Material Cost
Dressmaker Cost Calculator
Add up the fabric and the decorations, find which part is expensive, then try a cheaper cloth, a lighter pattern or one bow fewer — or give the dress a number it has to come in under.
Priced dress loadedSolved from build 25482629
What do you want to work out?
Price the dress, and see which cloth or decoration is carrying the bill.
Parts
The dress being priced
- 身頃Fabric 0.00Choose a patternNo cloth yet
- スカートFabric 0.00Choose a patternNo cloth yet
Decorations
Total material cost
One number for the dress, made of exactly two things.
- Fabric
- 0.000%
- Decorations
- 5.00100%
Materials only. Quality, labour and any selling price are counted elsewhere.
Where the money goes
Each cloth is one line however many parts it covers, and decorations are split by the way they are charged.
Cost by fabric
Total 0.00No cloth has been cut yet.
Cost by decoration
Total 5.00Charged per piece
Bows, jewels and brooches are bought one at a time, so the count is the price.
Charged by length
Trim, ribbon and lace are priced by the metre, so a longer seam costs more of the same decoration.
No length-priced decorations on this dress.
Cost by part of the dress
What each part of the garment carries, and how much of the bill it is.
- Decorations5.00100%
Only cloth is counted per part, because the game charges a decoration to the dress rather than to a panel. Decorations are their own row.
Cost drivers
What is making this dress expensive?
Each line is read off this dress's own cost sheet.
- 1 × インコの羽根 costs 5.005.00100%
- Decorations take 100% of the material cost5.00All the cloth together costs 0.00.100%
Preview
What would a change cost?
One change at a time, priced by the engine, with everything it moves.
Current
Currently 1 placed
5.00
After the change
Take off インコの羽根
0.00
- Fabric
- 0.000.00
- Decorations
- 5.000.00
- Fabric cut (m)
- 0.000.00
Style scores that move
Current versus previewed build
The two dresses, measured the same way. Only what the change moved is listed.
Take off インコの羽根
Fabric
0.000.00
Decorations
5.000.00
5.00 less
Material cost
5.000.00
5.00 less
Fabric cut
0.00 m0.00 m
豪華
60
−6
華やか
30
−3
ミックス
20
−2
Ways to spend less
Every row below is a real change to this dress, priced by the same engine and checked for what else it does.
Take off インコの羽根
Save 5.00Fewer placed
- 豪華 −6
- 華やか −3
- ミックス −2
Suggestions are computed from this dress. Hidden and developer-only items never appear here.
Keep going
The material cost is one answer. These are the next questions.
- What would this dress sell for?Turn this material cost into a selling price and see what the materials leave behind.Calculate sale price
- Change the dress in the builderTake this exact dress back to the bench and keep working on patterns, cloth and decorations.Open in dress builder
- Does it still pass the brief?Read the commission requirement by requirement, and see exactly which items counted and which did not.Open commission checker
- Work out how much fabric you needQuantities only, with no money involved: how much cloth each part cuts.Open fabric calculator
- Fix a failing commissionRepair a dress for a brief with the fewest possible changes.Open dress fixer
- Start from the brief insteadGive the solver a commission and let it return a complete outfit rather than a cheaper version of yours.Open commission solver
How it works
How the material cost is calculated
Three rules produce every figure on this page, and the dress builder prints the same ones.
- 1Fabric is charged on the pattern, not only the priceA part's fabric cost scales with the panel area its pattern cuts, plus a small charge per panel, and then with the price of the cloth on that part. A cheap cloth on a generous pattern can therefore cost more than a better cloth on a frugal one.
- 2A decoration is either bought or measuredA bow, jewel or brooch is charged per piece placed. A trim, ribbon or lace edge is charged by the metre of length drawn, so shortening a hem is one of the most direct ways to lower the material cost.
- 3Only materials are countedThe total is the cut cloth plus the decorations. Quality and sale price are separate answers, so nothing here should be read as profit.
