How To Make A Sewing Pattern for Bags in Adobe Illustrator | SEWING WITH STEVE

what's up guys welcome to sewing with Steve today I won't be on a sewing machine but I will be showing you how to make a pattern on Adobe Illustrator I do this professionally for clients so I think it would be really helpful for a lot of people I know when I first got started I didn't know about making a pattern I didn't know how to line up all the dimensions around the corners and just all that so I'm gonna make it really easy for you and hopefully by the end of it you completely understand exactly how to make a pattern and then you can go on and make bags that blow your own mind anyways I hope this helps if you guys have any questions please leave a comment appreciate you the first step in Adobe Illustrator is I create a new document now within this document I always go to print and I change points it always goes to points I changed that to inches and I'll just start with a 50 inch by 50 inch template you can kind of leave everything as is and create the document now here we have a fresh template so the backpack that I'm I'm going to be making is very basic it's gonna be 12 inches wide 18 inches high in 6 inches deep I'll add some some fun aesthetic situations but overall it's just gonna be super basic so I will start by going to my rectangle tool now I recommend if you are getting into illustrator for pattern making that you learn your hotkeys you can even customize them so I'm going to click on the document with my rectangle tool and make it 12 inches wide and 18 inches tall there is my basic shape I'm gonna zoom in a little bit I like to throw in a taper to the top of the bag I think aesthetically it looks good I'm gonna grab this corner and I'm going to bring it to the right by a half an inch now to get to that screen your hotkey you do a direct selection tool is going to be a if you hit V it gives you the black arrow and it selects the whole item object and if you hit a it gives you the white arrow so click on the other corner and then you can hit return or probably enter on on a PC and I'm just going to go - half an inch horizontal so that gives me a full one inch taper to the top of the bag so I will hit a again and I'll grab the bottom two anchors now there is this corners tool where you can click and drag and make corners instead of dragging I'm going to go to the top here and I'm going to give it a two inch radius then I'll grab the top two with my direct selection tool and I'm just going to drag these all the way and here you can see we have a very classic style backpack so what I'll do is I will figure out exactly what my bag is going to look like in Illustrator I'm just going to draw it out so there's maybe the front and then here is the back the back is just going to be plain mesh I'm going to use a standard mesh in the front I want there to be a pocket so I'm gonna I'm gonna create a line so you can go to the line tool or you can hit there's a back slash forward slash I don't know which one it is it's the same one as the question mark on a Mac I'm going to draw my line and I'm going to put this where I want the zipper to be now I like to drag it to the very bottom I hit return and this allows me to say say I want a six inch pocket allows me to go six inches up say I want it to be 7 inches I'll go up one more inch that aesthetically looks pretty good now I know that the zippers that I use with the seam allowance once the zipper is finished they're going to be about 3/4 of an inch and that's a standard number 5 YKK zipper so I will I'll take my line I will copy it which is you can go to edit copy or you can see here you do command C so I'm going to do command C and then I'm going to paste it in front which is command F and now I have two lines you can't tell but if I hit enter because I'm gonna move it by throwing in my dimensions I'm gonna put in minus 0.75 inches so now I have the front of my bag basically how it's going to look and in between those lines is going to be the zipper so next thing I'm going to do I said that I would do a six inch depth so I'm gonna take my rectangle tool again or click press M I'm going to click on the top right and I'm going to set my width to six inches and my height that's already set to 18 inches because that was the last shape that I made I'm going to create that so now I have the side profile of my bag I want this bag to have a side pocket and I want the side pocket to a line with the top of that zipper so you could get your line tool and you could draw a line straight over nice thing is the illustrator see this pink guide pops up I can just go to the edge and I can hit 6 inches and that's going to cover the width so that is where my pocket will end and I'm going to be doing a a binding tape grosgrain or whatever you want to call it and it's gonna be about 1/2 inch down so that's essentially what it's going to look like finished but you don't actually need that line you only need that single line now to put in my zipper I want the zipper to be on the front of the bag so if this were the front let's type in front here here's the front of my bag and here's the back you could do this if you need the reference I don't need to but I want you guys to be very clear about what it is I'm doing here I'm gonna grab my line tool again I'm gonna draw a line straight down on the face of the bank and then I'm going to hit V which gives me my black arrow I'm going to hit return and I'm going to go point seven five inches because that is the width of my zipper at a finished dimension so here we have the front of my bag and this is the zipper is going to basically just go all the way around on the front of the bag it's not necessarily ideal if your pocket ends exactly where your zipper is because you're gonna have a lot of seams or fabric layers right here if that's exactly where your Simas so