Swatch Book pattern pieces on chipboard, hanging on pin board.
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Back in April, Arvey Paper, the store where I bought chipboard for my pattern pieces, went out of business. It was convenient to have a local place I could just stop by and get a few sheets at a time. I miss that store sometimes!
So now I buy it in massive quantities, which I admit does give me a bit of a greedy thrill. It's satisfying to know I won't be running out any time soon. But when "soon" means more like 2 years, it might be too much.
The moral of this story is there are two sizes available in my etsy shop now--8.5" x 11" and 8.5" x 14".
Chipboard is fantastic for making pattern pieces. It is used for other crafts too, but I'm not sure what they are...book making, cards, ???
I make all my original pattern pieces with chipboard these days, and for older patterns, I print them out and tape or glue them to the chipboard.
Then I punch a hole in the pieces and hang them up on one of the many pinboards hanging on my sewing room walls. The walls and ceiling are all the left over space in the sewing room. For now, I'll leave the ceiling out of it, but perhaps next year I'll be showing you some pegboard ceiling contraption I've built!
Having the pattern pieces hanging where I can see them has helped with my productivity lately. It helps me remember they exist, and yet keeps them from being clutter and stacking up in random piles.
Each size of chipboard package comes with 25 pieces. This is the most I can get in the Priority envelopes and still follow the USPS rules. They end up weighing a lot, so the Priority Flat Rate envelopes are the only way to ship them that makes sense.The 8.5" x 14" size is great for bigger things (used some of it to make grocery bag pattern pieces), but I find myself using the 8.5" x 11" size most. I think it is the familarity of the size that makes me reach for it more often, and since most things I make are small, the standard paper size works just fine most of the time.
Any left-over scraps are used for my to-do and grocery lists. Since they are heavier and more substantial than a post-it note, I find I don't lose my list as often!
