Using Downloadable PDF Patterns

In this lesson, we're going to learn how to get the best results from tissue patterns, how to prepare a PDF pattern, and how to transform a folded pattern piece to a single layer pattern piece. Okay, well let's get started. What I have here is an example of a pattern, the Simplicity Easy Sheet pattern right here. And these are all the pattern pieces. This will be on your pattern guide and it identifies each piece by number.

And then below it you're going to see the text that identifies the name of the piece and tells you which version that piece goes with. For instance, right here on the front, it identifies that that is for view A. So of course you'll have looked at the pattern cover and identify which view you're going to make. Take your tissue out of the pattern envelope, identify each one of those pieces, and cut them apart from the main tissue. Put aside the pieces that you aren't going to use, and then cut the pieces that you've identified for your project.

Take them to the ironing board, and on a medium to low setting, press the tissue piece. Even if your tissue piece isn't as wrinkled as this one, still press it, and I'll tell you why. Patterns have been drafted to fit together precisely. And if a piece has got a big fold in it or a wrinkle, it's going to distort the cutting line and distort the pattern piece, so that they don't fit together as precisely. Yes, you can get away with it on some pattern pieces if there was a little wobble in the tissue, but on others you cannot.

So to get the best result from your pattern tissue, is just again, on a low to medium setting, make sure that you flatten this whole piece out and get all of those really tight wrinkles out of the piece. Okay. And then you'll trim it down to the size that you need. We're gonna cover that in a few minutes. So we're all done here.

We're going to, again, remember, find all the pattern pieces that you need for that view, separate them from the rest of the tissue, and then press the tissue flat. And now you'll be ready to take it to the fabric and cut out the project that you're working on. Okay, now I'm going to show you what I promised; is how to transform a piece that's supposed to be cut right on the fold to a piece that is cut on the flat. So oftentimes in the pattern guide, the fabric is folded in half and you're cutting out either two pieces at a time or a single piece that will be cut right on the fold. And what you'll see is this little double arrow line here that says cut on fold.

That's so that when you finish cutting it out you have the full piece. But sometimes you don't want to cut it on the fold. Stripes and plaids are hard to match that way. So you want to transform this piece into a piece that is not cut on the fold. So what I've done here is I've taken just some basic tracing paper, the pattern paper that I use almost always to trace out my patterns, and I folded it in half, made a very nice sharp crease, and laid this pattern piece on the line right on the fold, weighted it down with some weights, then I took an ink pen and drew around it.

Use an ink pen for tracing and drawing patterns. At least that's what I do. I know some people would prefer to use a pencil so they can erase. But what's nice about an ink pen, a ballpoint pen glides very smoothly, and it'll make it easier for you to accomplish those curves and draw exactly the pattern piece as it is. Then after I've traced all of that out, I've of course transferred all of the notches and the dots, and after I open this up, we'll add the grain line because when you cut a pattern piece on the fold, the fold is to be on grain.

So you don't need a grain line on this pattern piece when it's on the fold. So now while it's still folded, I'm just going to cut it out, and after we get this all cut out, we're gonna transfer the markings to the other side as well. And because I used a dark ink pen, chances are it'll be very easy to see through from the other side. And I'm sure you can't see it now, but I can see through to the other side, so I can mark those. But here we have the the full pattern piece.

Now the only thing we have left to do is to take the ruler and get right on that fold, and draw your straight of the grain grain line in. And now you'll be able to have this pattern piece instead of the folded pattern piece. And it's just that simple; make sure you put all your markings, make sure you put the pattern name, the size that you used, and any other information that's on here, put it on this tissue. And I even often label them with the date and who I'm making the project for. It really helps.

Later on you think you'll remember, but two years from now, not as likely to remember it. All right, now I'd like to talk about the PDF patterns. PDF patterns are the newest thing in pattern making and they're all downloadable patterns. Sometimes they're called PDF. That's the format that they are in when you download them.

And what the PDF does is it keeps the pattern intact as far as the size and dimension of the pattern. So you know you're getting just as true a pattern with the PDF as you would as purchasing a tissue pattern. Now, what's really nice about PDFs is that they're instant gratification. I look up a pattern on the internet, I wanna make it today, I can print it out in a few moments, and then start assembling it and actually get ready and make it. And honestly, so many times when students say to me, "Oh my gosh, I have to print out all that paper and then I have to tape it all together.

I'd really rather have a tissue pattern." Well, just for example, for me it would be probably an hour and a half round trip to go to the fabric store and pick up the pattern. And of course, well, I'm probably gonna get distracted at the fabric store, so let's add another half an hour to that. And by the time I get home, I've taken up two hours of my day. In that amount of time, I could have downloaded my PDF pattern. I did not have to go to the store, I didn't get distracted, I didn't spend any money in gas.

