 to you guys a lot about indie sewing patterns. It's on the first impression Friday videos are more often than not an indie pattern. The Sew Together 21 challenge is always an indie pattern and inevitably whenever I talk about these patterns I hear from people about how they just despise PDF patterns. So I always ask them why to figure out you know what is the objection and inevitably it is I don't have the time patience or desire to take together my pattern pieces or I don't like the regular printer paper that I either have to print it on at home or even if I were to pay to have it printed at a coffee shop I still don't like the paper of that. So I have solutions, I have options and I want you guys to hear me out on this because there are a lot of really great indie patterns out there nowadays and with the influx of indie patterns there's also an influx of options on how you can get your indie patterns to you printed one way or another. I talked to you guys recently about Sublime Graphics. I got a ton of feedback from that video all of it kind of like whoa I can't believe this exists and I'm excited about it too and I'm going to demonstrate and like do a little show and tell for you guys about all the options that Sublime Graphics offers because there are a lot of them and so I just want to make sure you can find the best option for you. Okay so first and foremost let's talk about the three different types of papers that they have available. We have the regular printer paper this is what you print on at home it's 20 pounds it is your coffee shop paper if you're getting your prints printed locally if you are sending them off to another plotter this is what they're coming on this is the paper that is the heaviest. Okay then we have this really lightweight paper called tissue paper so this tissue paper is a little bit different than what you would see at like in your big four patterns. So the big four patterns are printed at a place that has machines that basically does like what a newspaper does very expensive very I mean there's one machine in the entire country the entire US that is able to do that so the fact that Sublime Graphics has figured out a way to print on tissue paper is great albeit it's not the exact same tissue paper that you are familiar with with the big four that said that could be a pro for you because that tissue paper can be a little bit delicate it can rip easily and you know it has its own slew of issues like when you go to alter it and things like that so this is what the tissue paper looks like you can see kind of how transparent it is a little bit noisy and I want to point out I picked out a smaller pattern piece and you can see here that there is some bleeding on the ink but I want to call your attention like here I don't think it matters too much I can still read everything very clearly but over here especially with the small dots I don't know whatever size that is they can kind of they're not running together but they're definitely a little bit fuzzy on the edges so that's something that I wanted to point out to you but I just want to make sure you know what you're going to get whenever you order the tissue paper and we'll talk a little bit more about ink here in a second so keep ink um and then talk in your mind then we have the Goldilocks right this is the one that's in between the two of them this is called tracing paper and of the three it's what I prefer it's not quite copy paper and it's obviously not tissue paper either it's somewhere in between it has kind of like a much more smooth finish um and this is what that looks like you can see you still can't you can barely barely see through it um but it's not as stiff as your copy paper I also want to call your attention to this pattern in particular because do you see this giant rectangle in the middle and then therefore all these other smaller rectangles shooting off of it this was sent to Sublime Graphics as a tiled pattern as a print at home eight and a half by eleven trim all the edges take it all together this was sent to them that way they have a proprietary piece of software that they developed themselves that digitally tapes all of this together so you send it off to them as all these individual sheets you can even see how the you know the pages are numbered as if you taped it together at home and their software tapes it all together for you they print it out on one big sheet so it looks like you sent it over to them as a coffee shop pattern or a large format print but it's not it's all these individual tiles so if you come across a pattern and there are some that only offers the printed home option um they will tape it together for you it's not sent to you with the intention of you having to cut anything other than your size of the pattern so that handles anyone who doesn't like taping got you covered there is a surcharge for the taping um the taping uh she said is anywhere between five dollars and fifteen dollars but more often than not is just a five dollar flat rate surcharge it just depends on um it depends on a whole bunch of different factors and she can't really tell if it's going to be five or fifteen until you send her your file so there's a little spot on their website where you can upload a file and they will um send you back a quote on how much it would cost to have it printed on your paper and if it needs to be tiled and all of that kind of stuff I also want to say about the papers that if my explanation of the papers was okay but still not good enough for you to decide which one you like the best they'll send you samples I think the samples will come plain without any printing on them though so keep that in mind but um they will send you free of charge uh samples