what I'm actually gonna do is I'm gonna grab the bottom of my zipper and I'm going to make it extend let's just do one inch down and that's actually where my zipper is going to end so this is where I will have a seam underneath the pocket that's where the seam will be for my zipper and this will be my pocket so now that we have the front or the back profile the front profile and the side profile what I need to determine now is my interior so I'm gonna take that same front profile of the bag top them duplicate it in the center this all and I'm not going to show you guys exactly all the hotkeys I'm just going to kind of process through this if if you need to know hotkeys you can google those so I'm gonna draw my line and I want there to be a laptop sleeve so I'm going to draw a line at the bottom and I want the laptop sleeve to be 11 inches high so that's where it's gonna go so visually that is what it'll look like I'm also going to use binding across the top there and boom so I have the back of my bag the front of my bag the side of my bag and the interior I'm not gonna worry about any more crazy pockets because I want this to be super simple so if this is my bag I'm gonna go over to artboards over here on the bottom right if it's not there you can go up to window and you can select artboards and it'll pop up I'm going to create another artboard and what I will do here is show you how to do the pattern so my back panel is going to be one solid piece I set my hotkey to option command o and it offsets the path by whatever dimension that I want so if I want 3rd 3/8 inch seam allowance I'll put in point three seven five 3/8 of an inch and voila there is the piece of fabric that I would cut out now to get to that tool let me see if I can actually remember I'm go to object path offset path and that will bring you to the offset path so if you look up just Google how to set your quick keys you can custom put that in there because I don't believe that there's a quick key for it right out of the package with Adobe Illustrator so this I know is going to be my back panel let's just set something like a hundred we're gonna Center it this is where I get super anal so bear with me and I'm just going to Center align it there I like to because I'm gonna be printing out this pattern what I like to do is take that outside stroke and I'll go up top here to stroke and if it's not there believing the windows stroke here it'll bring up its own window right there but I just do it up here anyways I will do like 3 5 whatever it is and I will click on the stroke and then you can actually make it so the stroke Alliance to the outside let's zoom in real close here so here I've got it on the middle and you can actually see the blue line that's the stroke but because I'll be cutting this out of paper I want to cut on the actual line if you put it inside your you can cut on the outside of the line or you put on the outside and cut on the inside of the line it's completely up to you this is my preference so there is my back panel piece how stupid easy was that so I'm going to label this I'm gonna cut out one mesh actually let's do spacer mesh and then I'm gonna do one lining what I do when I do padding just a generic padding is I take that that primary shape this one and I am going to offset it by negative 0.5 inch I'm gonna delete the exterior one and that's generally how I set my padding so this is going to be back panel pad and I'm just going to cut one padding if you select this line and you actually click I the letter I you can click on this and it'll copy over that detail so there's my back panel padding so basically I'm going to layer one piece of mesh back panel padding and then one piece of lining and so those together there's my back panel now group these that way if I click on them I just have to click on one so then I'm gonna copy the front of the bag I'm gonna paste it now what I want to do here is extend these lines okay now there's these nifty tools right here what's it called Pathfinder if you don't see it windows Pathfinder if you don't have any of these set up if you just go to window and find the things so this one's Pathfinder this one specifically is what looking for and it'll cut up those pieces so what it did is it took those two lines whoops may ungroup it and that's the zipper piece so I don't need that as part of the pattern I'm just going to sew the zipper on but these two pieces this is my top front panel this is my back front panel so I will take both of these hit I will offset path and I'll do 3/8 of an inch boom hey I click on there there's my top front panel and there is my front bottom panel now if you see this when I still say a copy this and I paste it and I align them because my zippers 3/8 or 3/4 of an inch and this is to 3/8 sections they should line up perfectly which is pretty convenient so now what I actually need to do is I need to figure out what exactly does this pocket look like how does it function so what I want to do is actually have a piece of fabric that is going to be behind but it's give me the shape of the bottom front but it's going to have an extra three quarters of an inch of height plus the seam allowance so I'll show you I'll just grab this piece and I'll grab that I'll copy them and I'll paste them over here now I like to align them perfectly so that I know I'm not jacking it up I'm going to select both of them go over to my Pathfinder tool and this is the one that I'm looking for it takes the two shapes and it just gives me this similar area so this should fit perfectly right there I'm gonna offset 3/4 hit I click there and boom this let's copy this paste dent I don't like doing things more than once I also like being perfect it's insane okay so I'm gonna say front pocket interior and this is gonna be one lining because hey I did that too soon there copy this paste it I just it's very