Have you heard of ClubBMV? It’s a great club where you buy a yearly membership, and then you can buy patterns from Butterick, McCall’s, Vogue and Kwik Sew – usually at a discount.

Just last weekend I received an email saying they were having an all-brand sale. Well, of course I had to go look.

There were a few patterns in my wish list I was considering. But as I was looking, I started to wonder which patterns I had already that were similar. I may have known I didn’t have that exact pattern, but did I really want to have two similar patterns. (I’m sure all pattern makers are dreading that thought process!)

It was time to organize my patterns in a way I could simply look and see what I had. My physical patterns are all arranged numerically, and by designer, but that didn’t answer my question quickly. I didn’t want to go through a stack of patterns to see what else I had.

I started with a simple list in Word.

This is part of my list of Vogue patterns. I did keep this list as it will be easily referenced and updated.

Next, I took this list and opened it in a new Word document. Now it was time to make it more of a quick visual reference.

I looked up each pattern, copied the artwork for it so I could see it right away, and sized each photo around 3.5 cm. It did take a little time, but it is so worth-while!

Here’s a sample of my pages. These are a sampling of my Butterick patterns. I can see quickly what each pattern I have looks like. I love it!

I have a sewing binder full of ideas, and this will now go at the very front of my binder.

Next, I plan to attack organize my PDF patterns…

Happy creating!