Sewing Patterns 101: Learn to Read Sewing Patterns

1. Class Introduction: welcome the sewing patterns. 101 Learn to read sewing patterns. My name is Arianna Bauer, and I am a fashion designer in textile artists, and I've been sewing since I was six years old. In this class, I will teach you how to read nearly any kind of sewing pattern. While reading sewing patterns might sound easy at first, they can actually be pretty confusing. So the types of sewing patterns who will learn about in this course our modern sewing patterns printed on paper like the ones who would find it? Joann's pdf sewing patterns that you print out on your printer at home. Vintage patterns that you would buy on places like eBay Or you could find it garage sales and patterns from books. I'm gonna show you some great places. You confined sewing patterns, both in person and on the Web. I'm also going to give you some great tips on how to store sewing patterns For our final project, you will select a sewing pattern and complete a worksheet that worksheets going to get you ready to go shopping for your very first or your very next sewing project. So just click and world to get started, and I will see you in the next lesson. 2. Finding and Buying Sewing Patterns: So today we're gonna talk about sewing patterns on where to find them and, ah, the major brands that are out there so that you can recognize things when you do go to the store or you shop online. So the major brands out there are McCall's butyric quick, so simplicity and invoke. These have been around for a pretty long time. Some of these have been around for a very long time now. These patterns can be sometimes very, very easy to manage and sometimes can be very annoying there. Our little idiosyncratic sees with each of these kind of pattern brands, and we're gonna talk a little bit about those. So the McCall's brand you're gonna find is usually pretty straightforward. They generally tend to fit a little big. Now, when we go over the sizing, you're going to see those numbers are not gonna be anything that you line up to a normal clothing store. Do not be afraid of the large number sizes. The they don't work at all. They work in a way that sewing patterns worked from the 19 fifties. Sewing patterns in vintage were actually typically single size. So are multi patterns. Today are still kind of laying on that old concept. You also have simplicity very much the same thing with the simplicity patterns. They're gonna be very, um, broad in their levels. They're usually not super advanced sewing levels. Then we have our quick So I person a big fan of quick. So from thes pattern companies that are sort of the what they call you'll see on sewing blog's the reference of the Big Four pattern companies. These are the ones they're talking about these air, the sort of big players in the market. But quick, so has a lot of activewear. They have a lot of, um, sort of easy to make clothing, and they tend to generally fit a little better. Sort of out of the box, you could say than some of the other patterns that we're going to talk about. Um, probably more so than the McCall's in the simplicity. They're gonna be pretty straightforward pieces and and I do tend to like the quick so brands, um, the next up we're going to go to the vote patterns. Vogue patterns are going to be very, um, inviting to, so you're going to see very beautiful designer labels, you're going to see a lot of unique and interesting stuff. Vogue patterns are notorious for having very poor directions. You're gonna be prepared when you so vogue pattern to be looking up things in other places . I don't want to scare you away from them, but they're generally not beginners. Now there is a group called Very Easy Vogue that when you go through in the pattern books in the back of the store, you're gonna find the very easy vogue and those air good place to start from. But when you want to dio really amazing stuff and you know you're you're not designing it yourself. You do have really great collections like this tonic carrying, and you are going to get those designer brands. And when we get to the vintage here to see the vintage Vogue have even more designer work in them. Now my actual number one most favorite from the Big Four pattern companies, actually a German company. And it's called Berta the bird. A sewing patterns they have to Siri's. They have the Birdie young, which is a brand is aimed at they call it more juniors. I actually just think it is more fashionable and there is standard Burda. What I love about Burda is they're sizing the bird is sizing is developed for someone. Um, with my body's hype, I have a bit of an hourglass shape. So I do tend to like things that do have a good variation. They do not nip the waist so small, like the simplicity and some of the other ones where you're having to do at least a basic alteration on waist size. If you're like me and you have a tummy or you've had babies, I do have a lot of pros on the bird. I also generally dude like their directions. So the big four pattern companies, you can find a lot of those online. Just search them by name. You're gonna pull up. And in the resource is I do have a number of websites where you can buy these now Next group that we're going to talk about are some indie patterns. Now, you know you heard of any music. This is Indy sewing patterns. Thes are regular. People who just decide to work in have decided to build and produce very professional, very high quality patterns. Some of my favorite indie sewing companies are Megan Nielsen blanks like Grain Line studios . See Kate? So So Caroline Name clothing. Honestly, I love them all. They all have very different kinds of elements, some of them very venjah, Gee style, some of them a very sort of bohemian chic style that you're going to see very trendy today . Those patterns were going to get as PDS, where you're gonna print them on your printer, and we're going to go over that in later chapters. But some of them a few of them you can actually get as printed paper patterns. Other places you can buy patterns are bookstores, Barnes and nobles. Amazon. Of course, you can buy just about anything on Amazon. A. Do have a word of note on buying sewing patterns on Amazon. They can be very overpriced. So when you are looking, double check your pricing by vintage patterns. Is a little bit more of it experience. You'll find vintage sewing patterns. Ah, great go to is, of course, eBay. You'll find auctions with what I like to call mystery boxes where you know, somebody's cleaning out their great aunts closet, and she had a big box patterns, and they have no idea what's in them. I have a tendency to pull the trigger on those a bit more often than I probably should, because I just love to collect sewing patterns. If you are looking for specific patterns, you do find something you know on Pinterest or on the Web. EBay's another really good place to look. But do beware some of the vintage vogue patterns, really, the vintage Pretoria designs. They're a bit difficult to get a hold of. There's Still they're not impossible, but they do cost what I like to call Rio money. So anybody who's been online knows that if you Google free, enter your item here, you can find free stuff on the Web will. You can also find free sewing patterns on the Web. All free sewing dot com is a really great resource. They're site can be alleviated, obnoxious to navigate, so you do have toe deal with that. To get the free patterns, their vintage patterns, you can usually find some really interesting finds in the free arena, and you'll find that a lot of the pattern makers do. You have ah limited set of free patterns so that you can try them and see how you like them . The one thing that I really love about the indie pattern makers is their