What to Expect
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What to Expect From Paprika Patterns

Sometimes when there’s a new Indie pattern company I buy their pattern just to see how they’re doing things. How have they styled their instructions? What do their PDF patterns look like? What new inventions have they come up with to improve user experience? And I imagine you’re wondering about the same when you see a new company pop up whose designs you like. We’ve gotten used to a certain standard from Indie patterns and expectations are high. Since we’re new in the neighbourhood I thought I’d show you some previews of our patterns and instructions so you know what you get when you buy a pattern from us.

Pattern

We offer our PDF patterns in both a tiled print at home version and a Print shop version. There’s a short print guide, the obligatory 3″ and 10x10cm boxes to check if you’ve printed at the right scale and a legend to explain the symbols and abbreviations used. The pattern pieces have been nested and all necessary information has been included on every pattern piece: how many to cut in what fabric and what the seam allowance for that piece is.

What to Expect

Skill Builders

Our instructions have a clean layout for good readability. Besides the introduction there’s a size chart, finished measurement chart, fabric requirements and a line drawing of the pattern. The sewing level is indicated with three dots, but also lists the skills needed for this pattern. I always find it hard to interpret sewing level indicators on their own: two out of three dots can mean anything. A lot of people call themselves ‘intermediate’ but what skills this entails can vary a lot. So the ‘skill builders’ on our pattern tell you exactly what you need to know to estimate how easy or difficult the pattern will be for you. At the same time they indicate what skills you’ll be improving with that particular pattern.

What to Expect 2

Easy acces to relevant content

Another part I’m very happy with is how we’ve tied our instructions to our online content. When you get stuck on a certain step you don’t want to have to browse through a website to see if maybe the designer has written something about that particular step. When you’re sewing you want to know exactly on which subjects and where you can find more information. That’s why we’ve included short links in the instructions. For example, in the Jade Skirt instructions Step 1 is folding the front piece. Under that step you’ll find a box that gives you extra tips on how to do this, and a short link that leads to a blogpost with a video about folding the Jade front. If you’re reading from your laptop or tablet you can click this link in the PDF, and if you’ve printed the instructions you can just type the link in your browser. The link for the folding video is paprp.at/jade4. No www’s or anything else, just click or type and you’ll get to the info you need!

What to Expect 3

Website

We’ve tried to keep our site as simple as possible. Everything is stored on the same website, no separates for shop and blog. We’ve split our content into two blogs: Resources and Tutorials. Resources is where I’ll post about company related news, such as posts about specific patterns. Tutorials is where you’ll find step by step walkthroughs, both of steps in the instructions and of pattern hacks and the sort.

When you’ve bought a pattern you’ll always find the latest version in your account. The version number is noted in the name of the download file. The changes that come with a new version are listed in your account so you can decide whether you need to download the new version or not. You don’t have to keep track of an email if you want to print it again and you can download it as often as you want.

I hope this gives you a better idea on what you can expect from our patterns! We’ll continue to improve things as time moves on and we receive feedback from you. If you have ideas about anything we could improve, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or email us!

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3 Comments

  1. You’re right, the expectations on indie patterns are much higher than on others. I think we all hope to get something much more understandable patterns and instructions than we’re used to get from the big five (or four?) whose instructions often are frustrating. On the one hand, this expectations are a bit unfair against the indie patterns constructors. But in most cases I know nearly all of our expectations are met because it’s “your baby” and you put everything you can in it.
    When reading this post I got the impression that you’ve set the bar quite a bit higher. ;) I love your idea to note the seam allowance on the pattern pieces and the explanation of the recommended skills. So, in one sentence, you had some great ideas and they’re very well integrated.
    Best wishes,
    Friederike

    1. Ah thanks so much Friederike! It could be seen as unfair, since all those extras are more work of course and you’re all on your own instead of having a whole team. But it’s also what sets us apart. And it makes sewing more accessible, you don’t need to follow a course just to decipher instructions :)

  2. You’ve clearly been thoughtful about what is missing and valuable about indie patterns. I hope all you’ve invested of yourself will bear fruit.

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