Sewing is gaining popularity these days. It is great as a hobby and allows you to express your creativity while making something useful for friends, family and loved ones. The thoughtfulness and care that goes into intricately designed textiles can make quite an impact on others.
It’s also a good way to gain an income on the side of your main job. People prefer to wear custom-designed clothes that have been made especially for them. There are many customers who are willing to pay good money for customized clothing and a master crafter can earn a good income from custom sewing jobs.
The Best Free Sewing Patterns Available
One thing that you do need for success in the sewing business is a variety of stitching patterns that you should be good at. Whether you are new to the craft or an experienced crafter looking for inspiration, you can get plenty of free sewing patterns online that will be very useful later on. There are a large number of blogs run by hobbyists and professionals who love to share new ideas on sewing. All you need to do is make a simple search on the internet. Quite a few of these bloggers include links to PDFs that can be downloaded for free or a small fee for their patterns.
Then there are commercial sewing machine manufacturers. These businesses also offer a number of free patterns that are available online. You can easily find yourself browsing and filtering through hundreds of custom patterns until you find the one that you really like.
We have prepared a guide to help you cut down the time you spend searching for sewing patterns online and spend it on something better. Like getting down to the sewing and creating designs that you really enjoy. Here is a list of some of the best online resources for free sewing patterns.
Online Magazines Have Free Sewing Patterns
This is probably the most reliable internet resource for beautiful sewing patterns. Online sewing and design pattern magazines will only give you sewing patterns from experts that have been tried and tested by hundreds of professionals. This ensures that new and experienced crafters will have no problems in using them.
Five of the most popular online sewing magazines are listed here.
The Sewing Directory
This is a great resource for sewing enthusiasts. They have an extensive library of sewing patterns and all of them are separated into different categories allowing you to browse through them easily based on the type of project that you are working on.
Whether you are doing patchwork quilting, upcycling old textiles or making creative designs for customers, you will find something useful here that will help you improve your crafting and project output.
Sew Style and Home
This is a great website that has plenty of good patterns for download. The website is focused more on home crafts and creative designs for reusing the old fabrics but you can also find awesome ideas on making new designs.
They have hundreds of pages of creative designs and the patterns get updated on a fairly regular basis. You can search through the projects to find something that works for you. It’s a must-visit website for sewing professionals and hobbyists alike.
Love Sewing
Love Sewing was put together by professional crafters who wanted to share ideas on how to improve their skill. It is a well-organized magazine that has lots of tips on sewing and also helps people who are new to sewing by directing them towards the right sewing machines and other resources.
They have built a large library of sewing patterns and designs that can be downloaded from Love Sewing Mag. Whether you are looking to craft a gift, piece of clothing or seasonal textiles, you are sure to find good and easy patters on this mag.
Simply Sewing
Another great website that is particularly popular among hobbyists. If you are looking for fresh new ideas that are easy to use then Simply Sewing Magazine is for you. You will find everything from sewing patterns to letters and words stitching here. You will also find ideas on how to make sewing accessories, home decorations, and soft toys.
The magazine also reviews new and old sewing machines and readers can post their reviews and ratings for the best stitching machines available in the market. If you like creating new items from recycled clothes and textiles in your home, then you will find this magazine very useful.
Sew Now
This is a popular magazine that is favored by long-time sewing professionals. They maintain an online record of all their published issues in an archive on the website. If you are a follower of this magazine and know a pattern that you would like to use, you can search their records to find what you need. All older magazine issues are available for free.
Another great thing about this magazine and sewing patterns on offer is that they put up a reference for the skill level that you need to be able to use a pattern. This can be helpful, especially to new users as they can easily search for the patterns that they will be able to complete for their projects. More experienced users can go for more complex designs with no need to search for easier patterns.
Blogs Have Free Sewing Patterns
Blogs and hobbyist websites are another great resource for free sewing patterns online. You can download free design patterns from bloggers who have tried and tested stitching designs themselves or post on their blog about a design that they have seen somewhere.
Many bloggers create new designs from scratch that you can use in your crafts. You can also improvise the design and add your own personal touch to it. This is an approach that bloggers also follow. Many bloggers take an existing sewing design from a sewing magazine and then add their own patterns across it to create something unique and crafty.
Just to be sure that the design will work, check the comments below the blog-posts. A blogger may post a very complex design on their page that looks beautiful but is very difficult to create, even with the best of effort. People commenting under the blog post will be more likely to give an actual account of how good or difficult it is to create the design in practice.
