PDF Sewing Pattern Cards from UpCraft Club

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PDF Patterns are making their way into your local sewing shops! Now you can skip the flimsy tissue and still shop local, buying both the fabric and pattern for your next project all in one place. UpCraft Club is  a new online pattern shop and they’ve come up with an innovative way to bridge the gap between independent pattern designers & independent brick & mortar fabric stores. It was so simple – I took a few pictures of how the process goes and of my new Out and About Dress!

This post was sponsored by UpCraft Club; they provided the materials for my top & paid me to write – all opinions and experiences are my own, of course!

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UpCraft Club is an online pattern shop with a bunch of membership benefits – you get one free pattern or video class each month (and 20% off anything else in the store) and gain JoAnn Fabrics VIP benefits, saving 10% off all purchases. Certain patterns are certified and held to a higher standard on top of that – you can see the certification process here. Even more impressive, UpCraft offers a money back refund if you purchase one of the certified patterns and don’t love it!

Separate from all those benefits, anyone can now buy a PDF pattern in a store that stocks them, thanks to UpCraft Club’s handy little pattern cards (and their patent-pending technology that makes it possible)! Before now, local quilt & craft stores could only sell independent designers’ patterns if they offered a paper version – leaving indie designers with pallets of pattern envelopes in their garages, and shop owners with sales on the table when customers were looking for something they didn’t offer.

It was so easy to buy my pattern & fabric all in the same shop, supporting a local business (Stitch – now defunct), an online startup (UpCraft Club), and an independent designer (Sew Caroline).

I shopped at Stitch, a modern craft & fabric shop in downtown Des Moines. They had 4 options laid out, with pattern samples sewn up behind the cards. I love their display! I bought my fabric here too, a soft Art Gallery Knit designed by Leah Duncan.

All I had to do was snag the card, there isn’t any charge or cost. The back includes all the sizing information, yardage requirements, and notions needed.  I purchased on my phone, but it would work just the same on a laptop, desktop, or tablet. There is a unique URL at the top of the card’s back to type in, taking me directly to an online shopping cart with the pattern loaded.

No searching, no typing on a tiny keyboard, it just automatically pulls it up and you check out. The file is emailed immediately, you can download it, print it, and get started sewing in a matter of minutes.

From downtown shopping to a new outfit in a day, not too bad! I turned Sew Caroline’s Out and About Dress into a tunic length top, and I just love it.

I just think this process is so clever – I like that it will introduce more people to PDF patterns because they are so much easier for beginners to use and enjoy! If you’d like more information as a shop owner (or as a shopper, who would like to see this at their local store), visit this page on UpCraft Club for more information!

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