If you need help or advice, simply email us at contact@sussexseamstress.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Alternatively you can find a question submission form on our Contact page.

If you think your question would be helpful to other customers, you can also ask questions about specific patterns publicly in the reviews section of the pattern’s PAPER PATTERN page (PDF pattern pages do not have reviews sections). You’ll find a tab called “Ask a Question” which will allow you to ask a question publicly about that specific pattern and get a response that other customers can also see.

If you have an account and can’t log in with your password, you can select the “Forgot Password” option just below the sign-in button. This will email you a link for resetting your password. The link will expire after 24 hours.

Patterns are drafted for a C cup.

Should you need to do a full bust adjustment, you can find a guide and video on our blog via this link.

UK Shipping is a flat rate of £2.99, regardless of how many items you order, so you’ll save money if purchasing multiple items at the same time.

International shipping is available for sewing patterns to the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand plus a few other countries. International shipping is not available for larger items such as dressmaking kits.

Please note that depending on your country's tax regime you may find you are liable for additional charges on physical imported products, for example local VAT or Import Tax. Please check your own country's import policies to determine if such charges may apply to the items your have purchased.

Unfortunately we can no longer ship products to the EU due to EU GPSR regulations that are too expensive and unreasonable for a small business such as ours to comply with. If you are based in the EU, you can still purchase PDF downloads and these can be either printed at home or sent to local or online printing companies for printing on to A0 paper.

Beginner - These are simple patterns, suitable for all skill levels. Although suitable for beginners and provided with instructions and tutorial videos that will cover how to sew and construct the garment, these patterns are not intended to teach you how to sew from scratch. There is an assumed knowledge of basic processes like laying out and cutting out a pattern and sewing a plain seam. If you want to know exactly what’s involved in constructing a garment, you can watch the tutorial videos for our patterns for free on the Sussex Seamstress YouTube Channel.

Confident Beginner - Suitable for all skill levels, apart from complete beginners. If you’ve made a few garments and are confident with the basics of sewing, then these patterns will take you to the next step, introducing some slightly more advanced elements.

Intermediate - Require a good level of sewing ability and may involve the use of trickier fabrics or more advanced processes such as special sleeves or seams. However, if you’re a Confident Beginner wanting to take the next step, why not watch the pattern tutorial videos so you can see exactly what’s involved and if it looks right for you.

We have a special page that covers sewing patterns for beginners. You’ll find a filtered list that only shows beginner level patterns, as well as some advice on which patterns to start with. Almost all of our patterns come with video tutorials, you can view these via the Tutorials Page. You can watch these tutorials before you buy so you’ll know exactly what’s involved in making each garment and you can decide if it’s right for you.

We aim to release around 10 new patterns a year. The sure-fire way to know when new patterns are released is to sign up to our newsletter. We always announce new patterns via our newsletter first. You can also follow us on Facebook or Instagram. If you subscribe to our YouTube Channel, you can also receive notifications when new tutorial videos are released.

Regardless of which format you choose, you will receive the same pattern & construction instructions. If a video tutorial has been produced for the pattern, you will also have access to this via the pattern’s product page or directly via our YouTube channel.

Paper patterns are printed onto high quality, large format A1/A0 paper and usually mailed to you the next business day.

PDF patterns are digital downloads that you print at home onto standard printer paper. These patterns cost less than paper patterns and are available for immediate download. Although digital downloads have some advantages, you will need to assemble the pattern by taping multiple pieces of printer paper together. If you are not comfortable doing this, are not great with tech or are fairly new to sewing then paper patterns are easier to deal with and may be a better option for you. Alternatively we provide A0 & A1 files with PDF downloads that can be sent to local/online copy shops for printing on to large format paper.

After placing an order for a PDF Download pattern you will receive an email containing a download link. Clicking this link will allow you to download your pattern.

99% of the time, this all works flawlessly. But this is the internet, and things can occasionally happen, so if you don’t receive this email within 30mins of placing your order, please check your spam/junk folder.

If the email is not in spam/junk then it could be that your email address was mistyped on the order or, if you used a payment provider such as PayPal, the email will be have been sent to the address associated with the PayPal account. Sometimes this is an older or different email address to the one you more regularly use.

If the email seems to have been eaten by the internet gremlins, just let us know by sending an email to contact@sussexseamstress.com or using the form on our contact page and we’ll send your PDF pattern to you as an email attachment instead. We’ll make sure you get your pattern, gremlins or no gremlins.

