What to do if you are using a sewing pattern but you need the finished bag or pouch to be larger or smaller in dimension? It’s a tricky subject, and today I’m going to be discussing two different methods for doing so.
Thank you so much to Karla Thomas for creating this helpful graphic to give an overview of the first method, printing using different percentages:
In the first portion of the video, Christina from Chrislet Designs will talk about printing your pattern pieces at different percentages and doing a bit of math for your square and rectangle pieces.
If math is not your friend, then I think you’ll find the second section of the video helpful (which starts at about 20 minutes in); in this section, I’ll be talking about using the slash and spread method (often used for garment sewing) to alter your pattern pieces by hand.
Also here’s the graphic from the video discussing how to decrease or enlarge the Tower Crossbody Bag sewing pattern. We chose the Tower for this demonstration as it has a small amount of pieces to talk about; as you’ll see from the graph, the squares and rectangles are calculated here using Christina’s 90% / 125% example.
*note: there has been a correction to this chart (the 90% Exterior Top). The chart in the blog post has been updated.
