Organise my life – PDF Patterns

I love to sew. I love the fabrics, I love the patterns, I love the outcome (usually!).

What I don’t love, is trying to choose something to make from my huge number of PDF patterns. (I was going to count them for this post, but I’m not quite ready to face my addiction yet, so lets just say it’s a big number and leave it at that).

The PDF patterns themselves are great, but as I don’t ‘buy, print, sew’ …. I’m more of a ‘buy, save, forget, find, close, forget, find, print, lose, print, sew’ type …. it can be difficult to sift through them all looking for inspiration. I have them well organised in Dropbox* (if you don’t know about Dropbox, see the note at the end of this post), so I can go directly to the type of pattern I want, but once I open that folder, it’s a long list of names. Here’s an example of my folder list on the left, and just the beginning of what’s inside ‘Dresses’ on the right.

 

               

 

Rather than spending a lot of time opening each PDF one-by-one to check out exactly what it is, I’ve started ‘snipping’ a picture from each pattern and saving them all in one document.

So I open the PDF, open my handy snipping tool (bless your cotton socks for that one Microsoft!), and ‘snip’ a picture of the finished item. Then I save them by name and insert them into a Word document.

 

 

I try to include the pattern name in the snip, but depending on the layout it’s not always easy to grab while still keeping the picture cropped to just the item in question. If I can’t get the name in, I add a text box over the picture myself.

 

 

At the moment I am keeping mine in digital form, but I am thinking of printing the pages and popping them into plastic sleeves in a folder, it would be kind of like having your own personalised catalogue.

 

* Dropbox allows you to upload, store and share files from your computer or mobile device. You can then access these files directly from your computer, or by going to the Dropbox website, so if you are away from home, or your computer dies, the files are still safe and accessible. You get loads of storage for free, and if you refer friends you can earn extra storage space. The link posted is my referral link, so I will get more space if you use it and sign up. Or check the website directly, dropbox.com.