Clothing patterns

[rosmerta]

Does anyone know where I can get some clothing patterns from? Am wanting to make some simple summery skirts and dresses. And also material!

tia

this is a good place to start for patterns.
Fabric is much easier to buy in real life rather than online.

Thanks MrsB, that website is great. Out of curiosity, do you make any clothes yourself?
This is the first time I've tried it so any tips you have would be appreciated!

I've done a few in my time but not on a large scale - always found dragging the sewing machine out of the loft the hardest bit so if they're small I almost prefer to do them by hand.

I've done quite a bit of dress making and the most important things are:- When you get your paper pattern, make sure you take notice of the arrows on the paper and put them on the straight grain of the fabric. Tell me if you don't know what that means. If you don't your clothes won't 'hang' right.
The other very important thing is to press as you go along. It will tell you in your paper pattern where to press seams open, or to one side.

Hi DutchOma, is that just putting the arrows so that it follows the thread of the fabric, iyswim?

You need to measure the distance between the arrow and the selfedge of the material and make sure that top and bottom of the arrow are the same distance from the edge of the material. Hope that makes sense. Just following the thread of the material isn't quite going to do it.