support and their directions. You are going to get so much more detail and so much better directions with the indie pattern makers than you're going to get with the sort of traditional paper printed patterns that you would buy. Joann's, the people who designed these patterns. They work very hard to make sure that you are successful. There's blog's available. There are so informs available. There's a bunch of groups online, so you can really get Ah ah, whole lot of help. A lot of times will even have so along on their block. Another sewing pattern manufacturer that I really do enjoy is J. Lee Patterns. They are a Canadian company, and they have PdF downloadable patterns as well as paper printed patterns for a whole range of activewear and dance, where these are patterns that are gonna be really hard to find somewhere else. They're really unique, and they're very current in modern designs. So if you have a dancer in your life, if you have a gymnast in your life, Or if you just absolutely love making activewear or you want to get in the making active where I do suggest to check out their site. Some of my favorite books are Gertie, so serious that you confined at Barnes and Nobles and Amazon. I actually do have a pretty extensive list of books that you will find in the resource is as well as a whole lot of websites. Other places online to find sewing patterns are like, etc. Etc dot com, If you haven't used it, is a great marketplace. We're finding all sorts of interesting handmade and, um, one of a kind items. But there is great ways to find sewing patterns on their. So depending on what kind of sewing pattern you're looking for, you'll find some really neat sites. And my favorites for vintage is a very unique cycle, mrs to Pew and sparkle baby patterns. So now that we know how to find them by sewing patterns, let's move on to the next lesson. 3. Reading the Front and Back - Part 1: Okay, so let's dig into showing patterns. So, depending on which brand of sewing pattern that you're looking at, whether it's a pdf pattern or a printed pattern, you're gonna find some certain key information that we need to look at this just on the outside of the envelope or when you're on a website. It's going to be in the description of your sewing pattern. You're gonna need to know the pattern itself. What is the sewing pattern for? So in this quick, so pattern week have two pictures on the front, the two pictures on the front are considered. Our views were also going to have some letters on those pictures. Those letters indicate which clothing item in the line work we're gonna be referencing for when we went to so it to find the pattern pieces, you're also going to find a pattern name or a pattern number with the big pattern cos it's going to be a number with your indie patterns in your pdf patterns, it's usually going to be a name. They also oftentimes contain a number, and those numbers are usually going to be kind of things like for one 81 in the case of this pattern, you'll also find possibly ah, sizing information. So in this particular quick so pattern we see, this is extra small, small, medium, large and extra large. If there is not my size on the front of this envelope, or I find out that there's not my size, then I'll have to go back to the store and find a different sides. Some patterns contain the full range of sizes and one envelope, while other patterns contain a much more limited set of sizes. And when we look at some other of these envelopes were going to go further now on the back in a little the back now and the flap. So in this quick so pattern, the flap is blank. So we're gonna ignore the flap here. Then on the back, we're going to see the sewing pattern number again and its description here and it's size. So we're going to see some information that's just going to describe the sewing pattern itself and what it looks like here we have the pull over top into. Langston is just going to say basically what the picture is but inwards. Then we have the fabrics So in this case, where they're saying that the fabrics here are designed for two way stretch nits with 75% stretch and the greatest dear stretch on lengthwise brain. So when we work into sewing patterns further, especially once we go into stretch showing patterns, we're gonna find that we need to have different kinds of nets. So what this is telling you here in this fabric areas what it's suitable for if you select a fabric that is not the kind of fabric that they have, um, given as a suggestion, there's a possibility that the fact that it will not work, as it is described here many times it will. For instance, if you take a four way stretch in it and you work this, you really shouldn't have any problems because this is a pair of shorts and this is a shirt , so it's not gonna have too much weight to carry on it for the four way stretch. But if we were to using non stretch fabric in this case, we would not be able to probably sit down in this garment or breathe very well because thes air, designed to have a certain amount of stretch. Now what we're gonna do here is we're actually gonna look at this pink box here that's on the side of this envelope that is actually going to tell you and give you your fabric percentage. So you do want to test and see if your fabric stretches as much as what shows here and at. We will go over stretch fabrics and stretch patterns in another video because there is a whole lot to learn about those in and of themselves. So it's going to give you that A. B needs those two way stretch minutes and C. D is designed for lightweight woven fabrics. Now we could probably easily get away with doing both the same to a stretch in it for both of these. But again, this is where you're making a decision as the designer, you know, but you have to accommodate for your choices in fabric. So the next is the type that we're going to go into the suggested fabrics. For instance, they're going to suggest for a and B cotton like written icon like nylon, Lycra and swimwear fabrics of them for sea View C and D. We have the cotton blends the poplin, the denim, the light and then we have a lining. Now, um, you want to check and see? You know, if you're going to do a lining now, you may choose not to do aligning in some patterns. Um, you kind of need the lighting, because if you don't, you'll need a facing. We'll talk about linings and facings in another video. Um, or you may choose to just follow along with the directions. You know, in the very beginning, I'm a big fan of always start with directions. You need to know the rules to break the rules. So we're going to follow the directions pretty close on on these patterns to see what it is they intend for us to do. So after we figure out the fabric that we need to know that we're gonna look at the body measurements now, what they're giving you here are the body measurements that should fit the sizes air, not the finished measurements of the garment. These are your body measurements. So, for instance, here in the size medium, the bust is from 37 to 38 a half inches. This will fit a bus that big. It will fit a waste on 27 a half to 29 and the hip from 38 a half to 40 now, because a lot of patterns airship to both Europe, Canada and the United States that there is also metric measurements on here. So if you are a person that prefers metric measurements, you're lucky on this pattern because it's actually here. You see that on the Burda patterns because Berta is a German company, so they always keep the metric measurements. You're not gonna find that in every single sewing pattern here in the US, so then we have the back waist length. Who is going to tell you how long this government is from the back of the neck coming down onto the waste? So then there are also telling you some additional materials