Thursday, March 25, 2010

Talk Back Thursday




Thank you so much to Becky, Lori, Summerset, Linda, Gwen, BConky, Sewing Geek, Kristine, Lady Jenn, Lisa Laree, Shannon Hillinger, Mamafitz, Stitchywitch, CarlaF, Faye, Patsijean, Debbie, Alison, Eword10, Cindy, Julia, Karima, Gaylen, Julie, Elaina and Tamara for talking back to my confession last Friday!

I asked if people cut out or trace the pattern tissue from the Big 4 pattern companies (Simplicity, Butterick, McCalls and Vogue).

Personally, I cut those patterns, and 7 of the 26 commenters do too. Six of them don’t think twice about cutting because they only buy their patterns on those extreme sales ($0.99 or $1.99) – so they can easily buy another one if they end up wanting another size. A few others mentioned that they feel comfortable cutting because they rarely need another size – either they generally only sew for themselves and theirs sizes are stable or they have so many projects in their queues that they rarely make anything more than once! And, of course, there is always the “impatience” factor… ;)

On the other hand, 9 of the 26 commenters report that they trace. The most common reason given for tracing is the need to make a lot of alterations to a pattern. And some folks are losing weight, so they don’t know what size they’ll want to make the next time around. As for just re-buying the same pattern the next time it’s on sale, a couple of folks pointed out that it can be a gamble, as patterns are discontinued.

And, of course, we had the “it depends” responses – 6 of them, to be exact. The main “it depends” factors are expense, size and potential future use. A couple of folks cut the cheaper patterns and trace the expensive ones. Several folks cut if they want the largest size on the pattern, but trace if they want one of the smaller sizes. Some folks cut once if they know they are only going to use it once, but trace if they anticipate re-use.

Note that “re-use” can play out in two different ways – re-use with a different size and re-use with the same size. It’s obvious that if you trace one size from a pattern, you can later trace a different size. But some people trace even when they expect to re-use the same size over and over again, because tracing paper is generally sturdier than the original pattern tissue paper. On the other hand, some people, like Linda, adhere fusible interfacing to tissue paper pattern pieces to make them sturdy enough for multiple re-use.

Finally, 4 people had a very creative alternative. Summerset, Lady Jenn, Julia and Elaina cut the largest size in every pattern (making sure to include all of the sizes in those places where the smaller sizes stick out beyond the larger sizes) and then fold the tissue paper to whichever size they want to cut at the time! Very clever! :)

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to respond! :)

1 comments:

Julia said...

I like the idea of using fusible interfacing to make the pattern pieces last longer. I was glad to see that others use the same method that I do.