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Welcome to Leena's.com

Welcome to Leena's.com, the tutorial and pattern drafting site for
PatternMaker Drafting Sofware for PC.
In this site, you will find tutorials, pattern drafting instructions, sewing instructions and many other sewing projects.
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Learning
Center

Scaling and Resizing in PatternMaker

Fabric elasticity here
30% horizontal

Even if the patterns for this rib blouse look very narrow and odd, the change is necessary. If you would not reduce the patterns in size the blouse would be very loose if sewn of this very elastic rib fabric.

Scaling patterns to account for stretching in the fabric

One of the best features of PatternMaker is the fact that patterns can be reduced in size to account for stretching in the fabric (Edit/Scale and Edit/Resize). You will need to calculate the stretching factors for the fabric you use. Examine how much the fabric stretches horizontally and vertically and let the program resize the patterns accordingly.

To determine the factors for a particular fabric, stretch the fabric and measure its elasticity. Fold piece of fabric in two and stretch it separately in height and width along a ruler. "Height" is the direction that will be vertical when you put the pattern on the fabric, and "width" is the horizontal direction. Measure unstretched and stretched width and height of the fabric. The Scaling Factor needed is calculated by dividing the measurement of the unstretched fabric by the measurement of the stretched fabric. Stretch moderately, as the fabric would stretch on your body.

Example: 

If the unstretched width and height of the fabric is 40 cm and the stretched width of the fabric is 50 cm and height 45 cm

Horizontal Scaling Factor is 40/50=0.8 and
vertical Scaling Factor is 40/45 = 0.9

In other words, if the fabric stretches 20%, the scaling factor is 0.8.

Download and print a scaling aid

Download a PatternMaker drawing illustrated to the right and print it. Mark with pins 4" in width and height on your fabric and stretch. Read the needed scaling factor using the brown bars.

Example: If 4" of the width of your fabric stretches to match the lowest brown bar, you need to use a x scaling factor of 0.6. And correspondingly, if 4" of the height of your fabric stretches to match the topmost brown bar, you need to use a y scaling factor of 0.9.

How to scale patterns manually

Without PatterMaler it is difficult but not impossible to scale the patterns manually. Draw guide lines on top of the patterns according to picture to the left and cut each line in the needed proportion. In the example you get patterns which are 60% of the size of the original patterns. Scaled and original patterns are in proportion to one each other.

If you want to scale the patterns only horizontally or vertically or in different proportion horizontally and vertically, draw horizontal or/and vertical guide lines. Refer to the picture.