that might need to be required in that material required section. So if you have a fabric with a nap, a one way designer shading, you might need extra. Now you're actually going to see this line printed on pretty much every single a sewing pattern you're ever going to see, and if it's not printed it's implied. So Knapp is in things like velvet of the lore or for it's sort of the direction so that if you've ever looked at velvet, when you rub it down one way and you rub it up the other way, you're going to see a difference in shine. Now, if you cut your pattern pieces sort of and you in the wrong way, you're gonna end up with discombobulated sort of shine effect. You can see that in certain saddens. You can see that, um, in corduroys sometimes, so you have to pay attention to the direction of your pieces. Now, when you have prints and you want a lineup, prints are definitely gonna need extra fabric. And depending on the scale, the larger the scale of your printing, the more fabric you need for lining it up unless you choose to ignore alignment, which isn't acceptable design choice. You're the designer, they're So now we're going to come down, and we're gonna find the size that we selected earlier that medium. We're going to see how much fabric we actually mean. So fabric comes in many different wits. Most patterns are going to give you instructions for something in the 50 to 60 ish range wigs and then the 45 inch wits. Now, fabric can come much narrower, but typically in the US it does not. When you get fabric from overseas coming from India and China, the higher in silks, you're going to see a lot more narrow fabric. They use narrower looms. But here in the U. S, you can even get, especially with nits, you're gonna find 60 inches wide even of 72 inches wide. And that's great. You get great value in your yardage. So here we're gonna look and see our medium size that we were looking at has. If we're making top A, we'd need 3/4 of a yard of fabric. If we're making top be we need one yard of fabric on DSO on and we go through. So then we get down to the fabric. 45 inch lay up so they don't give you the 45 inch layout for the top. They don't always give you all the fabric layouts, which you'd have to expect is that you're using more yardage because it's narrower. So you have to make an estimate. Honestly, you can even pull out the pattern pieces, and we can get a rough estimate. I'll usually order double on 45 inch fabric, Um, plus a wee bit more. I always like to have extra, because once it's cut, you never know what's gonna happen. And having an extra to re cut one or two pieces is just smart down at the bottom. Here we see the notions categories. So what? Our notions notions are all those little extra bits and bobbles that you need when you are showing their your thread that they are your zippers. Buttons elastic. So sewing patterns are going to give you that kind of information. Now for A and B, it says we need 3/4 of a yard of elastic. I definitely advised buying things like elastic way more than you need just because it's great to have on hand. And if you are going to be regularly sewing, having a little stock of notions is a very good idea. So then they give you, you know, for C and D. We have the two and 3/8 yard of elastic, and then we're also going to have some courting, and if you look back on the picture, you can see what that courting is. Four. That's for that drawstring there. Um, and then for D, we have some bias tape. It is used for edging. So we'll look later on on how to work with that. 4. Reading the Front and Back - Part 2: phenomena pull up another sewing pattern that is a little bit more advanced, a little more complicated to look at. The pattern we're going to be looking at is a Vogue Donna Karen designer pattern. We're going to go through this throughout the video. Siri's here because the vogue patterns are the most difficult to read. So we find on the front we have only one view in this case. It is a very complex sort of origami. Look on this patterns. Um, so we're gonna look on the side here and we see that it is a V 1361 That's its name or number. And then there's also a marking here that this is pattern sizes 12 14 16 18 20. So when I'm at the fabric store, I need to pay attention to that. Uh, so I'm looking here, and how do I know what size I need? Well, on many of the patterns, especially the ones of the fabric store, you're going to find it on the flat. The flaps usually contain information. Unlike the quick so that we saw over there. These flaps contain a whole lot of information. Our sizes air gonna be up there, so we're going to see a size 12 has a 34 inch bust in the 26 a half inch waist in a 36 and chip. Now that's probably aligning to something more of a size to the best way. That I tend to think of these patterns is to take off that first number and kind of look back through those patterns and you'll get something closer to what your clothing size is at a store now, like a set, don't be concerned about the numbers on these sizing. These are arbitrarily selected numbers. They follow some very old practices dating way back 19 forties, 19 fifties. So just don't be worried about the pattern size just picked what matches your measurements You'll finds and wonderful names on the Internet that when I make it, it's whatever size I say it is. That's what we're going for. Here you are making clothes that fits you, and you're gonna look amazing in them because they fit you. So in this mode, Cattle gonna open up the flap and then we see we have the V 1361 and right up there on the front here, you're going to see advance. So here we're gonna look, we see the description, and then we see the combinations of the pattern numbers so that a X five that's one envelope that had those sides, the smaller sizes and the larger sizes in the D five. If you find patterns that are not in your size, there is ways to expand the pattern size. It's called grading. We're gonna look at our size here, and we're going to see that the dress and years we're gonna go with the 16. We'll look at needs to three yards at 60 inches. So when you see those numbers, like 60 or 45 or 50 those air those fabric wits. So you're also going to need some usable interfacing and some lining. Now here they don't give you narrower fabric quits. It may be because the pattern pieces air are sort of large and don't fit. It might just be that they've decided not to give them to you, which is another thing that makes these challenge these patterns a bit more challenging. This requires some two way stretch knit and tree cone lining. Also here with notions we're gonna need some shoulder pads now. Threat is never going to be mentioned on notions Envelopes. It is something that you just sort of have to remember to get. Never get the cheapest threat. Never, never, never get the cheapest threat will work so hard and then regret your decision when the threat is breaking and going through your machine. So just know you get what you pay for. My preferential thread brands are Guterman. Now, we're gonna take a look at this vintage vogue pattern here for this nightgown so you'll find a number up at the top when we've got that there. And it looks like we do have a couple of views here. And then let's look at the flap. Now, At this point, vote had not started putting Theo information on the flap yet. So we're just going to gently put that back here. Then we're going to see here. There's 10 pieces in the pattern cut in size, small, medium or large. But this is actually the medium that was purchased here. So then we're going to see the yardage it's going to give us for a bus size. Now it's only looking at the bus size because, honestly, this has no waste. It's just a really big open garment. So you would really only worry about