Volume control

I caved recently and joined the Cashmerette Club. Well, they had a generous discount on it. If they supplied paper patterns as a matter of course I'd have joined ages ago, because it really is excellent if you sew and you have curves; but they don't. They supply PDFs.

I had never used a PDF pattern before, and I must admit I didn't like the idea. I don't have a printer at home (inkjet printers are a rip-off, and I don't need to do anywhere near enough printing to justify getting a laser printer), so, if I had a PDF pattern, I was always going to have to send it to a copy shop for printing. PDF patterns are generally cheaper than the paper ones due to this, but I did suspect it might turn out to be rather a false economy. Of course, there is also the fact that Cashmerette are based in the USA (though who knows how long that will be the case, since the owner is a British immigrant?), so the P&P fees on paper patterns would have been eye-watering anyway. To be honest, I'd far rather buy Cashmerette patterns through Minerva, where I can get free postage on quite a modest order; but they don't stock anywhere near the full range. Alas.

And, of course, there are the club patterns, which are exclusive to members, and they're free. As soon as I joined the club, I picked six of them; there are 32, but I don't want them all, because a lot of them are styles I can't wear due to Sibyl and her little vagaries. (A pity. Some of those dresses are really nice... but I am not fishing up my skirt if Her Royal Squirtiness requires urgent attention.) Some of the others aren't that wheelchair-friendly (there are two lovely coats, but they're long, which is awkward), and then there are some that aren't my style. I'm not a bomber-jacket person. Nor a jeans jacket person, come to that; I don't do denim. But still, six patterns - that's pretty good. Effectively that amounts to almost the whole of my membership fee right off the bat, and there'll be another one coming out every month over the next year, so even if I like/can wear only two or three of those, the club will still be a very good investment... especially with all the other benefits. Like free enrolment in "Sloper School", which, if you're not already a member, costs about the same as a year's membership. I think "sloper" is an American term, because I hadn't heard it before, but what it means is a dress shell for fitting purposes. As I've just mentioned, I can't wear dresses, but it's still extremely useful to be able to fit one, because that means you can fit pretty much everything else you want to wear. So I'm definitely up for that; I'm sure I'll learn a few fitting tweaks I haven't already either come across elsewhere or worked out.

As well as the six free patterns, I also bought one, because it is my favourite Cashmerette design and I've had my eye on it for quite a while now (since it came out, in fact!). It is the very simple, very elegant Montrose Top. Though I must admit I was mildly annoyed when I got to the checkout, because they don't show you what you actually pay; there's another £3 that is added on at the checkout for "taxes" (which I suppose means the Trump Tariff - drat the man; I'd forgotten him, briefly and mercifully). Oh well. I'll bear that in mind for future reference, but I think they should include it in the published prices nonetheless.

OK... so now I have seven lovely patterns, but they're all PDFs. Thankfully Cashmerette have a blog post with suggestions (for various different countries) on where to get them printed without paying through the nose. I picked Plan Printing UK more or less at random, and arranged for four of the patterns to be printed. They're pretty reasonable at £1.45 per A0 sheet, although they do rather sting you for P&P, so if you use them it's best to order in bulk. Or, at least, semi-bulk, as I did. It cost me about £32 to get these patterns printed, including the aforesaid expensive P&P. Well... could be worse, I suppose. It means my Montrose Top pattern ended up costing me about £26, and the paper version is actually £25 on Minerva (they didn't have it last time I looked; I should have got it there instead!), so next time I need to do a bigger print run in order to break even.

It's just that...

Well, you see, Plan Printing UK helpfully explain that when you print sewing patterns with them, they fold them to A4 size. And I thought, great, that works, I'd far rather they did that than rolling them. So I was, in my innocence, expecting a large envelope. Probably one of those board-backed ones with "Please Do Not Bend" printed on it in big red letters.

That is not what arrived on Monday. I got the box in the feature photo. I haven't measured it, but at an educated guess it's about 10 cm high. And it is full. No extra packing material here!

Well, now I understand why Cashmerette have an entire blog post on how to store PDF patterns. There are lots of good ideas in it, though to be honest I'm not sure how to make any of them work in here; I suspect what I'm going to end up doing is cutting out the pattern pieces to try to save a bit of space, putting them in large envelopes (or possibly those plastic sleeves with the punched edges that go in ringbinders - I may still have some of those), and storing them in the box they came in.

And I don't quite understand why they take up so much space. To be sure, it's good paper; they use 75 gsm, which is very nice (the more patterns I use which are printed on decent paper, the more I am growing to dislike tissue paper patterns - they are great if you go in for pattern matching, but I've never had to do that, so I'd rather have the durability). But then so do Nina Lee, or at least they use something of a very similar weight, and I should think you could get at least ten Nina Lee patterns into that box, envelopes and all.

Oh well. I'm not actually sewing at all at the moment because I have too many other crafts on the go, so I can take my time thinking about all that. (For the curious, I still have a Southbank on the go which will get blogged at some point as long as I don't actually die first, and queued up after that are the dressing gown and the floral Tencel set. The Montrose will have to join the queue after that. But - of course - there is another lady at church who's due at the end of April, so another baby jumper is going to have to start taking shape fairly soon.) In the meantime, my intermediate verdict on PDF patterns is: I'd still rather avoid them, to be honest, but at least they're better than having to pay US postage and additional Trump Tariffs.

On the bright side, I do have this little space in the flat where the box just slots in neatly!