Printing with Layers

We are so excited that our pattern pieces now have layers! Have you tried them out yet? Using layers is a great way to simplify the printed pieces and save on ink. Plus it is super easy for you to do!

**(Note: Not all of our upcoming patterns the next couple weeks will have layers, because we are still in the process of releasing previously drafted pieces. But as of early-to-mid May, all new CKC patterns will have layers when they release. To date, our patterns with layers are Urlotte's, Vixen's, and all sizes of Leslie's.)** 

So what are layered pieces? Basically, layers allow you to print only the sizes you want to print. Each size has its own "layer" in the document, so you only print what you want to see.  For example, if you want to print only the size 3, you can do so!  Or if you want to print sizes 3 and 4 both, you can do that too. 

And for those of you who want to keep printing your pieces the way you always have, that's no problem at all.  The pattern pieces will still function just like they did before. The "layers" are just an extra feature for those who want to use it.   

Are you ready to learn how? 

Calculating Fabric Requirements

One of the many things I love about CKC patterns is how easy they make it for me to buy the right amount of fabric every time. Today we're going to talk about that magical chart that you always find at the top of our CKC patterns.   

Have you ever wondered how we come up with the calculations in the charts? If you assume that we're just really smart, then... you're right!  And you can be really smart too.  We will teach you how! You will benefit from knowing this because there may be times that you will want to make adjustments to the patterns and you'll need to understand how to buy the right amount of fabric. For example, my daughter is tall for her age and we like skirts to go past her knee, so I often add some inches to the length. But if I don't also calculate those extra inches into the amount of fabric I need to buy, I could come up short! 

(Here is Poppy's with three inches added to the length. No problem!) 

It can also be helpful to understand our calculations because sometimes you can double up pieces in the same yardage of the same fabric, so you won't need to buy quite as much fabric. If you know that ahead of time, you can buy less and reduce costs.  

So let's get started!  To determine the fabric requirement for each piece, we will follow three steps. I'll list them first and then explain in detail: 

Step 1: Look at the length of the piece. Write it down. This is the number that matters. 

Step 2: Look at the width of the piece. If you are cutting more than one piece and their combined widths add up to more than the width of your fabric, you will need to add their lengths together so that each piece gets the width it needs. Add those up to get your total fabric length in inches. 

Step 3: Convert the length into yards, rounding up to the nearest 1/8 yard.

That's it! 

Step 2 may seem complicated at first but it's not. Let's look more closely. To make it easy, we will be using the cutting chart from our free pattern, Marilyn's Slim Fit Peasant Dress.   

Let's look at the 18 months size and start with the Dress piece. Now follow the steps. 

Step 1: Look at the length of the piece. Write it down. This is the number that matters.   (Answer: 16")

Step 2: Look at the width of the piece. If you are cutting more than one piece and their combined widths add up to more than the width of your fabric, you will need to add their lengths together so that each piece gets the width it needs. Add those up if necessary to get your new total fabric length in inches. (Answer: Our 2 pieces are each 15" wide so they easily fit into the standard 42" or 60". Therefore we do not need to double the length. They will both fit in our 16" length.) 

Step 3: Convert the length into yards, rounding up to the nearest 1/8 yard. (Answer: 1/2 yard) 

So together we just determined that we need 1/2 yard to cut the two Dress pieces for 18 months. Is that correct on the chart way at the top? Yes, it is!

Now let's have an example where we really need Step 2. Look at the 18 month size Ruffle now.  

Step 1: The length is 3.5". Write it down.

Step 2: The width is 30" and we need to cut 2. If we are using standard woven fabric (42"), we will only be able to cut one ruffle in that width. So since we need 2 ruffles, we will need to double the length that we found in step 1.  So 2 ruffles x 3.5" length equals 7".  

Step 3: Now we need to convert 7" into yards, rounding up to the nearest 1/8 yard. That will give us 1/4 yard for the 2 ruffles.  Is that correct on the chart? Yes, it is! 

Some of the fabric lengths that we come up with may be a little harder to convert to yards in our heads. So here is a super helpful tool for helping you convert those inches into yards: 

Did you notice that we even made a column for our metric customers? 

We also made this chart into a PDF file so you can print it or keep it handy in your Dropbox. Download the Fabric Requirements Conversion Chart here. 