the bus. So since we have the medium, we're gonna look at the medium on the back. The medium is a 32 to 34 inches on the bus, and then they have now some very unusual Pavlik sizes here. So we have 39 inches and 54 inches. So this tells you a lot about how manufacturing and looms have changed over the course of time. So here we're 1950 four on this pattern, and we're looking at 39 inch very unusual yardage sizes compared to what we would see in a modern sewing store. So we need than some bow and covering for the court. We have the contrast ing yolk, so it's just going to continue to go back through very similar to what we were doing with our other patterns. Now the suitable fabrics air down there below. This is one of those patterns that you could really kind of play with it, way beyond what the suitable fabrics list is here. And that is the vintage pattern. So for pdf patterns, you're gonna find they don't have a pattern envelope. So the one thing I like to do is I like to make a pattern envelope. So what I'll usually do is go to the instruction sheet. And there is almost actually, there's always a title, a front page on there and then a page that has the sizing information. So what I will do is something like this where I've taped on to a, um, larger size envelope from Office Depot's by a big box of them. And then I put my print and patterns in them or my copy and patterns and we're going to see and this is, ah, one of the storage tips that I'm going to talk about and then on the back we're gonna put the sizing sheet. So in this pattern, I haven't cut or assembled this pattern. This is gonna be one that we're working on. This is a Megan Nielsen pattern. Almost all pdf sewing patterns come with two files. One is the actual pattern itself. The other one is the instructions. So I print the instructions separately. I like to save paper, so I printed in front and back, and then within the instructions, you'll have to look for the same key information. So we've got the name. This one has a name, not a number. This is the brier, and as we go through the sewing pattern itself, we will find the body measurements on this before you start with size and the yardage you're also going to find in the Megan Nielsen pattern, some extremely detailed information on what you need to shop for and how you should assemble this and prepare for this pattern. Pdf patterns I do think are actually rather nicer for them the other patterns you'll find in the store. 5. Unpacking The Envelope: in this section. We're gonna unpack some envelopes and see what's inside of the patterns. So the 1st 1 we're going to start with is this quick so that we went over so inside of the pattern envelope, we're just gonna go ahead and take out. We have two pieces. We have the tissue paper, which is going to have the actual pattern pieces on it. And we have the instruction sheet. So let's check a few of our other ones and see what else we can come up with. So we're gonna check this bird a young pattern. This was another one we had talked about. Same thing inside here. We're going to have the paper and this issue patterns. Now, this is pretty much going to be the case for all of your patterns. So let's look at one of these patterns in closer detail. So let's take a deeper look at the quick so pattern that we unpacked just a few minutes ago . So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take the envelope and the tissue paper, and I'm just gonna put those off to the side. I'm not gonna work with those first My grandfather taught me something when I was very young. He said always read the instructions before you start anything. I used to not believe him, but I definitely believe him now. So we're going to start with the instructions, so they're gonna be pretty tightly wrapped up. There could be multiple sheets. And while we're doing these, one of the things that's gonna happen is we're going to see that they're in multiple languages from time to time, and each of them are on different paper. Now, this quick so is actually a very nice paper. Should be very easy to read. So here's one page. Now, There was two pages in here, so we're gonna go ahead and look at the second page and see what's on here. So this is page two. So I'm just gonna ladies one on top of each other, and we are going to get started 6. The Instructions Sheet: to here. We're looking at the pattern instructions for the quick. So for 181 so very quickly. Here we see the front views in the back views of the Leinart of the garments that are available in this pattern. So those are the same things that we saw on the outside of the pattern envelopes here. Now we're going to see the actual lay out of which pattern pieces are included in this pattern, you're gonna see the names of the pieces along with numbers. Those numbers correspond to these numbers over here here, you're also going to find which pattern pieces you need to do the different views of the pattern. For instance, view A and B will require pattern pieces one through eight. So this will give you a good idea of which pieces you need. Now, we're gonna look and see this segment here is going to tell us a little bit of instructions about how to actually use the powder in these air. Good to take a note on and to read on your own. When you are working with your pattern here, we're going to see some cutting instructions and tips. They're going to tell you some pretty common things. The looking for your grain, looking for your layouts to be in the right direction, waiting down your fabrics with pins or weights. So pretty standard sewing information over here. So here we're going to look at the layout of how we're going to place the pattern pieces on toothy actual fabric itself. So if we look up at the legend here, we're going to see some information on the coloration for where? The right side of the fabric, wrong side of the fabric printed side pattern up the printed side of the pattern down and the star would indicate special instructions. Every single pattern is gonna have some sort of legend for how they intend to use their layout, their layout grid. Here, not all of them will be in color. And sometimes the ones that are not in color are a little hard to see, which we're gonna see when we move forwards. So then, if we take a look here at the actual layout itself, this is for top A for top, be in the contrast for A and B. So here we're going to see some pink sitting on to that white there. That means we're going to place our fabric with the right sides together. That's what that little grey thing indicates. So you're going to be looking at the wrong side of the fabric when it is folded in half and the pink side up here. Which means this is three printed side of the pattern facing up, and here you're going to find some words, is the fold here and the fold here. So this fabric is going to actually be folded this way and then a smaller one that way, and we'll look into that a little bit more in detail later. You'll also see notes here on the salvage, the salvages the edge of the fabric where it was woven, where it came off the loom that what the salvage of the fabric will have a different look to it than the other parts of the family. So on the side here will say, this one says, single layer. You want to take a look for special instructions like that so that you can take note. The's single layer pieces are cut this way, usually because there's only one of an item necessary. So if we look in detail, we can see the same situation is going on over here and for the brawl. We're gonna look and finally lay out here below. We see the layout for the shorts and the same thing you're going to see with the pattern pieces up in the pattern pieces down. Now, this pattern does something that you want to probably take a note