HELP! Silly newby question.

[Ell-Bell]

I am attempting to sew a simple pair of fleece baby pants. I have made a couple other easy things before, but none where the pattern gave me a choice of sizes. I know what size I will be using, but how do I easily cut my fabric to that size without trimming off the pattern? later I want to make a bigger size and don't want to ruin the pattern... did that make sense? is there a way to trace or mark the fabric without ruining the pattern? There must be...

[Brojakee]

This is what i do i take a sharpie and trace over the outside and at wal mart you can buy fairly cheaply packages of fabric markers to mark the notches.

Or my Great Gramma buys the rolls of paper that go on the exam tables at the dr office (she gets a roll for 3.00 ) from the dr and just traces it off! Good luck

[Ell-Bell]

But what if the size I want is small, and the medium and large would have to be trimmed off before I could sew it, KWIM? Maybe I'm just overthinking it!

[morningloria]

you could trace the two larger sizes onto tissue paper, and then put them aside for when babe is bigger, then go ahead and cut the pattern for the smallest size.

that whole "smallest size inside" never made sense to me either. when i buy a pattern, i want to be able to use it a few times.

[purple peaches]

trace the pattern size you want onto paper - i use baking paper an duse that as your pattern leaving the other uncut and still able to use.

[courtenay_e]

Yup, what the pp's said. Rather than regular paper, there's "patterning" paper available at fabric stores. It is almost the texture of, say, a lightweight interfacing, it's fairly see through, white in color, and has a grid of squares (I think one inch by one inch) on it. You buy it off the bolt, by the yard. I love it. I use it all the time. You can trace your pattern onto this stuff and save the actual pattern for later. Also, in a PINCH (in fact, I just did this this past week, when I ran out of my huge supply of patterning stuff...), you can just fold the larger sizes to the back of the pattern, tape them down with a TINY bit of tape, and voila! reusable. But, the stuff from the fabric store is a lot quicker, less time intensive, etc. Then, when you're good enough to make your OWN patterns, you can use it for that, too.

[jillybeans]

i pin it down, and very carefully lift a tiny bit up at a time, or fold it if possible, and trace it like that.

[baileysmommy]

I use transfer paper and a little transfer wheel that you can buy at JoAnns, Hancock, or I am sure WalMart. The sheets come in many colors so you can find one that shows up on your fabric. The "wheel" has little barbs and makes little dots where you roll it along the pattern line. You layer fabric, transfer paper, and pattern on top, roll along the pattern line, then cut.

[ovandyke]

I fold it down to the size I want. This works well on fairly straight sections (the tissue is quite easy to fold and forgiving I find) and then on the curved sections I cut the largest size and then carefully lift up the little bit I need to get rid of and eyeball it. It certainly works well enough for baby pants I find. good luck and have fun sewing.
Liv

[blessedw/family]

I have used the tissue paper that you use in gift bags to trace the size of a diaper that I wanted to sew... but it is just one piece to worry about - so it's not too time consuming. or if you did not have a lot of pieces, you could use a copier to copy the pieces you need, but copy paper is hard to work with when you are pinning it to fabric so you might still have to trace some things. Just a beginner's thoughts that I've tried.... :

Another thought is: the Joann's I go to often has some patterns marked down to $1 or a little more. If it was one of those patterns, you could buy 2 patterns.