of each of the papers so that you can tell for yourself which one you like the best um okay let's talk a little bit about the inks that they use if you have ever tried to use a laser printer to print your patterns and then you've gone to iron it what happens all of the ink like wipes away it's like it never existed it's like magical paper so they have taken great care to pick specific inks that are intended to be heated inks that they know people will be using and iron on knowing that you are going to need to iron your patterns to flatten them out and get out any wrinkles or the if it comes rolled or if you store them rolled or store them folded whatever it is to get all those creases and curls they know that you're going to be applying heat to it so they use inks specifically intended for heat to be applied and it'll never come off it'll never smudge it'll never rub off on your fabric have you ever had that happen before so the fact that they are sewist and they know that this is what we're doing with the patterns sort of sets them ahead from the guy down the street that I am using I don't know what kind of ink that guy uses and I never even considered that there might be an ink that wouldn't work for what I'm doing so not all inks are created equal and you can never really tell who's using what ink but with sublime graphics you know that they are using an ink specifically for heat so you know that there is always always going to stay on the paper and never transfer to your fabric which is great okay the last little bit is shipping so you have a couple of options again lots of options which I really love but most often when you order from large format printers they are going to give you a rolled pattern they're going to roll of your sheets put it in a tube and send it off to you the tube can only be shipped priority mail so there is an additional shipping cost when it comes to shipping the tube to you at a certain point though if you're getting lots of patterns printed the tube makes sense because it's a flat rate and it doesn't matter how much it weighs and if you have a ton of patterns you can fit a whole bunch in there so you're printing a ton of patterns that makes sense if you're just getting one or two patterns though at least for me I always felt like this feels like such a waste which is why I stopped going to the other online plotters like PDF plotters and started going down the street because I was really just getting like one or two at a time so sublime graphics offers a service that is no additional charge where they will fold your patterns for you and will place them in a mailer similar to this one it's a very hard sturdy card stock or cardboard mailer so it's not going to get folded or bent or anything like that when it's being shipped to you same kind of quality of the tube it's just you know a flat mailer and so if you're getting one or two this is a better option for you because it's cheaper to ship these but she can only fit so many patterns depending on their size you know so many patterns in one of these so it's really best if you're getting just a few patterns one or two of them if you opt for the tissue paper maybe you can get a three maybe four in there um but if you're getting any more than that a tube is really going to be the best option for you but I just want to let you know that there are options you can have them folded or you can have them rolled and shipped in a tube so those are another another option that you'll see whenever you head to their website speaking of shipping Sublime Graphics has extended their coupon code for all of us ITH Spring will get you free shipping when you order five or more patterns to be printed and that's in the United States if you're international there will be a 10 discount applied to your shipping so still a little bit of a savings there um but us customers 100 free if you have them print five or more patterns so that's a really cool deal so I hope that this will show you just how easy it is to work with pdf patterns now I know in the beginning when they first started coming out they were all taped at home and maybe you tried that once you know five years ago seven years ago and got really frustrated and gave up I know I don't like it I'm not very accurate I can't do it well so I gave up on it and then whenever they started doing the copy shop formats that's when I really started getting into indie patterns you can kind of see the evolution of that through the channel and kind of the projects that I was making but now that they have this option where they'll digitally tape it together for you and you can get it printed on different types of papers and different shipping options to you know whatever makes the most sense for you economically it's really a no-brainer to be trying some of these pdf patterns join me and sew together 21 um explore some of those patterns that you're falling in love with uh when you're watching the first impression friday videos sublime graphics really has you covered and makes it so so simple so I hope that this video helped explain all of that a little bit more I am always always on the hunt for different services or products that is going to make sewing more fun easier more accurate better results all of that kind of stuff and I feel like sublime graphics is definitely the game changer when it comes to printing pdf patterns so let me know any additional questions that you might have leave them in the comment section below I'll do my best to answer them or get Linda the owner of sublime graphics to help you out there so that's gonna do it for me today y'all thank you so so much check the description box for links and um the coupon code information again I'll see y'all soon bye