important for me that I label all my pieces so this is my front pocket exterior and this is going to be one shell which is my exterior fabric group those paste that again and this is going to be my front top exterior oh that doesn't look great in their group that so now I have the full front panel of my bag done now this is where it gets really fun this is I think where a lot of people get confused but to me it's very simple I'm gonna take both of these I'm gonna copy it all and I'm gonna paste it now I'm gonna work with a new another artboard just because I like having my space let's see and then I'll just pull in all my final pieces here so this will be like my working artboard so to figure out how long we're gonna have a couple panels we're going to have this top panel we're going to have the bottle bottom panel and then we're gonna have the pocket panel this is my pocket I'll kind of bring it over let's just figure out the base structure of the bag I'm gonna draw a line straight across from there I'm going to take this I'm gonna cut it ungroup I'm going to delete this bottom or move this bottom piece and not delete it I'm going to cut I'm going to take over this is a new tool see for cut also the scissors here so it's a scissor tool and you're going to click on Bowl of those bottom corners and you're going to delete that line you can also click a or select a which is your direct selection tool select that line and delete it so this now tells me the length of this top panel and this tells me the length of this bottom panel here's how you get the length of this you're going to go up to the top right it's going to say document info if you don't have it windows document info then you're gonna select the menu you're gonna go to objects now you see here it says it's twenty eight point nine six two inches that's how long this single path is twenty eight point nine six two inches so if I figure out without the zipper so this top panel - the zipper is going to be five point two five by twenty eight point nine six to twenty eight point nine six two by five point two five now this is the piece of fabric that will be showing I'm going to offset my path three quarters of an inch click I boom there there's my top panel and then this I'm gonna do the same for the bottom go up to document info pass twenty three point six seven five but this one has a width of six inches so six inches by twenty three point six seven five and I made it tall whatever I'll click II also this tool free transform and I'll just rotate it while holding shift so it it locks in there's my bottom panel offset the path three-quarters of an inch boom there's my bottom panel so now these I don't need those I do need this still I'm just gonna drag over the pocket get it out of the way and then let's see copy and paste these over here didn't group them so this is my top side panel and I'm going to do one shell and one padding because I want it to be lined and then I'm gonna copy and paste this bring it here this is my bottom side panel and then you could call this gusset or whatever it really doesn't matter as long as you know what the hell it means we did group and all right let's see here my bottom panel ciao okay so now I need to figure out the pockets so I'm just gonna do one full piece of fabric that's gonna wrap down and underneath the bag and then I'm just gonna put stitches across so I'll show you how I'm going to do that I'm gonna again copy this paste it I'm gonna line them on top so if you need to perfectly align two objects what you can do is select this rectangle and this shape because I want them to be aligned at the top I want it to be aligned to this one so I'm gonna click on this one again it's going to give me that selection believe they call it a key object so by hitting this hold shift click that and then click on this one again it gives me that as a key and then I can hit this a line tool on vertical-align:top you can also go into window and then you're gonna click on a line and that's going to bring up these tools very handy especially for pattern making this is my pocket so I'm going to just make a line all the way across I'm gonna select those pieces go to my Pathfinder like I showed you and I'm gonna divide it again I'm gonna ungroup I don't need this top panel anymore select a delete whoops select a delete that line go to my document info and there's 25.67514 25.67514 quarter of an inch click I click on the line so it off do it again group it cut it paste it bring it up here copy this paste it so this is going to be bottom pocket panel and that I can just do a shell I don't care to line it - enter group those guys okay so now I have my back panel my back padding my back into your panel my front exterior top my front exterior bottom my front pocket lining and then let's let's go ahead and take this one and we'll do another one lining piece I guess I would mean it's two lining so we'll do two lining pieces and what that does is it will allow me to put another piece behind this front panel to hide this kind of pocket piece and it'll line the front this exterior this is also going to be one shell cool make sure you get those right otherwise you'll be crying and after you cut out all the fabric one of the last pieces that I need is the laptop pocket so I'm going to take this copy it bring it down to my working artboard I'm going to divide it on group it boom here is my laptop pocket offset it 3/4 or 3/8 of an inch now because I'm gonna do binding tape across the top I don't actually need this top piece here so I'm gonna draw a line divide it to lead it there so now I have my laptop pocket and you could put padding in between this I'm not going to worry about it for this project copy this over and we'll just say a laptop pocket one lining boom line the center group it there it is so the only thing that I really have left to do is