How to print and assemble a PDF pattern

It is true that PDF patterns have both fanatic supporters and sworn enemies. There are people who find the work of piecing a pattern together simply exhausting and others who love the instant gratification they provide by being immediately available after purchase. Today we are here to show you how to print and assemble a PDF pattern, which is actually not that hard. All you need is a home printer, a pair of scissors (or a paper guillotine, if you have one) and a stick of glue or scotch tape, whichever you prefer.

Now, before showing you how easy it is to piece a PDF pattern together, we wanted to tell you that all of our patterns are also available in an A0 size, which you can send to a copy shop and they will print it in a big sheet. This file is included in your downloads, so if you don’t have a home printer, you can choose that option.

How to print your PDF pattern correctly

First order of business is to choose the right settings for printing at home. Open your print-at-home (A4) file in Adobe Reader (it is a free program which you can download here) and click on the ‘Print’ button. A window will open. Make sure that the option ‘Actual Size’ is selected (NOT the ‘Fit’ option, as this will resize your pattern).

To make sure that your pattern will print in the correct size, we recommend that you print out the test page first. This is a page which includes a test square. So, go to this page in your file and from the Print window select ‘Current Page’ to print just that.

Once your test page is printed, take a ruler or a measuring tape and make sure your square measures 5 x 5 cm. If it does, then continue by printing all the pages in the file.

As you can see in the photos below, our patterns have a rectangle border all around the page to help you trim and assemble the pages more easily. This border should appear on all of your pages and if it doesn’t, your printing settings are wrong.

Now, let’s move on to the assembling part.

To save you some time, we recommend that instead of cutting all the lines around each page, cut out only the right and bottom line on every page. That way you will have some extra piece of paper to overlap those pages and it will make the process much faster.

Once you have cut all the bottom and right lines, start sticking the pages together row by row, making sure that all the lines match up.Use the diagram included in the first page of your pattern file to help you.

You can use either scotch tape or glue stick to assemble your pattern. Both ways are easy. If you use tape, we recommend cutting smaller pieces and stick 3 of them along each page, instead of cutting one long piece of tape that is not so easy to handle.