So now that you understand how we calculate the fabric requirements, you can do some adjusting of your own whenever you'd like!  Let's say that you want to make Marilyn's dress two inches longer.  No problem! Just add 2" to your length in Step 1 and make sure you follow through with Step 2 and Step 3. You will have enough fabric every time! Or let's say that you have a nondirectional fabric and you want to cut several pieces out of the same fabric and buy less overall. Just add up the lengths and widths and determine how many yards you really need. 

So now no matter what width of fabrics or what kind of prints or what adjustments you decide to make, you will always end up buying the right amount of fabric!  Isn't it fun to be smart? 

Let's Create!  ~ Kristen

Quick Tip: Save all that Printer Ink!

 I'm excited about today's quick tip. It's one of my favorite things about PDF patterns at CKC. I have read several comments lately on the Facebook page about customers that want to buy new patterns but they aren't going to because of ink. "I'm all out of ink."  "It's too expensive to print patterns after I buy them."  

CKC patterns are fabulous because of all the great pictures and step-by-step instructions. But all those pictures use up a ton of ink!  Right?  

Well, not necessarily. That's my quick tip of the day, coming right up. 

This is my happy place. I love it.  It's not big or fancy, but I do wake up each morning excited to come here.  You may notice something about my sewing desk. No printed papers everywhere! Not even in a binder. 

And that's my quick tip of the day:  If you are short on ink or paper, ONLY PRINT THE PATTERN PIECES.  I've been using CKC patterns for a year and a half and I have never, ever printed out more than just the pattern pieces. 

When I buy a new pattern, I immediately save it to Dropbox. (It's a free app!) Then I can pull the pattern up on any of my devices to read as I cut and sew.  Yesterday I made a dress that had 20 pages of instructions. And I only printed one! I also love that on my devices I can enlarge the instructions and zoom in on the pictures. I can see the patterns even better than if they were on paper! 

So if you want to save on ink and paper, there you go!  See how easy this is?  I highly recommend it for the home seamstress and any small boutique owner.  If you ever have problems printing your pattern pieces, here's a great blog Tiffany did awhile back to help you print your patterns successfully. 

 There will be some of you, I'm sure, that still want to have your patterns all printed out just for old times' sake. We still love you.  If that's the case, here are some helpful tips for storing your patterns.  I use those same tips for storing just my pattern pieces. It's a great way to organize and I don't need nearly as many binders!  (I have one binder, to be exact.) 

So I hope you give it a try and ONLY PRINT THE PATTERN PIECES. We have a bunch of big sales coming up at CKC, and now you don't have to miss out on any of them because of ink and paper costs. The more patterns the merrier. 

Let's Create! ~ Kristen

Boutique Basics: How To Price Products

Shannon here and I'm baaaaaack for another installment of Boutique Basics where I help boutique owners learn the business of owning a boutique! This week we are going to be discussing something we get asked about a lot and we all HATE figuring it out: pricing products properly. So let's put our big girl pants on as well as our thinking caps and get down to business. I suggest you don't just skim over this article either; get out some paper and a pencil and really work on this. You will be thankful when it's all over and you have a plan in place for properly figuring out the pricing of your products.

How do you store your pdf patterns??

Hi, I am Greta. I kind of blog over at http://gretam.wordpress.com. I haven’t been that good in keeping up lately. Too much sewing going on over here!! I am here today to share with you how I store my pdf patterns. I started printing mine all out as I got them and was paper clipping them and started piling them up and up and up. I decided I needed a better way. This is what I ended up with and still use today. It helps me find a specific dress, pants, skirt, jammies, toys, household item pattern with ease.

How to Tape CKC Patterns Together

Today we're going to talk about the best way to tape your pattern pieces together! If your pattern only uses one piece, then there will be nothing to tape together. But if there are multiple pages, it is very important to overlap and tape them as we intended. So let's take a look!

First, you will need to print out the pieces. They come at the end of our CKC patterns. It is important for the piece(s) to be printed perfectly to scale, so we recommend that you read this blog post on printing pattern pieces, if you have not done so already. 

Once you have your pieces printed properly, you are ready to tape! 

New Policy on Photo Usage!!!!

