Hello, I’m a collector of hobbies and my new collection item is garment making. I owned a few custom t-shirt shops in the past and have been sewing occasionally since high school on and off. I thought it would be fun to try making my own clothes for a change. I just set up a cheap projector hanging from my ceiling so I can do “digital” patterns and this software looks perfect for that. I’m excited to get started! I’m starting to follow the guides and tutorials. Any other things I should look out for with a projector? Thanks!
2 Likes
Hello and welcome, @MikeBigFrog
I haven’t tried to project directly from Seamly2d, yet - I normally do a bunch of size nesting in Inkscape first - but I can give you a small heads up…
Always leave large margins around your pattern pieces - top, bottom & sides - so that you can move the PDF page around to place the pattern on the fabric.
And then you should use very thick lines so that they’re visible on the fabric - dark lines for light coloured fabrics & light coloured for dark.
And you should always include a test square that you can measure to ensure that your projector is projecting in the correct size.
Further than that, I guess it’s all done to try & test what your preferences will be 
3 Likes
Of course, you don’t need a PDF at all, I have been quite happy cutting from the Piece mode. However, I do strongly prefer when each piece fits in my projector area. I gave up & shelled out a dozen bucks to get the cloak pattern I’m working on printed professionally because my projector area is so much smaller than my cutting table.
& I’d recommend at least one calibration square per pattern piece, though I only use it to confirm that nothing’s gone sideways, the initial calibration being consistent. (For me it’s 35% zoom is close enough, though 34.95% is closer.)
2 Likes
Which you can set in the prefereces. You can set the cut, seam, or internal line type, color, and weight that is used in Piece and Layout mode.
3 Likes