How to organize your sewing patterns?

If you are like me, you have accumulated hundreds of sewing patterns over the years. There are pattern envelopes, magazines, traced patterns, printed pdf-patterns, you name it. At some point, you realize that your sewing pattern collection is out of control. When your boxes, binders or what-ever-you-are-using are bulging, it’s time to do a purge. I did this a few days ago and found out that you have to consider several things when deciding what to keep and what to trash. So I made a handy flowchart for you to follow!

It has been meant for a person who sews for her/himself but you should be able to adjust it to work for you even if you sew for other people. I sew a lot for my kids and I basically needed just one question: “Does it fit?” Most of my sewing patterns for children are either traced or pdf patterns cut to size, so patterns that were over a year old were way too small for me to use. And you can believe me when I say that there were a lot of those patterns! Why have I saved a pattern that I used for my daughter’s winter coat when I know I’m not going to make another before that one became too small?

However, sorting through the patterns that I have got for my personal use was more challenging.  That is why I designed this flowchart. Start from the top and answer the questions when trying to figure out whether to keep a pattern or discard it:

You can also download the chart in a pdf format: Organizing sewing patterns – a flowchart.

And here is the same chart with a larger contrast text: Organizing sewing patterns – a flowchart – high contrast.

My previously bulging sewing pattern binders have now space for new patterns and there’s no excuse for me to leave the patterns laying around anymore.

I hope my flowchart will help you to organize your sewing pattern stash! Are there any other things that you consider when sorting through your patterns? Comment below!

Thank you for reading and a special thanks to all my dear subscribers! Happy sewing!

Katja