We're growing and changing here at Create Kids Couture, and here's a change that will make some of you very happy. We are updating our photo usage policy. We used to prohibit folks from using our photos because we used to sell the clothes as well as the patterns and didn't want our competitors using our photos to sell their clothes, but now that we are just selling patterns, we've decided to let you use our photos to help market your items. We do have some rules though, so please read this post carefully, be respectful and follow them, or you will no longer be able to use our photos.

First, we REALLY prefer if you share photos directly from our Facebook albums on your page.  For example, say I want to hold a flash sale of outfits made from Grace's Twirly Knot Dress and Top Pattern for my shop Two Modest Mamas. I would go to the CKC Tops Album, click on the photo of Grace's, click share, and write in my own comment, and then click Share Photo. Here's what it will look like:

How to Measure for Fit

One of the most confusing things about the fashion industry is how each brand has their own sizing. If you've spent any time shopping, you already know this. For children, Old Navy, Baby Gap, and Gymboree tend to run bigger than say, Carter's in the same size.

Well, if you're sewing a CKC pattern, how do you know what size to make for your child? If you haven't made one of our patterns yet, you may not know the fit of our designs, so you should probably measure before cutting your fabric. Each pattern includes the measurements for the finished garment in each size. Once you measure your child, you should choose the garment size that is closest to her measurements, and when in doubt, size up!

We've created this super handy chart for you to use while measuring your little one. Print it out and fill in her/his measurements to keep them on hand, and update it when needed. Here is the link to the full size document.

How to Print your PDF Patterns!

Hi everyone! It's me, Tiffany, and I'm *gasp* actually writing a blog post! :)

We are often asked about printing and how to get your pattern pieces to print properly! I thought I would make this blog to show some photos and further explain how to ensure they print properly!

First of all, the pattern pieces should be printed on standard 8.5” x 11” paper. Before printing, check to make sure you have the proper settings. The "Auto Rotate and Center" box must be ticked, and page-scaling must be set to "None” or “100%.” This is VERY important. Above is a screen shot to show you exactly what this means. Your print screen might look slightly different, but the options should be the same. The red ovals above show the options that must be selected. 

   

After printing, find the 1” square on the printed pattern piece. Use a ruler or measuring tape to make sure the square is exactly 1”. If the square is even a little bit larger or smaller, it can throw off your sizing and the outfit will not fit properly! You will need to check your settings and try printing again, until your square measures exactly 1” as shown above. We recommend printing only from the latest version of Adobe Reader. (It’s free.) Other readers may appear to be correct but do not always print to scale. 

When you have finished printing your pieces and you know they measure correctly, you are ready to tape them together and cut your fabric!

Happy Sewing!! 

Tiffany and Shannon

Tips and Tricks Thursday: Modifying Sizes Part 1

If you're like Tiff and I your children are not the "average" size for their age, which means when you use one of our patterns and make it the "average" size it may not fit properly. We're here to show you how to properly adjust our patterns for the perfect fit!

If you're a seasoned seamstress, you are probably very familiar with how to modify your patterns properly, but if you are still somewhat new to sewing then this may be all new to you and is *hopefully* something you will be excited to learn about!

 

Tips and Tricks Thursday: Caring for Your Handmade Clothes

I figured we should write a blog about this topic since we write patterns on how-to make handmade clothing, but have never discussed how to care for all these clothes you create. Caring for a handmade garment requires special care from the clothes that you purchase from a store.

Kiki, Kara, and Mia Patterns made using cotton fabrics.

Policy on Sharing Patterns...

It has come to our attention that our patterns have been shared with people who did not pay for our patterns. Tiffany and I worked very hard to create our patterns and sharing them with all of you was NOT easy for us to do. We are two stay-at-home-moms  who own our own clothing boutiques. Many people asked us for our personal patterns and it took us well over a year to finally give in and share them with all of you. Some of you may think that its just $10 and its not a big deal, but when you consider the time it took to make these patterns and how much we could potentially lose out on in our personal boutiques because we are no longer the SOLE creators of these pieces it's a lot!
If we do find out that you are sharing patterns you will be placed on our "blacklist" and will no longer be allowed to test OR buy our patterns. If you do, we will immediately refund you. We do not want to put anyone on this list and sincerely hope we never have to. We hope everyone understands.
Thanks and happy sewing!