Assembling pdf patterns

[Acorn]

I've had a McCalls pdf, but it was for a baby top, so it wasn't too challenging!  It worked well.

[mudcat]

I bought some kids patterns (McCall's I believe) a few years ago because I was thinking to make some kids clothes from my quilting cottons to donate to one of the back to school organizations that disperses to children in need.  At the time you had to work with a third party to do the download.  I don't recall the name of it ...maybe SewingPatterns.com. 

Anyway, I thought PDFs for children's clothing would be only a few pages and I was completely shocked at how many pages there were.  I still have them though I only ended up making one thing because they all took more fabric than I had anticipated.

Big4 has some work to do with making the PDF files a little more space efficient.  100 pages would be torture. 

[Vezelay]

@Tamnymore if the download folder has an AO file I would be sending it to a copyshop like Netprinter or Patternsy. (Patternsy will print just certain layers if you ask them). Anything over 30 or so pages is too much faff for me.

[Acorn]

I've just looked at the McCalls pattern, which is for a top for a baby up to 18 months old, and it has 21 pages with no test square.  I compared it with an Ellie and Mac top, for ages 12 months to 14 years, and that one has only 9 pattern pages, and has a 1" and a 4cm square!!

[misschris]

Has anyone tried McCall or Butterick patterns as pdf downloads from the US website? I'm used to Stylearc pdfs where the patterns usually have lots of clean lines and instructions for printing and sticking together - even if the garment constuction instructions are 'sparse'.

I ordered Butterick 6784, a new Katherine Tilton paper dress pattern in a Butterick sale on the US site but it was out of stock so I've just bought it as a pdf. Of course being a Tilton pattern it is full of fussy pattern pieces. There are 2 sheets with a total of 100 A4 pages. Like me my printer is somewhat elderly and is likely to object to printing more than a couple of pages at a time so that's an all day job!

Stylearc patterns include a 10cm square so you can check you are printing things the right size but I don't see anything like that in the Butterick pattern. I assume you just set things to 'print exact size'. Wish me luck!

I bought the same pattern a few days ago. It actually didn't take too long to put together but I did run out of tape! No scale square, as you noted, but my mono laser printer handles big print runs without distortion or slipping so mine looks ok. Check for the blank pages that don't need to be printed, it will break up the printing into blocks, might help give the printer a rest.

[Gernella]

I bought some tape that is a bit like paper to do a small piece of a pocket.  It worked quite well but since then I've bought the magic tape. However it was just for odd bits and the main I'm afraid I went the cheat's way out and had it printed.  The last two I've had printed by the Avid Seamstress, the paper was better, not as thick as some of them.

If there are a lot of sizes within a pattern I chop them out of Adobe so I can usually manage with just one piece of paper.