Want to Design and Sell your own Patterns, but don’t Know Where to Begin? Start Here.

Figuring out how to share patterns with others is no small feat. It can also get extremely expensive. When I first starting thinking about digitizing my own patterns, it seemed like a bit of a money pit. I have managed to figure out how to do it in an affordable manner. It does however, require a large mental and time investment.

First things first, you have to figure out how to get your drawn patterns onto the computer. You have a few options, there are people out there that you can contract to do it for you, or you can use Adobe Illustrator and figure out how to do it yourself. I chose the latter. Originally I used the one month free trial that they offer and then did decide to commit to a yearly subscription. I already subscribe to the photography package that Adobe offers, so adding illustrator was pretty simple. Between my Adobe Illustrator subscription and my Lightroom/Photoshop subscription I pay approximately $28 a month for my Adobe programs. I used tons of Youtube tutorials to help but hands down the best series I found was by Pattern Lab London. I relied heavily on their tutorials. They also provide free files that are already set up perfectly for pattern drafting. I’m not going to spend a lot of time explaining exactly how to draw patterns with your computer, as the tutorial I listed above does a way better job than I ever could. There is a bit of a learning curve with this, but practice definitely makes perfect.

Once you’ve drawn out your pattern, you’ve got to create instructions and a “pattern front.” I personally prefer instructions with drawn illustrations as opposed to photographs so it was important to me to include those in my instructions. I used adobe illustrator to create the instructions to enable that as well. There are actually stock images on Etsy of body forms that you can “draw” on top of to get proportional images.

At this point, if you’re creating a pdf pattern…you’re good to go! If you’re hoping to make a paper pattern, you’ve got a few more steps. A paper pattern requires a pattern front and back, I used adobe illustrator to make those too. A paper pattern also requires quite a bit of material sourcing and again time investment. I’ll be listing my sources and the cost per pattern for each item under this time lapse.

I opted to go with all color printing on 8.5 x 11″ cardstock paper front and back, a stapled 8.5″ x 11″ instruction manual, 36″ x 48″ nested pattern, and a clear plastic bag for my patterns. I chose the bag option over a printed paper envelope option because printing on an envelope is not something that I could source affordably. I also could not find any envelopes that really suited my tastes. I chose 8.5″ x 11″ paper because it meant that I didn’t have to adjust any dimensions from my pdf pattern. It also fits nicely into a 9.5″ x 12.5″ mailer.

Here are my sources:

Printivity for the instructions, pattern front and back- this ran me about $3.00 for each pattern. I chose to do the front and back on cardstock and the instructions in color.

PDFplotting for the pattern-this cost me about $1.80 per pattern.

Amazon for clear bags to put the pattern in-these cost .11 cents a piece

Amazon for the mailers-these cost 1.26 per pattern.

Shipping- I used the post office, to ship each pattern cost me (on average) $5.00 per pattern.

Once you’ve gotten your patterns created and put together, you’ve got to have a platform with which to sell them. Fortunately for me, I already had a blog. I added the WooCommerce plugin and followed many more tutorials on how to get it up and running. I’m not going to list the tutorials here or go into a ton of detail on that. If you’re interested in learning more, comment below and I can make a separate blog post about it!

I think that covers it! If you’re thinking about creating and selling your own patterns, this should give you a pretty good starting point. I’m sure there are other ways of doing it, this is just how I chose to get it done. Good luck!!