- 4A budget is a ceiling, not a dress to aim at exactlyThe planner takes a commission's budget, or a figure you type, and asks the same engine for the cost of each change rather than estimating it. What it prints is the best of the single changes it measured — not a claim that no cheaper dress exists, because a trim length and a placement count can always move by one more centimetre.
Questions
Cost calculator questions
Do I have to build the dress here?
No. A dress can be loaded from a link, from a build saved on this device, or by hand. All three use the same dress format the builder writes, so a dress moves between the pages without being re-entered.
Why is a cheaper cloth sometimes only a little cheaper?
Because the price per metre is only half of the sum. What each part is charged depends on the panel area its pattern cuts as well, so a cloth at half the price on a pattern that cuts twice the area can come out at the same cost.
Why does a trim length change the cost so much?
Length-priced decorations are charged per metre of the line you draw. Doubling a hem doubles that decoration's cost, while a per-piece decoration costs the same however the dress is shaped.
Does a cheaper dress lower its quality or sale price?
This page does not answer that — material cost is only the money in the materials. Style scores are shown beside every suggested change, and quality and selling price have their own tools.
Why is my dress over the commission budget?
The budget in a brief is checked against the material cost of the whole dress, cloth and decorations together. One expensive cloth on a wide-cut pattern, or a long run of length-priced trim, can put the total over on its own. The planner names the changes that close the gap, and flags any that would break another requirement in the same brief.
How can I make a Dressmaker build cheaper?
Three levers, roughly in the order they pay: swap the cloth carrying the largest share of the bill, shorten or take off a length-priced decoration, and re-cut a part with a pattern that uses less fabric. All three are measured on your actual dress, which is how the tool can show that a cheaper cloth on a wider pattern costs more rather than less.
Can I replace a fabric without breaking a commission?
Only if the swap still satisfies every rule in the brief — fabric type, colour, style scores and the budget. With the brief switch on, each row is re-checked against the commission before it is printed, so an option that would fail the brief is marked as failing it instead of being quietly recommended.
Which part of my dress costs the most?
Both answers are in the breakdown above: cost by material, and cost by part of the garment. Cloth is charged to the part it is cut for, so the biggest line is usually the largest panel area wearing the most expensive cloth. Decorations are charged to the dress as a whole, which is why one long trim can outweigh every panel.
Related
Related tools and catalogues
The pages that answer the questions this one deliberately leaves alone.
Material cost
A dress's material cost is what its fabric and its decorations add up to. This cost calculator reads the dress you loaded — from the dress builder, a shared link, or a build saved on this device — and prices it with the same arithmetic the game uses, so the figure at the top of the page is the figure a commission is checked against. Fabric cost is not simply the price of the cloth. Each part is charged on the panel area its pattern cuts, plus a small charge per panel, multiplied by the price of the cloth worn on that part, so two cloths at the same price can cost different amounts on the same dress. One cloth cut for four parts is one purchase, which is why the breakdown groups a repeated fabric into a single line. Accessories are charged two ways: a bow, jewel or brooch is priced per piece, while a trim, ribbon or lace edge is priced by the length you lay down, so the same decoration is cheap on a short seam and expensive around a hem. Point and path decorations are therefore kept apart, and the cost drivers name the single line carrying the bill. Cheaper alternatives are measured rather than guessed: a swap is offered only after the engine has priced the whole dress again, and every option states the style, fabric and commission effects it has.
The material cost is the money in the cut pieces and the decorations, and nothing else. Quality, sale price and profit are answered on their own pages, and the cost sheet here never mixes them into this total.
The budget planner answers the question that follows the total: how do I get this under a number? A commission's own budget can be used as the ceiling, or an amount to cut can be named instead. Every option is a single change to the dress — a swapped cloth, a shorter trim, a re-cut part, one decoration fewer — priced by the same engine that printed the total and re-checked against the brief, so an option that would fail a requirement is reported as failing it rather than quietly recommended. What the list is not is a claim about the cheapest dress in the game: a trim length and a placement count are continuous, so the honest promise is that every option was measured, not that no cheaper one exists.