And chances are, if the company that you're purchasing the pattern from offers tissue patterns and PDF patterns, the PDF pattern is gonna be considerably less expensive. So there's a lot of great reasons to use a PDF pattern. So I'm gonna use this one right here, which is one of my patterns. It's a child size shirt pattern. So I downloaded the pattern and the pattern guide actually, so that's downloaded as well and printed out for me.

And then what you're gonna get with most PDF patterns is a diagram of how the pieces will all go together. What you'll see here is that everything that goes on this sheet is lettered A, and then there is a number, and they're put together in sequential order. And it will actually tell you how many pieces of paper you'll need to have in your printer to print out that pattern. In this case, it gives you examples, but I think it's about 32 pages on this particular pattern. And it gives you all the sizes.

So what I will be assembling for this particular pattern is one, two, three, four, five sheets. And again, they're all lettered, so I put the As together, then I put the Bs together, and so on. The other thing that should be on a PDF pattern is some type of square. In this case, it's a three inch square. So when you print this out, print out the first page that has this on it and measure it.

Is it exactly three inch square? If it is, you're good to go to continue to print. But watch, they'll tell you in the beginning how to set your printer. There are settings in your printer that will shrink things to the size of the paper, and you don't want it to do that. You want the option that's called None.

None. Don't change anything. Print it out exactly as it has been made to be printed, and then you'll get an accurate pattern. So now we're ready to put our pattern pieces together and I wanna show you how really simple this is. So for the first sheet, I need four pieces; A1, A2, A3, and A4.

Now I have trimmed them up just a little bit where they butt together. I've taken the little bit of edge off of here and of course the edge off of here, so they'll line up easier. It's not necessary, but it's a lot easier to do it this way. Now all I have to do is line these up so that the registration marks match perfectly. And you'll need for this scotch tape dispenser that's weighted.

You can buy 'em at the office supply store really inexpensively. But you're gonna see this is a lot easier to do than if you had to keep picking up the little flimsy plastic dispenser and tearing your tape off, 'cause this'll just sit still for me while I tear off a couple of pieces of tape. And then over here we'll put in a three. Once we get these cross marks to match up beautifully, we know we're right on. You can also see by the lettering, you can see by the actual shape of the pattern piece that we're right on target.

And there we go. It's just that easy. And I already have the sleeve done. And then you can go back in later and add some more tape. What I like to do is tape the entire area within the pattern piece.

Out here, it doesn't matter because that's gonna get cut off anyway. But the long pieces that are within the pattern, it's really a good idea. It just makes it easier to handle, it's not as unwieldy. So you finish that off, and now I already have my sleeve done. And then I'll go to page B, lay those out, tape those together.

Again, do a little trimming so that they fit together. But everyone finds their own system to do this. But you see how fast that was. It really doesn't take the time that people imagined that it might. So this is a great alternative to the tissue pattern and you will save money.

For instance, on my website, if I have a PDF pattern and a tissue pattern, the PDF pattern's gonna be $5 cheaper at least. So it's a great alternative. Don't be afraid to do it. It's easier than you think. All right, let's talk about multisize patterns.

Back in the day, they came in exactly the size you needed. But now, just for convenience sake and less storage for the fabric stores and pattern companies, they put them in multisize. So for instance, in this pattern we have an 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16. So what the pattern company has done for us is create a different line design for each size cutting line. So you'll see that here on the 16, it's a straight, solid, everyday kind of line for cutting.

But when you get to the 14, it's a dash, when you get to the 12, it's a short and a long dash, and it goes on and on, depending on how many sizes there are. So you need to first identify which size you're gonna make and what does that cutting line look like. Now there are areas, for example, over here, and from here to here, where it's a straight line and there are no additional lines. That means that cutting line is for all sizes. So every size cuts that line right there.

Okay, so now that we've identified the lines, and let me just say one more thing. When you get some patterns, the lines will be different colors. So you'll know that the 12 is the green, and the 14 is the orange, and so on. So you may have colored lines too. Each pattern company, it does it their own way.

I like the colors myself, you're less likely to get off track, especially in a more complicated pattern piece than this one is. Now is the time to decide: do I want to cut it out of this original tissue, or do I want to save this tissue and trace the pattern out? This is entirely up to the seamstress who's making the project. Think, will I ever wanna make this in another size? Will I ever wanna make this for someone else?

Will I ever be a different size than I am today? Some of us vary in size from year to year. You may wanna revisit this pattern in a different size. So if that's the case, you're gonna wanna trace it out and make an additional pattern, and then this will go back in the envelope, just as it came out, without cutting it out. So one thing that some people like to use is a highlighter and they highlight the size.

