If it wasn’t for sewing I don’t think I would even know how big an inch is. I live in Canada so I rarely use inches for anything. Step 1: Make Grid Lines 1″ and Divide into Eighths of an Inch Later, when I write about how to upload your own drafted patterns, I will come back to this. It is intended for when you have a pattern already, but you need to scale it. I’ll add more Draw tutorials but I think this is a good place to start. So, today I am writing about how to resize your pattern. Then I never tried it again until June, when I wanted to resize someone else’s pattern so it was to scale. The pattern is for an over sized hooded sweater. I digitized and graded my first pattern that I drafted without any help or tutorials. So I tried it out, spent a few hours working on a pattern and learned that it can be done. I knew I had OpenOffice Draw on my laptop (which is free!) but I wasn’t sure if I could use it to digitize patterns and there are no tutorials online, at least not that I can find. I watched YouTube videos on how to digitize and grade patterns using Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, but these programs cost more than my hobby could afford. I have since drafted many patterns and hope to upload them here soon.įor a while everything I had drafted was on brown packaging paper and I had no idea how to get it online or on my laptop. I needed more! After printing many more patterns from as many websites as I could find I started to get into pattern drafting. I couldn’t believe someone would put a free pattern online for people to print and have.

It was for a hooded bolero jacket and it changed the way I now look for patterns. I remember the first time I found a free sewing pattern online.

Using openoffice draw tutorial