Preserving Your Commercial Patterns

Greetings Creative People,

Happy New Year! I hope your New Year is filled with peace, love, and joy!

One of my plans for this blog this year is to, not only bring you more consistent postings, but to start doing giveaways! So, stay tuned, because more information will be coming soon!

Now, on to this post! First, the information I am about to share with you, is not my idea, I learned this from a gentleman on YouTube...I am so sorry that I don't remember his name or the name of the video, but if you come across his video in a search on YouTube, please share this post with him because I have been doing this to my patterns since I seen his video and I can't thank him enough!!

Whenever I work with commercial patterns to make something for myself or someone else...a feeling of anguish comes over me because that would be the only time I could use that pattern for that particular size. I hated to cut into my patterns for a couple of reasons. You are limited to size you cut or smaller if its a multi-sized pattern. or your pattern has been discontinued because it been in your stash for years and you finally decided to make it, nevertheless, these issues are no longer a concern for me. Since, I seen that gentleman's YouTube video, I have been copying my patterns and I am able to preserve my commercial patterns for as long as I need them. I took some pictures to take you through the process with me as to how I do this, let's begin:

Tools you will need:

• Plastic sheeting
• Sharpie Marker
• Scissors (for cutting paper)
• Ruler (optional)
• Straight pins or pattern weights
• Commercial Pattern (your choice)
• Fabric (your choice)

In this example, I am making a corset, using Butterick B5935, View C. 

I have this type of clear plastic sheeting or drop cloth, that I purchased from Family Dollar for $5.00. The package says it 'extra strong', it's 10ft x 20ft 2mil thick and it total is 200 sq ft. This type works well for me, I am sure you could purchase clear plastic sheeting at any of your local hardware stores of heavier weight and/or more on the roll. 

After getting all my supplies together, I opened my pattern to determine what pattern pieces I needed to trace, to make view C. I placed the plastic over the tissue paper and traced everything I would need for the construction process of the garment. Be sure to follow the size line that you chose, trace notches for the chosen size, dots. darts, grain-lines, waistline markings, and write the number of the pattern. You can write the pattern company and pattern number, that's completely up to you, I usually don't, however, I do save the plastic pattern for future use, so that might be a good identifier. 

While tracing all the pattern pieces, I kept the plastic at a full sheet to avoid the "trace then cut" method, I cut the patterns out all at once using my scissors that is used for cutting paper. Once all the pieces where cut out, I then laid the patterns on my fabric as I normally would and cut all the pattern pieces out. I hope you can tell in the photos, the steps I took to complete this process. 

Tissue Pattern before tracing the pattern piece

Tissue Pattern with the plastic on top

I have a few tips that I think you should not do, as you probably can tell in the photos, I already did; please learn from my mistakes ☺.

Avoid using straight pins with the plastic...the pinning process took too long considering I poked myself several times trying to get the pin through the plastic, you may have a tougher time if your plastic is thicker than '2mil' like mine. If at all possible, use pattern weights or cans of food from your pantry (as weights) to prevent the plastic from moving as you are tracing.

Second, use a real Sharpie (brand) permanent marker! The marker I used was purchased from the dollar store and most of the information rubbed off on my hands and table during the handling process; I can't tell if it rubbed on the fabric. I never had that happen considering I have used Sharpies in the past without any rub-out!

And finally, if you are getting older and your hands are shaking more than usual, then use a ruler to trace your lines and grain-lines; just about all of my lines are super wonky! Ugh! But, I think my cuts are straight so I am going to keep it moving...in the future, I will take my time and use a ruler.

.Once you have your pieces copied, you can move on as you usually would. I really love using this process as I still have a lot of my patterns that are completely in tack. If you have any questions or comments, or I left something out, please feel free to leave me a comment below! 

Happy Sewing! Until next time!