Dressmaker has hundreds of fabrics, from cotton to sequined silk. The Burlap Challenge ignores almost all of them. Burlap costs nothing in the game. The developers meant it as a mockup fabric for testing a pattern before cutting the real cloth. Players noticed that a free fabric makes a dress cheap to produce, and they built a community challenge around turning potato sacks into gowns that sell well.
Quick answer: Make three different off-the-rack dresses using only burlap fabric, decorate them with any accessories you want, then sell them from the shop window for the highest net profit you can get.
Burlap Challenge rules
The challenge is not an official game mode. Nothing in the menus tracks it, so you keep to the rules yourself. There are four.
- Build three unique off-the-rack dresses, not commissions.
- Every fabric panel on every dress is burlap. No other fabric is allowed.
- Accessories are unrestricted. Lace, trim, bows, brooches, chains, buttons, and jewels all count.
- Your score is how much money each dress makes.
Most players judge the result by net profit, which is the sale price minus what you spent on accessories. Some versions of the challenge leave a slot open for a mystery rule of your own. That is optional. Players use it to add a theme or a self-imposed restriction.
Unlocking off-the-rack dresses in Dressmaker
A fresh save cannot access the challenge immediately. Finish the first three commissions in the story to unlock off-the-rack dressmaking. Then open the sketchbook and move to the following page, where you can create dresses without a customer and put them up for sale in the shop window.
Burlap is available from the start of the game and costs nothing, so you never have to buy fabric for the challenge.
How burlap dresses make money
An off-the-rack dress’s sale price comes from four known parts. Burlap does little for the first one. The challenge comes down to raising the other three without spending too much.
| Price component | What drives it | Effect with burlap |
|---|---|---|
| Material | Cost of the cloth used | Very low |
| Labor | Believed to track time spent | Normal |
| Quality multiplier | Cutting and sewing accuracy | Up to 150% |
| Prestige multiplier | Your shop’s rank | Up to 150% |
Accessories add value to the dress. They also add cost, because everything you pin on counts toward the dress’s total cost. Burlap brings the fabric cost close to zero, so almost every coin above your accessory bill is profit. A cheap base with high quality and a good rank gives the best margin. An expensive fabric on its own does not.
The pattern you pick barely affects earnings. Earnings come from how cleanly you cut and sew and from the accessories you add.
Building a Burlap Challenge dress
Repeat this process three times, once for each dress. Each dress needs a different design.
Checking your Burlap Challenge result
The sale screen shows the dress’s sell price and your net profit. That second number is your score for the dress. In one run, a burlap gown with green and gold accents sold for 3,637 coins and returned 1,493 coins of net profit. The gap between the two numbers is what the decorations cost.
Add up the net profit from all three dresses to get your challenge total. Players share their finished dresses in the official Dressmaker Discord server or tag the team on social media. The developers sometimes feature entries in their community highlights. There are no prizes, so ridiculous designs are welcome.
