---
title: Creating a new pattern design
---

When creating a new design, you have two options. You can create it in a
stand-along development environment. Or you can create it inside (your fork of)
the FreeSewing monorepo.

If you are unsure what to pick, go with the standalong development environment.
It is the best choice for people new to FreeSewing.

Working inside the monorepo is the preferred way of regular contributors, but
if you were a regular contributor, you would probably already know this. So
when in doubt, go stand-alone. You can always change track later.

## Stand-alone

To setup the standalong development environment, you need NodeJS 16 or higher.
Then run:

```sh
npx @freesewing/new-design@next
```

This command will setup FreeSewing's stand-alone development environment.

## Work inside the monorepo

First, [fork our monorepo](https://github.com/freesewing/freesewing/fork). Then run:

```sh
git clone <url to your fork>
cd freesewing
yarn kickstart
yarn new design
```

These commands will clone your fork of the
[freesewing/freesewing](https://github.com/freesewing/freesewing) repository on
Github and set it up for development.