Printing out sewing patterns at home or at a printshop

printout

pdf

STEP 1. CHOOSE THE RIGHT FORMAT.

We currently offer 19 printing formats in PDF, plus the DXF format. Every order will also contain an SVG file that can be imported into the software of your preference.

Sewist CAD offers sewing patterns that can be printed at home or in copy centers.

- Home printers in the USA and Canada usually use Letter format. In other countries A4 format is more common. If in doubt, please choose the universal A4/Letter format as shown in the screenshot below.

- If you are going to print out the file at a copy center, make sure to contact them first and double check the format that they accept.

Most copy centers will be happy to work with bigger ANSI formats (e.g. A0) or ARCH formats (e.g. ARCH D).

You can easily select a format on the pattern page:

STEP 2. PRINT OUT THE FILE.

Please use Adobe Reader software to open your PDF pattern. You can get Adobe Reader free of charge at this link - https://get.adobe.com/reader/.

Your customised sewing pattern will arrive as a multi page PDF file, with the first page showing the layout of the pieces on the other pages. While the program tries hard to place them so that there are as few spare pages as possible, most likely some of the pages will still remain unoccupied. You may choose not to print them at all and go for the "filled" pages only. When printing the pattern, set the zoom option to "No scale", or "100% scale", depending on the printer model. It is a good idea to print out the first page first and check if the square sides will equal 10 cm. The bottom edge of the square also has an inch scale. If they come out smaller or bigger, you need to play with the zoom settings to achieve the exact measurements.

There will be frames around the actual page area - this is fine. Please pay attention to the positioning of the file contents on page in case you selected universal A4/Letter format. This format contains the printable area only and the margins are added by the printer. You may need to recenter the printable area in case it gets shifted towards left upper corner. This can be done in advanced settings of the printer you use.

STEP 3. LAY OUT THE SHEETS IN THE CORRECT ORDER.

You will also receive a separate readme file with the layout of the pattern pages. The file contains a numbered chart which shows the order in which the pages should be placed. The chart also shows the draft lines of the pattern pieces that would be drawn on each page.

Trim top and/or right margin of the pages where you see the scissors symbols. In the center of each page, the number of row and column is printed, separated by / sign. Construct layout pages according to these marks (for example, page marked 2/3 is in the second row and in the third column).

STEP 4. PIN THE SHEETS TOGETHER.

It is a good idea to use either a cork sheet or a foam plastic sheet. Put the cork or foam sheet on a solid surface, e.g. a table, and place the sheets to be pinned on it. Match together the corners of the frames on the pattern pages and run a pin through both of the corners, so that the pattern sheets stay laying on the surface rather than hanging on a pin.