Reana

HOW TO PRINT PDF PATTERNS WITH LESS STICKY TAPE


Today I found a way to make my life better. I wanted to share in case it can make your life better too. Now you might already be doing this (you are pretty smart. And pretty. And I love your nails today), but here's a heads up if you're not.


NB: I'm not sure about printing outside of Australia, so this might have an Australian flavour. If you are outside of Australia, come say hi! Bring your big printers & we'll introduce you to a quokka.
I find snipping & sticking together A4 sheets of paper a pain in the ass, but I love PDF patterns' immediacy & ability to be reprinted when I screw up. My favourite PDF option is when the designer releases a 'copy shop' or 'coffee shop' version, except for one issue:
Most Australian printing shops (none that I've tried, anyway) have paper or a printer large enough for American or Canadian copy shop PDFs. My solution has been to print whatever their largest is, then trawl through the A4 PDF to locate the additional pieces, print them, and attach them to the large pice of paper.
A bit tedious but it involves less sticky tape.

The next 2 patterns in my line up are Closet Case Files Ginger Jeans & Jolie Marie Louise Chloé Blazer, two patterns offering a copy shop PDF (thank you ladies!). I popped into Office Works today to do the usual PDF print & screw around, but was met with a delightfully helpful human who offered to print it as a poster instead.
For future reference he's told me to ask for the file to be printed (1) no scaling (2) as a poster (3) with an overlap (10 or 20mm is good).

The numbers
If it's something small, like a cami pattern, sticking together a few A4 sheets is no biggie. But let's take today's 2 patterns as examples:
NB: Below examples are as per Office Works pricing, and do not include sticky tape or labour.
Closet Case Files Ginger Jeans - View B Option 1- A4 28 sheets x 10c each = $2.82
Option 2 - 1 x big paper A4 add ons 1 x big sheet ($4) 6 A4 sheets (10c each) = $4.60
Option 3 - Printed as poster 2 x big sheet ($4) = $8

Jolie Marie Louise Chloé Blazer Option 1 - A4 56 pages x 10c each = $5.60
Option 2 - Printed as poster 4 poster pages x $4 each = $16

The conclusion
It's more expensive to print the poster pages (at office works, anyway), but I'm sure including sticky tape would minimise that gap. More importantly, my time is worth quite a bit to me. If I printed the Chloé Blazer in A4 I would have cut 84 edges and sticky taped 97. Instead I snipped no edges and sticky taped 3.

So there you go! And if you've got an ever better suggestion, lay it on me!

ETA: Thanks to everyone who has commented!

Elizabeth suggests splitting the pattern pieces at home before taking them in so you can choose where the splits go and, hopefully, avoid even more sticky tape.

Lara suggests a 'plan printer.' I haven't tried this yet, but it sounds like a great idea.

Happy printing!
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