How To Find Sewing Patterns For Fancy Dress Costumes

Making your own fancy dress costumes is a great way to save money. There are lots of online stores offering ready made outfits, but a tailor made costume can be cost effective, and will fit your body perfectly.

Each sewing pattern gives you an indication of how difficult it will be to make, so even the novice tailor can have a go at making a simple costume. They give you a recommended fabric guide and tell you how much fabric and trimmings you will need to make the costume and accessories.

Many fancy dress patterns come with a range of design options, so you can use the pattern more than once and produce a different outfit each time.

Here are some top sites to help you track down the perfect pattern.

Simplicity Sewing Patterns website has a range of patterns covering adults, children, toddlers, pets and multi-size. Fairies, Disney, Historical and fantasy patterns are available. Simplicity was founded in 1927 and its headquarters are in New York. They have an excellent range of patterns for fancy dress costumes and offer easy to make clothes in the latest designs. This site is well worth a look.

The McCalls Sewing Patterns company encompasses Vogue, Butterick and McCalls. It produces the catalogues for all three brands.

Butterick was started in 1863 by Ebeneezer Butterick and is one of the most well known sewing pattern companies. They have a range of products including fancy dress patterns, books and dvds. Their costumes come under the category of costumes. There are patterns for adults, kids, plus size, dolls, pets and home decorating.

You can order patterns online, or you can purchase a catalogue so you can browse through their patterns from a book. Buttericks have a good range of Halloween, historical and religious costumes, as well as fairies, princesses, animals and characters.

The Vogue Company offer patterns by category, designer, new patterns or clearance. They have a good range of historical and Halloween costumes.

McCalls costumes include fairies, pirates, Disney princesses, superheroes and animals.

Kwik Sew Sewing Patterns offer pets, ladies, mens and kids patterns for a range of costumes. They give you tips on many of their sewing patterns as to how the pattern can be used. For instance, they suggest the cape pattern can be used for superheroes, Dracula, Zorro and Little Red Riding Hood. The suggested fabric is woven. You can download the patterns details in a PDF document, which is handy if you want to price the fabric before you buy the pattern.

Burda have a range of carnival, Halloween and kids costumes. They assign a difficulty level to the pattern so you can decide if it is within your skill level. A handy table of cloth measurements pops up in a new window, so you can work out how much material you are going to need.