Monday, October 12, 2009

How To make a pdf sewing pattern!






This assumes you have already drafted you pattern and want to convert it to a PDF format for others to use.

1. First I traced around my pattern, all pieces close together with no markings





2. Next I measured an A4, made it smaller (for printing), and divided up my drawing into even rectangles. (The size of my rectangles were 200 x 180 mm... they could have been bigger)




3. Next I wrote the markings within the rectangles, and put numbers at the corners to match them up again when printed out by somebody else. I also numbered each rectangle individually as well. (Ie. each page was number 1-9. Each matching corner also had another number marked 1,2, 3 or 4)
4. Then I cut these up into rectangles






5. Then I scanned each rectangle.
6. I could have left it there. Each file would have had to be converted from a jpg, to a pdf, and then merged into one file (Google these terms!) but I went and used my drawing software to trace around my hand drawn scans. (My drawing software is Illustrator. I think you can use CAD too)... then converted to pdf and merged into one file.

6 comments:

Flora said...

Your tutorial is very useful. Thanks for sharing.

Truly Myrtle said...

Thanks for this - I have some patterns I like to sell as pdf's...what about americans? don't they use Letter size? or is A4 common now too? This has had me confused!

Janney said...

I googled it and I think they are roughly the same size. Maybe just pick which ever one is smaller and fit it onto that size, then when they print it out, hopefully the printer will still print it out at the actual size and not adjust it. I'm not to sure though, I never thought of that!

Kelsey said...

Thanks for this helpful post!
I lived in France for a year, so changed the default settings on my computer to A4 paper. I forgot about this when I cam back to America and it does make a big difference! It cut off the bottom margin every time, when I accidentally printed A4 formatted pages on letter size sheets.

Unknown said...

Thank you so much for the info, one question please...you said after tracing your pattern you made your pattern pieces 200x800mm. How did you come up with that size? And what is A4? Thank you again, I have always wondered how to do this.

Janney said...

Hi Liz... 200 x 800 was just a size I picked which was smaller than A4 paper. And A4 is standard paper size over here in New Zealand.. I think in the US they us something called Letter size... so just chose a measurement which fits inside that if that is what you chose. :)