Hey! So I’ve been a little “organizing happy” lately. One of the things I decided to do was pin all my patterns on Pinterest…
What “pattern goodness” looks like on my phone
I guess comparatively I don’t have a HUGE pattern stash – last I checked Mena of The Sew Weekly has over 800 patterns, yowsa – but the great thing about Pinterest is that it’s easy to gather all my patterns in fun-to-see boards. Also, indie patterns and newer patterns are linked to their company’s websites so additional photos/size charts are just a click away!
It’s nice to have all my patterns available to me like this. I can see them all at once (more or less). Do you sometimes forget which patterns you have? Or which ones you’ve been wanting to sew?
Pinning all my patterns also made me realize where my pattern love is directed. Well, not “realize” – it’s obvious that I love dresses! I bookmarked this page on my phone and the colors and styles are nice to look at every so often. I also noticed that there are some patterns on here that I might not have bought if I had to do it again (I was a little pattern happy at one point, but have gained some control lately).
I’d like to keep my pattern stash manageable because it’d be nice to sew these babies up! And, so…that’s my story. Do you have a certain way of storing your patterns that you find helpful?!
You can find my pattern stash on:
- The “Pattern Stash” tab I’ve created at the top of my blog
- Pinterest, quite clearly!
Also, I just wanted to share this cute book I saw at the Strand today (a great bookstore here in the city if you get a chance to stop by!). I really love the old Winnie-the-Pooh illustrations and was so tempted to pick this up. There were a couple of other Pooh books on this table. Anyway, CUTE!
I like to reorganise my stash when I am procrastinating about sewing. It makes me feel like I am accomplishing something, I have my 200+ input onto Pattern Review and I have a database on my PC, Rachel from House of Pinheiro had pie charts and colours and everything on her blog once. It was pretty. One day when I want to kill/waste some time I will enter them all into Pinterest. 8-)
I agree about the sense of accomplishment even if I’m not getting any sewing done part. ;) Ooo, I think I remember Rachel’s pie charts – I’ll have to search for them again! I didn’t think about adding my patterns to Pattern Review, that’s a cool idea too. Except I need to get better at posting on Pattern Review!
What a great use of Pinterest! I am becoming more and more of a visual person so recently–right after I came one click away from buying a pattern I already had!–I decided to print out and tack up thumb nails of my pattern stash (hardly a stash compared to others). It was really interesting because I divided the patterns into knits and wovens and found that I had many more woven patterns yet my fabric stash is almost completely knits. I realized that I love the feel of knits, but the structure and look of wovens. It has really informed my fabric purchases since then.
Here is a pic on flickr, http://flic.kr/p/daqKqD
Hope you’re staying warm!
Leu
Wow, I love your inspiration board, Leu!! It looks like you have a nice space for sewing too. That’s really cool that organizing your patterns that way helped you realize what kinds of fabric you should be being. I’d like to make more knit dresses (I realized that I have a lot of RTW knits and they’re so comfy). I hope you’re staying warm too – at least New York apartments tend to be quite toasty!
What a brilliant idea! I think I am going to have to do this, I have a lot of vintage patterns in my stash so I will probably have to scan them.
Yeah, it’s pretty great! You might even be able to find those vintage patterns on the vintage pattern wiki? Love your online haberdashery shop, by the way. :-D
I have a few stacks too and I’ve been slowly adding them to PatternReview.com – they keep a catalog of your stash (for free!) so that’s cool. I always have plans for the patterns and then I forget :/
I had to start walking around with a little notebook so I can remember what I was planning to do!
Ah, you’re the second one to mention adding patterns to Pattern Review. That’s really neat! I had taken photos of all my patterns and kept them on my phone, but one day the app crashed and it was sad. :( That’s why I think something like Pinterest or Pattern Review is so helpful.
I have joined Pinterest, but not used it yet.. So, now you’re giving me a logical reason to do so?!
Haha, glad I could be of help, Mary! I don’t use Pinterest for much else since I don’t really understand pinning so many things…
I have today pinned almost half my patterns to My Pattern List. The fun part will be pinning my OOP patterns, and I will probably have to scan them myself.
I’m done, and here are my Pinterest boards: http://pinterest.com/maryinfl/
This is great, Mary! You have a really impressive pattern stash!
I really cleaned out my pattern stash. I now have 255 for sale, and 342 in my stash.
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