So just to keep themselves on track, they might highlight say that they were gonna cut out this size 14, then they would highlight all the way around with the pink marker, or whatever color marker you like. But just to make it easier to stay on track, you don't want to cut part of the pattern out as a 14 and the other half as a 16. You know the pieces won't fit together and it'll just be a mess. One of the other reasons I like to trace the pattern out and keep it separate is there are oftentimes a lot of small pieces in the pattern: a little cuff, a collar, a facing. Those tend to disappear.

I don't know where they go, but they kind of float off in the air, and the next time I go to get the pattern out, that piece is missing. If I have traced it out, all I have to do is go back to the original pattern, find that piece in the size I need, and make a new one. So that's another good reason to not cut this pattern up, but to actually make a tracing of it. So what I'm using here is a tracing paper. It doesn't matter what kind of tracing paper you use; there are pattern papers specifically made for pattern tracing.

There is dotted paper made for pattern tracing. You'll find any number of different types and you'll pick the one that works best for you. My favorite is this one and it's doctor's examination table paper. So I'm just gonna cut off a hunk of this, and once I get this on here, the way I want it, I'm gonna put weights on here, 'cause I don't want this to shift while I'm tracing it out. And then have a ruler at hand.

And again, I'm gonna say this over and over again, and I know not everybody's gonna agree, but I use a ballpoint pen for tracing and drawing out my patterns. I actually use it for drafting patterns. I don't think pencil is as easy to see, and again, it doesn't glide along the paper. So I'm going to line this up with the original pattern and just draw this line. And I can go right past it, I don't have to be right on, because once I get to the intersection I'll know right where I'm at.

Curved lines, you're gonna have to just make your way on the curved line. And remember, and if you make a line, let's say this line is over here and it's the wrong line, just do this and then you'll know it's not the line to cut. That's what drafters do. So I'm going to just trace this out, and remember, any straight line, you can use your ruler, so if we're gonna trace out this dart right here, and remember there's markings on the dart, so look for those and mark those where they're supposed to be. All the markings have to be transferred.

And yes, this takes some time and for some people's taste, it's just too much time. They don't wanna do it, so you don't have to; just cut the pattern out. Just remember that you make sure you're cutting out the size that you know you need, 'cause you're no going back once you've cut those lines off. Label all the labeling that's on the original pattern onto your new pattern piece. And that's all you need to do.

And you can do this with your PDF patterns as well as your tissue patterns. It doesn't matter. And again, I encourage you to put the date on here, and what the project is, or who the project's for. It will serve you later if you do wanna reuse the pattern. You don't have to rely on your memory, which might not be accurate.

So that's all there is to tracing out a pattern, and you can see it's pretty easy. All right, now we're gonna cover how to get the pattern tissue back into the envelope. This has been a problem that has plagued sewers for many years, and some have even gone to extra lengths to create a new, bigger envelope, and go through a lot of extra work in order to have the tissue back into some type of reasonable order. What I see oftentimes is the pattern overstuffed and the tissue kind of hanging out, and actually the paper envelope being ripped, trying to get all that tissue back in there. And I just know that it came out, so it's gotta go back in.

And one of the things is, is that you've cut away a lot of the extra tissue when you cut your pattern out, so you've got less tissue to go back in there. But the nature of tissue is it's got volume to it. That's why it's often used for packing around things because it maintains its volume. So you have to just work with it to get it back in the envelope. Now this doesn't work with PDF patterns.

With PDF patterns, we've put those on a heavier stock of paper that's really stiff. And one of the things I've been doing lately is rolling mine onto a tube. But there's lots of different ways to fold it carefully and pack it away. But it didn't come in an envelope, so it's not a concern to get it back in the envelope. But for me, I wanna get it back in this envelope.

This gives me all the data about the pattern. It gives me all the data about the yardage and the notions and everything else, so I wanna keep this intact. So what I've done is I've taken a pattern of the envelope for you and I've laid it out here. They're cut apart, the pieces have all been cut apart, but I didn't cut on the cutting lines. But normally that would've happened.

So now take the largest pieces and stack your stack of pattern tissue with the largest pieces on the bottom and the smallest pieces on the top, and just kind of evenly distribute them on the top. Set your iron at a medium setting, and then you're gonna make your first fold. And it doesn't really matter where it is, just make a fold, everything all together. And if you'll notice when you take it out, this is the way it was put in at the pattern factory. They have a machine that folds.

And do you see how much flatter this looks already, this side to this side, and this is double thickness. So you see the pressing it just flattens it right out. And our first goal is is to get all the loose edges inside. And I don't really subscribe to any specific system, I just get it started and get it where I want. And I know this is the size I want it to fit into.

So I'll keep folding these raw edges in and just press each time. Again, I've got this on medium setting. Get the air out of there, and okay, we'll go this way. And it's flat and it's probably the right width, but it's not quite the right length. Flatten this out.

Oh not steam. Don't put steam on it. There you go, fits right into the envelope perfectly. Slides right in there, and now it'll store very nice and flat and be easy and orderly to keep in one of your drawers.