How to Trace a Vintage Pattern
Single-sheet vintage patterns can look confusing, with overlapping pieces and lines to follow.
This tutorial shows you how to identify and trace the pieces you need.
Learn this skill, and you'll open up a treasure chest of vintage designs to sew and make your own.
What is an overlayed Print vintage pattern?
This is the original, very fragile pattern from 1952. These vintage patterns were printed in a single layer, with several pattern pieces sharing one sheet and their lines crossing and overlapping.
Each piece has its own line style or number, which you follow to trace it onto a separate sheet of paper. Remember to check the pattern key and transfer all the markings, including the grainline, as you trace.
My Pattern Tracing and Drafting Toolbox.
I have quite a few tools, but none of them are expensive. The basic essentials are pins, a tracing wheel, a long ruler or straightedge of at least 50 cm (although a metre- or yard-long ruler is better), a long dressmaker's tape measure, pencils, highlighter pens and a few permanent markers.
Curved rulers or French curves are useful but not essential. A basic school set square or a larger quilting square is also handy, along with dressmaker's carbon paper.
How Do I Use Them?
The original printed sheet, whether tiled on US Letter paper or printed in wide format, stays intact and ready to use again.
You can use translucent tracing paper, but I find it much easier and cheaper to use a spiked tracing wheel with decorator's lining paper or economy wide-format A0 paper underneath the print.
The following images will demonstrate both digital tracing using Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape and traditional hand tracing with paper and a tracing wheel.
A recent customer survey suggested we're split roughly 50/50 between digital and paper pattern users. I use both methods, depending on how I feel. Sometimes an afternoon spent tracing patterns by hand, listening to music and fending off the cat, who absolutely loves paper patterns, is hard to beat! 🙂
The surface underneath the paper layers needs to have some padding. This shows how clear the perforations are from the spiky tracing wheel
Start with the pattern piece list and key. Although it's a French pattern, full translations of all the labels are provided.
Look at the different line styles, then find pattern piece number 1. Every pattern uses the same line style for each numbered piece, so you'll soon get used to recognising what you're looking for.
I often mark my starting corner with a small cross and highlight the complete outline before tracing one pattern piece at a time. I find this the fastest method, and it helps me make sure all the internal markings are transferred correctly.
One of the great benefits of tracing patterns is how much better you get to know their shapes and sizes as you work. When we simply unfold a pattern from a packet, we often don't pay nearly as much attention. Tracing means you're gradually building up each piece yourself, giving you a much better understanding of how the pattern is put together.
Get the First One Right, Then It's Easy
I've outlined three pattern pieces here to show how easy the simpler shapes are to identify. Each piece fits entirely on the printed sheet, so it's a straightforward job to trace the lines, either digitally or by hand on the table.
Every pattern uses the same key, so you'll soon get used to knowing what to look for. I often mark my starting corner with a small cross and highlight one pattern piece at a time.
Why Skirt Pieces Need Extending
Skirt panels are, by their nature, larger pattern pieces. So the waistline and sides down to the hip are drawn, with directions for completing each piece.
Here is the back skirt panel traced in pink. It is piece number 5 on the printed sheet and shows the curved waistline, side seams extending below the hips, straight grainline, three darts and centre back line.
At the end of each line, you'll find the finished measurement. In this case, the centre back line measures 75 cm. Of course, you can adjust this to suit your preferred skirt length, measured from the waist to the hem.
Remember, no hem allowances are included.
Here’s a quick Photoshop trace in blue over my photo of the pattern on the table, showing the lines I’ll mark and trace with a tracing wheel onto the lining paper underneath. Most skirt pattern pieces are printed this way.
Pleats and darts can always be adjusted, but I see too many sewists treating them as fixed features.
The position of a dart on a pattern shows the intended style lines, but the size of the dart should be adjusted to suit your own body shape and curves.
These Folded Patterns Look Bonkers Until You Know the Trick
I’m going to show you one of the most complicated types of pattern tracing you’re likely to come across, although the pattern itself is actually quite simple to sew.
This blouse has just three pattern pieces, but the front piece is unusually large because the necktie and front bodice are combined into one piece.
First, I’ll show you a digital trace, followed by the same pattern pieces traced by hand onto paper on my floor.
This type of pattern piece is less common and is most often found on bodices with longer kimono sleeves, where the bodice and sleeve are cut as one piece.
Once you see how it works, it all makes sense, and you’ll find these pieces easy to recognise in future.
Use the original cutting layout included in the instructions to see the actual shapes of the pattern pieces.
This makes them easier to identify and follow on the tracing sheet.
The broken red lines along the top and bottom edges show where the pattern piece is too large to fit on the original printed sheet. These sections are therefore folded back on themselves along the red lines.
In this first image, I've highlighted the front pattern piece but left the folded sections unmarked. In the next image, I'll highlight these sections too.
Showing the two folded sections of the blouse front pattern also highlighted. If I am tracing digitally in Illustrator, I'll trace the folded-back sections as shapes and then reflect them so they flip over and join the two shapes.
This image is showing my digitally traced sewing pattern piece unfolded, so the complete blouse front and tie are now as they will be cut out. I check that all notches and grain lines, darts, pleats or fold lines are marked on and its good to use on the projector or arrange as a print file.
Here is the same blouse front, this time traced onto actual paper. I pin the printed pattern over a wide sheet of decorator’s lining wallpaper, then carefully and slowly follow all the lines with my tracing wheel.
To get good, clear perforations, the surface underneath needs a little cushioning. I alternate between a cheap yoga mat and a short-pile carpet in my computer room.
This shows step one of tracing the folded section by hand. I slip a second piece of paper underneath, trace the extra folded section, then flip it back over and outline it with a marker pen.
As with most things in sewing, there are several ways to do it. As long as you end up with a complete pattern piece, whichever method works for you is perfectly fine.
Here’s another look at the folded section to make it clear how it needs to be traced, flipped over and joined along the broken red line.
These larger pattern pieces are less common, but they can be confusing the first time you come across one.
Here is the final pattern on paper showing where the red fold lines were on the original.
The pattern piece is now ready to be compared to my own sized pattern block, then to add seam allowances and make a mock-up test
"This tutorial changed how I view vintage sewing."
