I used to be a big fan of Modern Sewing, Inc., they had this really neat master CD you could get that had hundreds of patterns for men, women and children on it and you could plug in your measurements then print the patterns. You paid for the number of prints, all the different pattern designs were available for you to choose from and you only paid for the ones you used. Well I was delighted to find out that Modern Sewing is back, but apparently with a different business model and I like them even more now!
They still have tons of great designs (this is Wrapped Top #5443) for everybody in the family including, pants, tops, dresses, skirts, jackets, raincoats, underwear and maternity styles. The only difference is that now all the size Small, Medium, Large and XL patterns currently available are FREE! All you have to do claim them is to click and print. Now I will say that I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to print mine. A large format printer or plotter would be nice, but I just have a letter size printer and it kept trying to cram this big pattern onto one piece of paper. If I had looked around first I would have seen the “How to Print Patterns” link on the right hand side of the page. There are step by step directions showing you how to print a tiled image – your printer will print a series of numbered images that you then tape together to form the larger pattern. This was pretty easy to do once I got the hang of it and I didn’t mind the extra ten or fifteen minutes spent taping since I didn’t have to pay big bucks for a pattern, much less wait for it to arrive in the mail or spend my gas money going to the store to get it.
Not all of the patterns appear to be available for download yet, but the good majority of them are and in a wide variety of sizes. Modern Sewing will also tailor any of the patterns to your measurements for you for a small fee, beginning at $4.95, which I think is more than reasonable. The company apparently is also supported through the abundance of Google ads on the site, but while some are found in annoying positions (in the middle of a list of patterns), they’re obviously not enough to keep me from getting excited at the thought of my next sewing project while browsing through the available designs at Modern Sewing.
That’s pretty cool. I’ll have to check it out.