I cant for the life of me remember where I saw it..but I know there is a quick way(read:easy for a non-tech savy person to understand) of pinning a piece of dynamic cloth so it will hand from a specific point or object instead of sliding off it or down it.

HOW do I do this?

constrained group

Yup, that's it.
In the cloth room, click the grouping tool - ( you may want to "hide other objects" to make it easier to see what you're doing )  Where it says "default group"  open the dropdown window and choose "constrained group" then select the points you want to stay put. Close the grouping window and continue with the simulation process.

Be aware it can look literally "pinned", like a thumbtack is stuck in the cloth, depending on how it shakes out.  Also if you select a lot of vertices, it can look like there is a patch of glue holding the cloth in place, as the surrounding cloth stretches around the constrained group.

Parent the object to the figures hip....this will allow the figure to move and the object to follow....

ohh ok. so I just have to do the contrain thing say to a point on the shoulder for it to stay put there and drape over her arm etc?

Constrained is one way but it depends what you are trying to achieve, if it is a piece of cloth draped over an arm then you can take car with the posing so that it traps between arm and body, set it to collide with the forearm and it will drape nicely down whilst hanging off the arm.

Depends exactly what you are trying to achieve really ;o)

Quote - Parent the object to the figures hip....this will allow the figure to move and the object to follow....

That isn't quite true, because the cloth will still follow whatever it collides with in a "realistic" way.   Say you have a dress on a character in frame 1,  and in frame 30, you have moved the character forward 10 feet.  The simulation is set to have the dress collide with all body parts of the figure.  Without parenting, if the dress fits character , the dress will "blow in the wind" in a fairly realistic way as the character moves forward.  I don't really see any benefit in leaving a cloth item parented to a figure, except maybe just to set the scene up at frame 1 and then un-parent it.  It's OK if the dress does not follow the character around before running the simulation, that's the point of running the dynamic cloth sim.

@pjz99
I see what you are saying...I'll give it a try. I found that objects seemed to fall to the floor if I didn't parent them first....

If that's happening, then something is wrong with the simulation e.g. some part of the body is not colliding with the cloth properly.  This has been a problem (a very bad problem!) in Poser 7 un-patched, but P7 SR1 has worked pretty well in that area.

Quote - That isn't quite true, because the cloth will still follow whatever it collides with in a "realistic" way.   Say you have a dress on a character in frame 1,  and in frame 30, you have moved the character forward 10 feet.  The simulation is set to have the dress collide with all body parts of the figure.  Without parenting, if the dress fits character , the dress will "blow in the wind" in a fairly realistic way as the character moves forward. 

I don't really see any benefit in leaving a cloth item parented to a figure, except maybe just to set the scene up at frame 1 and then un-parent it.  It's OK if the dress does not follow the character around before running the simulation, that's the point of running the dynamic cloth sim.

OTOH, I've had better success --especially with tight-fitting dynamic clothing-- when keeping the clothing prop parented to the hip so for each given animation frame, the parented cloth starts in a position which is closer to the figure and the relevant collision body parts.  That is, I've had animations fail when the figure or body part moves too far relative to the current position of the dynamic cloth.  Great for those times you want a superhero to literally run out of their civvies, but...

if I have a figure leap forward, I've found I'm less likely to have the character burst out of their clothes (or some part of it, like a sleeve) if the clothes are parented so they leap forward with the figure.

So my view is that parenting is the better default since I don't see any reason NOT to parent, though I'll concede there may be benefits I haven't noticed or appreciated.

the reason i see to not parent a cloth is when there are 2 layers.  i have never seen a cloth collide with a parented cloth, so i never parent either of them.  (i usually run 2 layers)
but if i was doing just one cloth i see no reason to not parent it...then you can move the figure around in the scene after the simulattion (just in terms of body, not specific body parts) and not lose the garment or it's simulation

Quote - the reason i see to not parent a cloth is when there are 2 layers.  i have never seen a cloth collide with a parented cloth, so i never parent either of them.  (i usually run 2 layers)
but if i was doing just one cloth i see no reason to not parent it...then you can move the figure around in the scene after the simulattion (just in terms of body, not specific body parts) and not lose the garment or it's simulation

good thought... I have run very few cloth sims where one cloth overlaps another layer of clothing, though I don't recall any problems with the few I've done even if both cloth props are parented.  I'll have to experiment more though, so thanks for the heads up.

BTW, you aren't limited to the BODY to move the figure after running the cloth sim(s).  You can move the hip too, say, if you have a dress parented to the hip.. or as a general matter in most cases you could move any part "upstream" of the body part to which the cloth prop is parented (barring moves which compromise collision results with other relevant body parts or which change the shape of relevant body part meshes, such as raising a collar).