of. These pieces are being cut twice in a single layer of fabric, so one is right side up. One is right side down. Brigid side up, printed side down. Now what I usually do on these type of patterns where I know I'm going to be working in a single layer is I make copies of the pieces where I can then lay them all out at one time. So if you look down here, we also have This is the 60 inches for the shorts. This was for the 45 inches, So this had to be worked a little differently to save fabric and for short t okay. And for short D, we have this very long, um, layout sheet. So some notes on layouts you don't have to use the layout provided in the pattern. If you don't use the layout, sometimes use more fabric. Honestly, sometimes I find that if I don't use the layout, I use less fabric because a lot of times I come in single layers because you don't have is mitt shifting and you can get more pieces out of your same fabric length, and then you would get if you cut in a double layer. So now we get these sewing procedures, which are basically the instructions here. So it's going to talk about when you're using your woven fabric, how to manager edges that is going to go on with the various instruction sets within the pattern. So this was the instructions sheet for the quick. So So let's put away this sheet and let's look at another pattern. So we're gonna take a look at this bird a young pattern. So again, this one has several views. This one is marked isn't easy. So I'm gonna go ahead and take out the pieces of the pattern here, so we have the instructions and the tissue paper, so I'm gonna go ahead and move the tissue paper and the envelope off to the side and we're gonna unbox these instructions here, so they are very tightly folded. Open these up. And while I'm opening these up, you'll be able to see that there is more than one language on these pattern pieces to here . We're looking at the bird is style sewing pattern that we just pulled out of the envelope here. So just like with the other pattern, we're going to see the line, aren't here, but notice immediately. We see this one is black and white versus color on the other envelope. So for this bird is style young pattern, we're going to see that the key here has a little bit of difference than the other one. We have the right side, the wrong side of the fabric, but it also includes interfacing, lining and batting. Some of these may be included in keys, even when they're not used in the pattern. So you dish inning Teoh, take note of what you're looking at because what might be light and dark here in one pattern might be a completely different thing in another. So we just need to take a look and see what we half. So as we move down the instruction sheet. We're gonna find some pictures here. These pictures are going to tell us about some different special instructions we need to use. And Berta is kind of unique and how they show there's Which is why I'm taking the time to show you a bird up. So this is going to indicate a double needle. If you look here, that is to needles very closely on there. Um, number two is laying seams down over each other like that because this is, ah, a kind of an interesting design on this pattern with those straps. And here, this is how you're going to be sowing the V neck. So now we've moved over into the next column and we're going to see first of all, that there are multiple languages on this pattern sheet and it has multiple layups. Now, here are cutting. Layouts are going to be located on the pattern sheet themselves. So this is where reading very carefully is going to be helpful. But we do have still the numbering of the pattern pieces and their names here. So we have a little bit about preparing your pattern pieces very similar to what we had in the other, uh, pattern. Then we're going to have the cutting, and here it says, cutting out you're going to notice that the English to a little different here and probably not as well put together as the quick so pattern, because this is translated originally probably from German. So we have the cutting layouts. We have what fabric you're supposed to use, and then we move into the actual sewing. So this will talk a little bit about the different procedures. So here we have more pictures coming down the side, which gives us a little bit of visuals on the instructions. And we continue our instructions here in English, coming down that first college. Then we move on to the next page, where we have very similar instructions and so on. So you can see there is some similarities. And there's also some differences between the instruction set. So we're gonna put this one away, and we're gonna look at one more pattern. So here we have the Donna Karen pattern that we talked about in the earlier video. So we're going to go ahead and pull this one out of the envelope. We're gonna see what we get. We have a lot of pattern pieces, a nice, big heavy stack here and the instructions. So, just like with the others were going to go ahead and put that sheet in that envelope aside , We're gonna take a look at these instructions you can see, actually, that it's already going to include French and English instructions. Okay, so we've unfolded the instruction sheet here, and this is that Vote 1361 that Donna Karen that we saw. We still see the line, aren't here. And as you can see, we can also see the pattern pieces just like we did on the quick. So where you see all of their shapes and their numbers and all of the numbers of the pieces air down here Now this pattern doubles in French as well as English. They're going to see the French listed on the side. Now, this pattern included the body measurements of the that were on the outside of your envelope. So that's nice to have just as a reference. So we're gonna move to the fabric cutting layouts again. We have a little bit of instructions now, something we haven't talked about yet is seam allowance. So in most sewing patterns, in 90% of sewing patterns that you're gonna find in the United States five a singe is standard. If there is something other than five a cinch on these printed paper patterns like the Vogue and the Quick So and the Burda, you're going to see that print it differently. They will market. Specifically. Finding the seam allowance is very important because if you change that seam allowance, you were actually going to change the finished measurements of your garment. So we need to pay very close attention to that and make sure we check it now. Those other patterns that we saw, it didn't give it to us outright, which means we're gonna have to look a little harder to find it. And it's probably printed on tissue paper pieces themselves. So here we have our legend again, right side of the pattern. Wrong side of the pattern, right side of the fabric. Wrong side of the fabric. Notice how these kind of overlap This is confusing, but this is how they do things. So we also have, you know, the size here with stars. The nap sl is salvage. Okay, these are so these were some more markings. We're going to see onto those pattern pieces going to talk about the folding, which is nice, that they give you some folding information here as well as now. We're going to get into the layouts, So this is going to show you the layouts of the pieces. Some patterns have several different layouts that you have to do depending on contrast, pieces are lining. This is one of those. So here we're going to continue looking at those pieces and how you lay them out. And now we move into the sewing information. So from this point forwards, these are the symbols that we're looking for, the right side, the wrong side, interfacing the lining and the underlining. We will go over underlining and lining in other videos so that you can understand the difference between those a glossary of the of the stitches that they use and what they explain them as and how wide they would need to be, which is important, is also very nice that they give you that because a lot of directions don't. So then we continue on to the actual directions themselves on how to sew this pattern. So we're gonna put this one away, and then the next video, we're going to go ahead and take a look at the actual tissue paper patterns themselves. 