I use Pinterest a lot when looking for sewing projects. You can search for women sewing pattern and get hundreds of results. Somedays, as your scrolling through the results you find exactly what you want, the only problem is when you click through it’s a store, not a sewing pattern. So how can you use a picture instead of a sewing pattern?
Why Do You Love It
The first thing to do is to figure out what makes you love it so much. Is it the fabric and the styling, or is it the shape and the structure of the item. Once you know what makes you love it, you can work on recreating it. If it’s the colours and the styling it can be very easy to recreate with the right fabric or accessories. But if it’s the shape things can get a bit trickier.
Pattern Hacking
Your first step to recreating it would be figure out what the very basic form is, so let’s say it wrap pencil skirt. The basic shape would be the pencil skirt. The thing that makes it more than just a pencil skirt is the fact it wraps around.Once you know that all you have to do is find a pattern for a basic shape and add the unique feature.
That sounds confusing so let me explain it better. Using the example of the wrap pencil skirt again, you would need to find a pencil skirt pattern. This pattern can be bought or made of clothes you already have as long as you get a pattern Now you can hack the pattern to fit your needs. Want to make the pencil skirt a wrap skirt maybe you should instead of making it as wide as the waist make it one and half times as wide as the waist.
Planning Out The Pattern
Since your pattern hacking the instructions you have might not work now. So you have to plan. Think through your pattern and the instructions you might have. Then think what will I have to do differently here. After thinking it through, write it down step by step. First I’ll sew the side seams then I sew the darts, etc. Don’t forget to write a rough outline of your instruction out.
Sew The Pattern
The next part is what you been waiting for sewing. All that left to do is sew the pattern. ( That made it sounds easy it not always that way) When sewing the pattern try to stick with the plan you made but don’t be completely rigid. Sometimes when sewing you might see a better way to do something, there is nothing wrong with adjusting your plan as you sew.
So the next time you fall in love with a picture instead of a sewing pattern remember, you can take a picture and turn it into a sewing pattern. So test your skills and challenge yourself to some pattern hacking. If you hacked a pattern lately, I would love to hear how it went. Share in the comments below.