Sewing Pattern Organization

If you’re like most sewists, you have a large collection of sewing patterns. Now that you can buy many patterns for $1, $2, or $5 on special promotion at some fabric stores, there’s no reason not to grow your collection and purchase patterns that you like “just because”. But once your collection grows beyond a modest size, it can become very difficult to organize your pattern collection, and even harder to find that one pattern you remember buying when you want to use it.

I believe I have found an ideal solution to this problem. I physically store my patterns in 2 Ikea dressers in the basement, in numerical order by publisher. In order to keep track of what I have and the details of each pattern, I use a free board in the Trello online tool.  If you’ve never used Trello, it’s pretty easy to learn.

In the Trello board create a column for each publisher, and a card for each pattern. Then I can add the information about the pattern to the card, along with pictures of the front and back of the pattern. First, I enter the information about the pattern into the “Description” field of the Trello card. I include Vintage (the year the pattern was published – can usually be found in the copyright information on the envelope), pattern description from the back of the envelope (show illustration), sizes included in the pattern, and any other information that might be helpful, like descriptive words not included in the envelope description and any designer info from the envelope. This information is searchable in Trello, so be sure to include any identifying information that will help you identify the patter.

If you don’t want to take pictures of your patterns, 99% of the time you can find images on the internet by googling the pattern publisher and number. To copy the image,  right-click on the image and select “Copy Image” from the drop-down that appears. Then, return to the Trello card you created for the pattern and press “cmd-V” on a Mac or “ctrl-V” on a PC while hovering over your open Trello card. The image should appear as an attachment to your Trello card.

This project may take a while, depending on the number of sewing patterns you own, but you’ll be surprised how much more you’ll use your pattern collection when you can view everything you have in one place, and easily locate the physical pattern.