7. The Tissue Paper Pattern: So let's go back and take a look at that quick. So tissue paper pattern that we have looked at the instructions earlier. We're gonna go ahead and unfold this tissue paper pattern. Now, these tissue paper patterns really, really hold it up. So here, we're going to see we have a lot of different shapes. Those shapes are going to equate. You are pattern pieces. So here's what I go ahead and I do next, I actually separate all of the pattern pieces from each other. You don't cut out of size. I just go ahead and get them separated. So I'm gonna go ahead and get these pieces cut apart for you, and then we're going to talk about how we're going to manage them from that point forwards . So now we're gonna go ahead and look at the actual individual pattern pieces of this pattern. So this is the number nine pattern piece from the quick. So this is the view CD front and can see the number still exists right here on the paper pattern. So we're gonna look at a few things first. First we see this Big five a cinch seam allowance allowed that means we're going to so five say 5/8 inch away from the edge every time we saw a seam. Or ahem, Now it's going to tell you this, unless stated otherwise. And down here, we can actually see There is a 3/8 inch seam allowance on this segment of the garment right here. This is that bottom edge. This is the side, and this is as mark the front seem and this is the crotch of the pant. So there's a few other lines that we want to go ahead and take a look at on this pattern, you have the dash lines here that are gonna mark the stitching line, as they say here. So those are going to be important and will need to get that transferred to our fabric. We also see this lengthen shortened line. The lengthen shorten line is going to be how we extend this crotch area bigger or smaller. So this would help us to make not only the shorts longer but longer, specifically through the crotch. We are also going to see this straight line going up and down here with this arrow. This is probably one of the most important pieces of information on any pattern piece you will ever use. It will be printed on every pattern piece use, and if it's not printed, you're gonna have to figure out where this line would actually go for yourself. So what this is is the green of the fabric, and if you haven't sown before in your new let's talk about what the green of the fabric actually is. So if we think about how a piece of fabric is woman, we have the arm that's going left and right and left and right and left and right, just like in the script. We also have your on this going up and down and up and down and up and down, just like in the script. So what we want that line to do is if this is the salvage edge which we talked about before , is the edge where the yarn is woven these air, the widths of the yarn. If we are putting our brain on this line here, we need to match it up exactly so that the wear fabric hangs the way it falls down with gravity. It's gonna fall in a way that we expect if we make the grain of the fabric kind of wonky along those lines. What we're gonna find is that fabric is gonna lay very crooked. It might twist. Um, it might stretch, so we don't want to do that. So instead, what we do is we line up that grain onto from our pattern piece onto our fabric. A few other pieces to note about this. We have these dots here. Those dots are going to indicate to us some pieces of the pattern that we need to also match up. So we want to make sure those get transferred. We also see this little triangle here. This little triangle is going to indicate a match point. This is where to different pieces of fabric You're going to get put together and we're gonna match them there, just in case. Some areas, especially on the curve, they can get stretched out. So we have an opportunity to correct and fix that whenever we use thes match points. We also see the sizing information so we know which one to cut out. So let's go ahead and look at another pattern piece from this same pattern. We are going to look at this. Number 11. So on the number 11 here, we can see a whole lot of the same information we have the view C d yoke. This is the yoke of that. This is that upper waste portion, and we see the sizing. So we see the open dots. Those open dots are a marker that we're going to need to get transferred onto the fabric again. We see that this is five a cinch seam allowance for the majority of the pattern, except for this scene here, which has a three a cinch seam allowance. So now we're going to talk a little bit about the next step we need to do with our pattern pieces, and that next step is going to be to get them to lay flat. And we're going to do that using an iron. You're gonna take your iron on its lowest heat setting, and you're gonna turn off the steam of your iron and you're just going to use a gentle heat toe iron these as flat as possible. If we do not get these pattern pieces black, What you're going to see is that you're going to have like, some scrunching, and that's going to lose size in your pattern so that piece of fabrics gonna end up just a little bit too short. Or maybe it's gonna end up misaligned, which is going to turn out bad for your garment. So we want to make sure those very nice and flat and lay very well before we actually do any sewing. So now we're gonna move on to pdf sewing patterns and see how we can assemble those and get those to the same places thes patterns here. 8. Assembling PDF Patterns: So now we're gonna go ahead and talk a little bit about pdf sewing patterns. So what I have done here is created my envelopes. I printed the title page, and then I found the page that had the pattern and sizing on it, and I went ahead and take that on the back. Now, this is just a nen vel ope that I bought from Office Depot. I buy him in a big box of them, and honestly, I bought one box and I haven't even finished him. You can get him for pretty cheap. So we're going to go ahead and see what I have in this envelope that I have printed out. So the first thing I did when I downloaded in my pattern was I printed out the instructions . So here are the instruction set, and we saw those a little bit before. Now we're going to see the same thing we saw in some of the other instruction sets. We've got the pattern layout. We've got the pattern pieces, and I just wanna hadn't staple those up at the corner so that I can keep these nice and clean, so I'm gonna go ahead and get rid of this and put this into its envelope because we don't need to look at that right now. So this is the pdf pattern itself. It's just gonna be single sided pages. I put them one this time on your printer on your regular printer paper. I usually use the cheapest printer paper I confined, so it's a little bit thinner. It's lighter weight. Easy to use. Um, you don't need to spend a lot of money on it. So here is the calibration square. So when you are printing these, you want to be very careful, toe actually follow the rules of the calibrations square. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna grab a ruler, and we're going to double check that two inches by two inches is actually two inches. Looks like my printer doing a job by two inches. Looks like this works. So since this pattern piece looks accurately printed, we're gonna go ahead and start assembling. So we're gonna do is we're actually going to take the pages and line them up based on their numbers. I'm going to go ahead and get a layout started. We're gonna switch over to the wide angle view so that you can see this a little better. Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and get started assembling this pattern. So we're gonna need is are printed paper pattern pieces, pair of scissors, and some tape. You can use any kind of tape you have on hand. I like to use just regular scotch date because I always have it laying around the house. So we're going to do to assemble. These is we're going to start with the very first outer corner piece. You know, this is the first outer corner piece because of this marking here, and you're gonna see pretty quickly how these go together. So one a is going to line up to one A. But now we have a Z. You can see some overlapping. So what I like to do some people fold. I find the folding makes them kind of bulky. Does I like to just cut right along the line there? Nice and careful so that we don't end up with crooked patterns and we are just going to use one small piece of tape tow. Line this up Now. Although this is the match point here, I do find that sometimes my printer is a little bit ridiculous, and it will print these off slightly crooked. So what I like to do is check all of the various lines on the pattern. Now, I'm not gonna take this down all the way just yet. I am going to tape it down, but not right now. And you're going to see in a little bit that when we go down to the next row that these pieces, we want to make sure we have the opportunity to realign them if the need arises. So what we're gonna do is go ahead and finish this road. Okay, so we have the first road just loosely take together. So we're going to start again with Roach to now. If you look here, there's no triangle on the bottom of this pattern piece. That means that we're not going to start there were actually going to start here where this triangle is. So we have now essentially two sides that we're thinking about cutting. So what we're gonna do is I'm going to cut off the side here on the top. Now I like to cut these at a little bit of an angle and you'll see why that works good in a second here. So we're gonna go ahead and cut that piece here like that. Put that off for the recycle pile and put a nice little piece of tape on through here and we will have this piece assembled. Now, we're just gonna switch this whole thing over, and we're going to get the next piece coming in there. We're gonna line up the two hearts here. We're actually gonna be lining up the two beaches, the to be on the three age of the three A. So here's how I do this. So first, we're gonna go ahead and line up this top would Okay, Just a little bit of tape there. So now you can see where having these pieces a little bit loose is a good thing. So we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and line up. This would Now, if these don't line up 800% perfectly, that is okay. So sometimes you're just gonna have weirdness is because the printer had, um, some stuff in the printing kind of crooked. Oh, are you're going to be a little crooked on your taping. Now, whenever you're working in a smaller area, that weirdness is okay. Now, if we have very large pieces that we're putting together, just know that if you're off by 1/4 INGE, if you're off by an eighth of an inch up here, the further down you go into those papers If you don't correct that an eighth of an inch becomes 1/4 inch. 1/4 inch becomes 1/2 inch and now we have a serious problem on your paper pattern. So just be really aware of how it is that you are putting your pieces together and just be double checking and looking for your pieces. So let's go ahead and finish this pattern up, okay, Now, because we are working in a limited space and if you are working in a smaller space than you would want to do, this is Well, what I'm going to do is, as I see pieces coming together, what I'm gonna do is finish and complete taping them, and then I'm gonna cut them apart. That's going to give me more space to work as I go along. So to finish taping them off, what I'm going to do is look for the areas where that pattern actually needs to stay together. And I'm just going to start putting on tape, Okay? So after I've taped these pieces up, I am going to double check that nothing is going to fall apart. I've got a piece of tape on each of these lower pieces, and then I'm gonna go ahead and cut off this pattern piece on it. If you can see that this pattern piece and this pattern piece so that we can start to move on to the next room. Now, I always trim away as many of the extra black minds as I can. They're just confusing when you're cutting your pattern out. So I have a tendency to want to get rid of them so that I don't get worried that they're actually a marking when they're not a marking on the pattern. So in these bigger pieces, what I like to do is now, at this point, I'm in a double check to make sure everything is sort of taped as it should be. I mean, if things were not fully taped, it's okay. It's really up to you. But when you follow these. I have a tendency for Teoh over zealously fold, so I like to be sure they're very well take now on the back. I'm just gonna look in the back here. I like to put a few little safety measures. I have a tendency to use reuse my patterns a lot. So because I do so I always put just a little bit of extra tape on the back just to make sure that when I'm folding and unfolding these I don't run into any issues, especially on these very small pieces on the corners. So we're going to go ahead and finish taping this. So now that I finished that piece, I'm gonna go ahead and fold this one up and get it back into the envelope so that we can continue finishing this pattern. So now that we have assembled all of the pattern pieces, we are going to go ahead and put this pattern away and move on to vintage showing patterns 9. Reading Vintage Patterns: all right, So let's get looking at a vintage pattern. So there's several kinds of vintage patterns that you can get the first time we're going to go over is a very old kind. This particular pattern that we are looking at is a believing 19 thirties pattern. Thes are going to have something a little bit different about them, the most patterns you've seen. So the first thing we're gonna notice is that it pretty well looks the same. These air single size patterns, they have a number and a name. Usually these are very special patterns to me. These are the old Hollywood patterns. I try to collect these whenever I can and this one I actually found at a thrift shop. So on the back we see a little bit of the pattern land and the pattern pieces and the line art here. So we're going to see that when we look at the instructions of this particular vintage pattern that it wants us to actually pin the right hand edge of the envelope to this line. That's because not everything that is included on the pattern of Opus actually reprinted that was to save paper. So Let's go ahead and put that envelope very carefully away. This particular pattern is sort of falling apart, so we're going to be very, very gentle with it. So in this pattern we see that there is some things about before cutting we get. There is pretty much the same information you'd see even on the modern patterns we looked at. We have our size layouts in the different wigs, and then we look on the back. We're going to see our instructions. So the biggest thing to note on this type of pattern is all of the dots dot patterns, which this is a dot style pattern, have absolutely no printing on the pattern pieces themselves. They're going to give you all of your clues with these cut out dots. So let's go ahead and get