Recent updates to popular internet browsers (e.g. Google Chrome) have meant that some users have started seeing a download warning along the lines of “this file is dangerous/malicious and has been blocked” after clicking the download link. Google has been working to address this problem with updates, but these may not have rolled out to all users.

We can assure you that our downloads are 100% safe, this is just an unintended warning caused by a bug in the “safe browsing” mode.

If you encounter this warning, you can take the following steps to resolve it in Google Chrome (the most popular browser - you should find a similar process in other browsers).

Go to the downloads tab by clicking on the three dots at the top right of Google Chrome and select downloads.

In the downloads tab, you will see the file you want to download with the options ‘Remove from list’ and ‘keep dangerous file’. Click on keep dangerous file (if you are not comfortable doing this - please see below). A pop-up will appear for you to confirm or cancel the operation. Select keep anyway.

The file will continue downloading and will be stored on your device.

We’re sorry that some users are getting these warnings and appreciate it can be alarming, but there is nothing we can do at our end to prevent this from happening as it is a web browser bug.

If you get this warning and are uncomfortable bypassing it, please email us at contact@sussexseamstress.com and we will happily email the files to you instead.

We strongly recommend using a laptop or desktop PC to print PDF sewing patterns. We’ve found that mobile devices often lack the option to print PDF’s at their actual size, and instead automatically scale them, resulting in the pattern being printed incorrectly.

The easiest way to print PDF patterns on PC/Laptop/Mac is to use Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is a free download, just search for “Adobe Acrobat Reader DC” to find download locations either in your web browser or app store.

You can download our PDF Pattern Guide for more information.

All patterns are provided in both A4 and US Letter format.

Load your A4 or US Letter file into Adobe Acrobat Reader. On the print page ensure “scale” is set to either 100% or Actual Scale. Also make sure that double sided printing is switched off.

After printing, you can check the size of the 10x10cm test square to make sure that your printer has printed at the correct scale.

If not, check that your printer itself is not scaling the image by clicking the “properties” or “advanced” buttons next to the name of your printer. Ensure “scaling” is either off or set to 100%.

If you would like more detailed instructions on downloading, printing & constructing PDF patterns, we have produced a blog entry that takes you through all of the steps in detail. The blog post also includes a free PDF test pattern you can download in order to check your printer settings.

A1 & A0 Pattern Files

Most of our patterns can be ordered already printed on to large A1 or A0 paper. However, if you prefer to buy digital, we also provide A1/A0 PDF files with most of our digital patterns. These can easily be sent to online (or local) printing services/copy shops for printing onto A1 or A0 paper. For customers a long way from the UK, this can sometimes be cheaper than shipping paper patterns.

Sussex Seamstress PDF patterns are no-trim, edge-to-edge PDFs. To assemble them you simply tape the individual pages together, edge-to-edge, with no overlap. No trimming of the paper is required. There will be a small gap of white space between the pages, this is normal and will not affect the pattern since we ensure that no important information is contained at the paper edges.

Your pattern instructions will show you how to lay out the individual pages and the pages themselves are watermarked with the location they fit, rows are labelled alphabetically and columns numerically (A1, A2, B1, B2, etc.). If you find the watermarks are missing or very hard to see, check that your printer is not set to an eco mode such as “draft” or “save toner/ink”, as these modes will often not print light coloured text very well.

If your print settings are correct, you’ll see the cut lines flow neatly from one page to the next. If you find the cut lines appear mis-aligned, then check your print settings, as your printer is probably scaling the pages instead of printing them at their actual scale.

We don’t currently provide PDF’s in layered or projector formats.

Although we provide some currency conversion options as a rough guide to local currency pricing, when you reach check-out the final transaction will be in GBP.

If you would like to make a final payment directly in your local currency we would recommend purchasing via the Sussex Seamstress Etsy Store instead. Since Etsy is an international company, they can offer local currency transactions that we are not able to on our British website at sussexseamstress.com.

If you’re a retailer interested in selling our patterns, you can request a copy of our terms via our wholesale contact form.

No. Sussex Seamstress sewing patterns are for personal use only. You are not permitted to use them for commercial purposes.

Customers who subscribe to our email newsletter can claim a 10% discount on their first order. This discount applies to all stand-alone paper and pdf sewing patterns on sussexseamstress.com.

The discount does not apply to other products such as kits and notions.

If you have a question that isn’t answered here, simply fill out the form on our contact page and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.