days are gone. Now, no matter what changes you make, you get a live
preview of what your pattern will look like, taking the guesswork out of
configuring your pattern exactly as you like it.

## 🧂 Recipes

Where we used to store your patterns for you, now we'll store your _recipes_
instead. You can go through as many pattern iterations as you want. And when
you're happy, we'll save all the settings it takes to create that exact pattern
in a so-called recipe.

You can then at any time re-use that recipe to recreate your pattern, or use it
as a starting point to make a slightly different pattern. You can also share
these recipes, allowing others to generate the same look for their own
measurements.

## 🤝 Getting involved was never easier

What hasn't changed is that we still support 5 languages (shout-out to all
translators) and that FreeSewing is still a 100% communal effort (shout-out to
all contributors). There's only volunteers here, and if you'd like to help out,
it's never been easier.

For those who are interested in our code, head over to our new developer
documentation at [freesewing.dev](https://freesewing.dev) to learn about the
new platform, our core API, our plugins, and more.

For those of you who are interested in designing patterns, we have updated our
[pattern design tutorial](https://freesewing.dev/tutorial) so you can hit the
ground running.

There's good news for translators too, as we now use
[Crowdin](https://crowdin.com/) which makes translation a breeze. If you'd like
to help out with translation, or maybe even add a new language to FreeSewing,
make sure to [get in touch](https://discord.freesewing.org/).

## 💩 Usual caveats apply

It's conventional wisdom in software development that refactoring code is good,
but rewriting it from scratch is bad. Still, we did it anyway because we wanted
to make it easier for people to get involved in the project, and generate
patterns in real-time in the browser.

That being said, this is a .zero release so you may stumble upon an issue left
or right. When you do, please [let us know](https://discord.freesewing.org/) or
submit an issue.

## 🤞 Tell us what you think

We'd love to hear your feedback. We're **@freesewing_org** on
[Twitter](https://twitter.com/freesewing_org) and
[Instagram](https://instagram.com/freesewing_org), use the **#freesewing**
hashtag, or [check our share page](#fixme).
