Monday, June 11, 2012

A pattern printing press right in my home. Who knew?

My husband has done quite a search to find a printer to print the many patterns that I have to deliver soon for Riley Blake. Printing in large format is so expensive. For one print, we were getting quotes like $1.75 each. How do you make any money selling a pattern when you are paying so much? We were bound to printing 100 prints at once to get a decent deal. It was like 66 cents per sheet. We called today to have them print for us, and they told us they had misquoted us. Shoot! What to do?

My husband pointed out that my vinyl cutter has a plotter on it that we have never used. It comes with a flimsy little ball point pen attachy thing, which wasn't quite good enough. So we wound some tape around a gel pen, cut off the top of the pen so it didn't get in the way of the top of the cutter. The printing was quite nice. 

Then we took my patterns in an illustrator file and imported them into my vinyl cutting software. Guess what!! It worked like a charm. We bought a role of 18" x 32 yards of paper from IKEA for $4.99 and will now be printing each of my Messy Macy Bib/Smock patterns ourselves (or rather letting my plotter draw the patterns for us.) It works so nicely.


It is such a miracle when something like this works out the first time around. And now I know that I have a pattern printer in my home!!! Oh the fun I will have. I can't wait. I am going to save hundreds of dollars this time around. And who knows what it will lead to?


5 comments:

  1. Hi,

    Whats the make and model of this cutter and where did you get it

    Thanks,
    Yemi

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  2. Mine is an old model, but any plotter/cutter will work with a pen. I bought mine on ebay 7 years ago.

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  3. Will you tell me what software program you are using to make the patterns or did you just draw up a few simple ones on your own?

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    Replies
    1. I draw mine by hand then scan it and create it through Adobe Illustrator. I don't have special pattern making software.

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  4. When you say you scan it, what do you use to scan such a large item like a pattern?

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