Late last summer I set out to make a half dozen dresses for my niece. At age 6 she loves a good twirly dress and Ellie and Mac have quite the variety of patterns to make a kid’s heart sing!
I am a projector sewist and have been so for about a year now. Fully in the thrall of projector sewing, I have a projector mounted to my ceiling projecting onto my cutting mats on the floor. Projector cutting can be a little fiddly in that it often needs almost total darkness to see the pattern lines on a darker fabric. With that in mind, I set out to make my niece’s dresses.
The first two dresses I cut out were Breezys, a pattern I adore. Waiting until after dark, I closed the door to my craft room and turned out the lights in order to see the pattern on the fabric. Yes, this is a drawback to projector sewing. Often the patterns are not optimized for the projector and you need almost total darkness to see the projection. Sometimes you also need additional help in order to see a fainter line. I did need some additional help on the Breezys but a white piece of paper to guide my cutting did the trick and I had the dresses cut out fairly quickly.
Next up was a Be Independent (the dresses were sewn by color grouping so that I had minimal thread changes to make on my serger / coverstitch machine). Same minor issues with this one.
“Wait!” You say. “I thought this blog post was about the awesomeness of E and Ms projector patterns?
I’m coming to that!
For the next three dresses I went with two Aubreys and a Sweetie Pie.
For some reason I was not thinking clearly (or maybe I was) and when I set up for the first Aubrey I forgot to turn out the light and close the door. Half way through cutting out the pattern I realized this and looked down. Clear, bold lines were standing out on the dark fabric I was cutting. My overhead light was on, my light over my machines was on and it wasn’t quite dark out. Hmm …
Making even quicker work out of the Aubrey than the Breezy (this says a lot since the Aubrey is a more complicated pattern), I moved on to the Sweetie Pie. This time I didn’t even think about turning off the lights and I cut the Sweetie Pie out in full daylight with all the lights on. AWESOME!
In recent months Ellie and Mac has updated many patterns to be more projector friendly. Both the Adult PJs and the Grow With Me pajamas got a glow up making my holiday pj making so much easier this year than last!
Using a projector saves me a ton of time and has increased the accuracy of my patterns. I no longer find myself wondering how much variation my not-so-perfect taping job has added to my pdf patterns. I also no longer have a closet full of cut out patterns – leaving me far more room to store fabric!
Using readily available programs I have learned how to alter patterns on my computer and once again, the bold lines of the Ellie and Mac patterns have been wonderfully helpful.
If you are ready to try projector sewing I highly recommend E & Ms patterns – they make cutting with a projector a breeze!
(Written by: Devorah Zamansky)
