You thought material prep was hard..

So not only do you have to prep your material you also have to prep your pattern.
For those unfamiliar with a sewing pattern, it is a huge huge sheet of onion thin paper with multiple numbered pieces. You first find on your instructions which pieces you need (for example 1,2,4,5,6,7,8) and then you need to carefully unfold the huge sheets and find your pieces. Just to add complications in, each piece is multi-sized meaning the number 8 piece has 6 outlines so you can make it a size 6 or a size 16.

My first confusion came from the internet which said to keep the pieces carefully so you could reuse them. Well if I was a size 14 how was I supposed to keep the size 16 outlines but still cut out my size 14 onto material. The answer is this: if the pattern cost you less than $5 cut out to your size and forget about saving the bigger sizes. You can always buy it again.

So with this in mind I set about snipping out the pieces required for the red and white dress. My mom and my book said to cut them out leaving excess around the edges of the biggest pattern and then do your ironing and then your cutting. Yes you heard me, you have to iron these things.

Take your iron, put it on a dry setting at the lowest temperature you have and carefully iron each piece of paper. You need to get out all those folds and wrinkles. Again I need to stress the usefulness of a good iron…mine spit up some drops of water even though I had drained it. It made the paper kind of wrinkled, hopefully won’t screw me up to much.

After ironing each and every piece you then need to find a safe place to store them flat until you use them so they don't get any new folds. Thank you Blaise for letting them sit in the living room.

Next up...we sew!