Bloggers are also not as organized as professional magazines. They don’t categorize their design patterns neatly, so it may take you a while to search through their designs.
However, there is really no match for the level of creativity and expertise that you will find on professional crafter blog sites. They are way ahead of other sources for free sewing pattern designs online. You will definitely find something inspirational on blog sites.
Other Websites with Free Sewing Patterns
Sewing websites are another popular source for getting free design patterns and inspirational ideas for your sewing projects. Some of the popular online websites for free sewing patterns include.
All Free Sewing
This website has an extensive range of sewing design patterns online. The sheer volume of free design patterns and tutorials will keep you browsing it for days. Stitching patterns are available for everything including bags, purses, embroidery patterns, Christmas and holiday sewing, dress patterns, maternity clothing, dining and kitchen decorations, upholstery and furniture.
All the patterns can be accessed and reviewed for free but you do need to create an account to use the website. Tutorials are also available that include DIY coat patterns for your pets.
Free Needle
This is a great website for the online sewing community. It’s been around since 2007 when it first started and gained popularity over the last 12 years. Free Needle offers beautiful free sewing patterns for almost anything that you can think of. It includes patterns for men’s, women’s and children’s clothing.
They have patterns for worn accessories as well as home decorations. Designs include patterns for lampshades, cushions, pillows, tablecloths, curtains and wall pieces. They also have accents for the bathroom, kitchen, bedrooms, dining area, living room, and kid’s room. They also have designs for pet supplies such as pet coats, beds, and toys.
The majority of patterns featured on Free Needle come with pictures of photographs of finished projects. This can be useful as it eliminates the need for guessing what the garment might look with a line drawing.
Every free pattern shown on the website has an instructions tutorial that can be reviewed before you download the file. The website also offers a step by step video instruction for some selected patterns. A full section is devoted to “learn how to sew” which can be useful for beginners. It offers clear instructions for home crafters on how to learn the skill.
Handmade Jane
This is an excellent website for beginners and intermediate sewers. It has amazing tutorials for crafting accessories and clothing using a variety of tools and fabrics. The website gets visited by many online users and is followed by hundreds of sewers who rate it highly. Design patterns and tutorials are put up regularly and they are easy to follow.
Instructions are posted in a step-by-step manner with pictures. Designs posted here also get picked up and published on magazines so you can imagine its popularity.
Elle Apparel
Another great website that receives high ratings from sewing professionals is Elle Apparel. It is run by Leanne Barlow who is a professional designer and sewing expert. They regularly put up new sewing design patterns for everything from cushions and tablecloths to dresses and all kinds of attire.
It is run in a light-hearted fashion and full of gorgeous pictures. Monthly dress inspirations and tutorials are put up to help sewers perfect techniques such as unpicking over-lock seams.
All Crafts
All Crafts is another amazing website that offers more than just free sewing design patterns. The site has a wide range of tutorials categorized as sewing patterns, crochet, Christmas, needlework, and knitting. The website also offers tutorials for additional crafts such as drawing, painting, gardening, floral designing, wood crafting and much more.
Coming back to sewing additional patterns are available for sewing accessories, home accents, clothing for men, women and children and gift items. One thing that you will find very interesting is that they have a link to patterns for reusable old fabrics that ensures nothing is wasted. Other free sewing patterns available on the website include purses, stuffed animals and holiday novelties.
The website also offers beginner tutorials for people who are new to home sewing and looking for ideas to improve their crafting skill. They also offer reviews on sewing machines, serger buying ideas, quilting machines, and embroidery machines. They also share sewing tips and pointers for more productive sewing. The website also shares information on how to clean and care for sewing machines properly.
Pinterest Boards are Also a Good Resource for Free Sewing Patterns
Pinterest is an image based website where people can post pictures of things they find interesting. It is a high ranking website with millions of visitors from around the world browsing the forums each day. The website has hundreds of active groups of fashion enthusiasts, crafters and even professional sellers that are posting images of their products and services for customers to buy.
It has a large number of crafters and textile design artists that share pictures of their completed projects for users. You can easily find thousands of free sewing patterns designs on the platform if you search for them on Pinterest.
Our Final Thoughts
Most of these designs will not have instructions. However, an intermediate or advanced-level crafter will be able to identify the patterns and use them for inspiration for their own sewing projects. If you’re tired of scouring the internet for free sewing patterns, it’s always an option to buy them. They’re also typically not very expensive and come in at around ten dollars.