to make the straps what I will do is figure out how long I want to make them I generally do a three inch gap so let me just draw a three by three box I'm gonna Center align it there so it would start here it would go down I like mine to be two inches wide and probably 16 inches long so we'll do two by 16 to get that perfect I'll just click to a 16 make a rectangle boom there is my strap that's what they'll look like super fancy straps so how are we gonna pattern this let's figure that out I'm gonna paste it down here what I'll probably do is just do one piece of fabric so I'm going to copy and paste so it's a double wit I'll just combine those in the Pathfinder with the unite and then I will do a 3/8 of an inch and then select that now you can get all sorts of fancy with your straps you can do them however you want I will get fancy with it later but that's just how I would plan it I pasted that up here in my working pattern Center it up you can even turn it and this is going to be back strap and I'm just gonna make two of them so two shell pieces then you'll probably you'll probably put padding in there but I don't necessarily think that you need a pattern piece for it if anything this would basically be your pattern you could adjust it while you're sewing backstrap pad to padding boom there it is okay so you could do all sorts of things you could at the bottom pocket panel or the bottom side panel which I guess would just be the bottom panel for the gusset I will actually just call it the funnel gusset panel top gusset panel look Gussie you could if you wanted there to be padding him there you can grab that interior rectangle paste it offset it by 0.5 an inch that's generally what I do and I could told you guys and then boom yeah so my copy over this name and this will be bottom gusset padding and we're just gonna do one padding also I see that one is padding so we'll change that to lining and we'll change this one to lining as well because that's silly don't be silly Steve boom center center group it so there's my pattern my trick is that I go to Kinko's to get this printed off now I know that Kinkos is prints 36 inches wide so I'm gonna set up a document that's gonna be 36 inches wide by it I just give it a hundred let's see now this is my final pattern pieces so I will pull these all here so they're on that document and then I'm gonna paste them now what I need to do is just line these up and way that makes the most sense for printing you could take forever to do this I like to have some spacing for the be able to cut the paper out what I do is I order online I think I get on Amazon I haven't ordered a while cuz I've not been doing a lot of patterning lately but I order Manila pattern paper so it's nice and thick so what I'll do once I get this back from Kinkos is I will paste it the whole sheet on to lay out the role of the Manila and I will just paste it onto there and then cut it all out which is pretty awesome my Manila is four feet wide so I lose a little bit of efficiency but you know it's really not too bad so patterning a basic bag for sure does not take very long at all pattern and a more intense bag takes quite a long time and once you get it all paste it here one thing that I forgot to do while I was in there was putting notches so you could line up all your pieces now this is pretty simple and I'll just start from the top I'm going to select my line tool line segment tool I'm just going to click here in the top middle I go about you can go about 2 or 0.25 inches and then you want it to be pretty thick so you can notch that's a really good place seven notches in the top middle of that panel and then the bottom middle of the panel now we'll add some more in there as well but first let's just get those primary guys exactly where they need to go on all these panels there's one in the middle of that panel see it I you don't need it for the padding and this just makes it a breeze when you're lining up all your pieces all I did was I copied one of these guys and I'm just pasting them all over okay now the other important one is going to be on this panel so really the only one that I need is where the top of the pocket aligns with the back panel because all the pieces being sewn together will get aligned the full gusset will be sewn together before I bring here the only reference I need on here is the pocket so to figure that out I could just grab this copy it paste it and then I'll just get rid of all the interior lines I'll align it perfectly here and my pockets get on line right there they're very simple process so all my notches are in oh you know it's another notch that I really like to have is my three inches so if I go here I make that 3 by 3 inch box you could make a line it doesn't matter on line at center so here I'm gonna want my line there my line there's good base lines I got a little crazy on yeah sorry about that but it'll serve you well now just drag that over boom that way when I'm going to put my back straps on there it's very simple to a line as well as my webbing piece so there it is so now you can save this as a PDF you just go to file save as before in the format you're just going to go to PDF backpack pattern PDF I already named it range you I only want the third artboard so it's gonna be range 3 to 3 save it and yes I want to replace the one I already saved and then I can go to finder downloads backpack pattern zoom out and there's my pattern so I'll send this to Kinkos I'll just email it to them and they'll print it and be off to the races so I love you guys good luck there it is good luck charlie Hulu [Music]

Channel: Bag Buff

Views: 43,742

Keywords: Stephen, Jones, pattern making, bag pattern, backpack pattern, how to make a pattern, adobe illustrator, sewing with steve

Id: F3VV2k1h9Vo

Length: 35min 0sec (2100 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 04 2018