a pattern piece out to look at. So now we look at this and we can see that there are whole lot of dots all over this pattern piece. The first thing we can take an easy note of is that there is a F that is made out of dots. That is the letter of the pattern piece that will coincide to a thing to a marking on the instructions on the edges. We can see some triangles that are cut out, those air going to be our match points so similar to the printed triangles on our modern sewing patterns. And then we're going to see larger dots and smaller dots. So these air going to be places where we're going to line things up within the pattern. Now one of the great things about the dot type patterns is that when you want to use tour methods or you want to use sort of more traditional methods, thread marking becomes extremely easy. It also makes it extremely easy to mark with disappearing ink. So when we actually do mark all of these little spots on where we're going to be placing items on to our pattern pieces, it's gonna be really, really super easy if we want to do it, because we don't have to try and figure out how to transfer that on without being able to reach it. Thread tracing will be really good for these, because you'll be able to mark both sides at the same time, so let's go ahead and look at a couple other pieces here and see if there's anything else unique about this pattern. Okay, so now we are looking at one of the bodice pieces, So something that you sometimes went out or sometimes lose that is the actual integrity of the paper pattern pieces themselves with vintage patterns. Like I said, this pattern is from 19 thirties. You know, some of the pieces, They're gonna be great. Like the 1st 1 that we saw, some of them not so good. So this piece was one that was very difficult to say. It was falling apart as I was ironing. And as you can see over here, this is a kind of a piece that you're gonna have to essentially recreate what I would do with this piece when I work on it is actually use some very lightweight iron on interfacing to attach this pattern piece, too, and then start retracing off and trying to figure out where the lines and edges of this original pattern piece was because we're never gonna have the original piece in its original form. But we can see, though we still have enough information to help us out. There's an A here that is its pattern number or letter in this case. So we know at least what peace is. We do have a lot of markings. We have what is most likely a dart marking here because you can see they start up the top and they work their way down those air dark markings. We have our match points here, and then we just have the rest of the pattern piece. Looks like a pretty typical bodies piece. So that is the end of this piece. So let's take a little time and talk about storing these very sensitive vintage patterns. So what I like to do is actually get the pattern pieces put into either a plastic bag or a separate envelope. We're going to very carefully, but these ones that I have re folded as gently as possible back in to this clear envelope here. Then what I did was restored. This as best I could was tape. I don't have any pattern pieces left in here because I kind of this envelope was completely falling apart. So there was no rescuing it to put the powder in pieces back the way they were inside of that envelope. Additionally, here we have the instructions that I had taped together. I went ahead and taped thes on their full mines. Refilled that and then I will report back again just as gently as I possibly can. I will put these back in with that side facing out. This is what I like about for your bags without side facing out. I'll be able to see what pattern this is when I go back and look now I store these then into a file folder where I can keep these safe and away from light. So let's look at one more vintage pattern toe. Just see a little bit of difference once you look into the sort of 60 seventies newish vintage patterns. Okay, so here we have that Vote Equatoria design that we looked at a little bit earlier. Just briefly. This is a Valentino 1971. This is one of my favorite collector vintage patterns that I have this woman actually searched out to find. So let's go ahead and take a look at the contents of the envelope. So we have the pattern pieces and we have the instructions. So if we look at the instructions, we're gonna find that as patterns got newer in the sixties and seventies, they really start to look like what we see on our modern patterns. The big difference between them is basically that these are single size versus multi size, and the pattern instructions were usually printed a little smaller. So these are pretty much what we got used to with our modern paper sewing pattern. So we'll go ahead and move those off to the side. And let's just take a look at one of these pieces that was already open and cut out when I got it. So this is the lower welt of the tunic. This is a pocket piece, and you can see you're gonna have lots of nice print lines. Um, human. Some interesting markings you can see here, the sewing machine foot on here that tells you where you need to sell between. So these are gonna be really close to what you've seen in other patterns. So that pretty much concludes looking at vintage sewing patterns 10. Think Before You Cut: Let's talk about cutting a pattern out, so there are a couple things to consider before you cut out a pattern. First, you want to think I Am I going to cut this out to the exact size that I need on my pattern piece? Or do I want to copy it onto a new sheet of paper? Now I have a tendency to always copy, especially with tissue paper patterns, because if I find that I'm making it and I try it on and lo and behold, I have selected the wrong size either too big or too small. If I have cut that pattern to the size that I thought I needed, then I am really stuck. I have to go back to the store, and I have to try and hopefully see if they still have it. Or if it was an out of print pattern, try and find it on the Web to get the next size that I need not necessarily a great thing. We could always grade the pattern up, but that's really a hassle if our pattern came in multiple sizes. So I like to always happy my patterns and we will do other videos where I show you a lot of neat ways to copy your patterns. Another thing that you can do is with PdF patterns. Now, with PdF patterns, you really do have a choice whether you want to cut them in your size or not, because you can always print another one. I am still a fan of copying because I just despised taping. It just takes so long, so I to me, would rather do the taping one time and then just copy the patterns is needed, but that is totally up to you. So however you mind doing it, that's what you choose. So that's another big pro on PdF patterns. So when you do select whether to cut or copy your pattern, then you go ahead and you follow the directions on that pattern and you get ready to so it 11. The Final Project: So now that you've learned so many things about reading sewing patterns, let's go ahead and talk about the final project. So the first thing that you're going to do is pick out your sewing pattern. Go shopping, have fun, find something that catches your eye and something that is within your skill level. And go ahead and take a picture of that and upload that to the project gallery. Along with that, you want to go ahead and fill out your sewing patterns. Wanna one worksheet that you'll find in the resource is and get yourself ready to be able to so that pattern don't forget about the community. Resource is here, and please feel free to ask questions. I check back here constantly, and I would love to help you in any way that I can. So please have fun and let's get so it