Video: Placing a Pattern

In this short video, a professional fashion designer demonstrates how to place a pattern, ready for marking and cutting.

Video Transcript

Hello, I’m Natalie, I’m a Fashion Designer, I have my own company, Miss Natalie B. I’m here today with Start Sewing to show the best way to lay your pattern pieces on your fabric.

The first thing you need to do is once you get your pattern, you need to cut out the correct size on each pattern piece, all the way around the edge on each piece that you need to use. The best way to place your pattern pieces on your fabric is to first get your pattern piece that says “cut on the fold” and take that pattern piece, fold your fabric, and place that pattern piece along the fold.

Take your second piece and to make the most use of your fabric, turn where the wide edge at the bottom, meets the narrow edge of this pattern piece, and where the arrow is pointing for the straight of the grain of the fabric – this needs to flow along the straight of the grain, like so.

Take your little pieces, and also this one’s got straight of the grain there, so needs to flow with the straight of the grain of the fabric, and then this one says “centrefold” to there, that one needs to be placed also on the fold of the fabric. The best way for this one is to turn it upside down.

You may have more pattern pieces than this, this is quite simple for a pattern, so you would place the other pattern pieces using up most of the fabric. The next thing you need to do is pin the pieces in place.

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