I love digital patterns! They’re immediately accessible and easy to use. I can dream up a new project, click ‘buy’ and have the pattern cut out and ready to go in the time it takes my home printer to churn out the pattern pages. Fantastic!
However, a word to the wise.
In your haste, don’t make the same needless mistakes I did!
These are the Maritime shorts by Grainline Studio – but a super-sized version of the pattern!
I’d bought several patterns at the same time and printed them out on my home printer. However in my excitement and haste, I neglected to do two very basic and important things that you should never overlook when you’re using digital patterns.
- Select and click ‘print to actual size’ instead of leaving the printer to default to ‘fit to page’.
- Print out the first pattern piece, pause the printer and measure the ‘correct size’ box on the first pattern page to check that the pattern is printing at the correct size.
The moral of this tale.
PDF patterns are convenient, easy to download, print out and tape together. Just don’t get lax and neglect to do those basic steps –
or you may end up making a big ass of yourself like I did!
Have you had any PDF pattern printing mishaps? Did it ruin your project? Let me know in the comments below.
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Happy sewing,
Christine
