Most of my patterns are 6000 miles away from me at the moment, but I have a small stash here - as well as over a year of Burda magazines and a smattering of Ottobre, Knipmode, Diana Moden, La Mia Boutique...etc. I've been increasingly aware that I am actually unaware of the patterns I own. I do have the majority of envelope patterns entered in my pattern catalog on Patternreview, and while it's helped prevent me from buying duplicates, I haven't found it all that helpful for browsing. Not all of the patterns in there have pictures - especially older patterns, I can't see the yardage requirements or other envelope information, and none of my pattern magazines are entered. For my Burda magazines, I have a notebook with copies of all the line drawings. This is helpful but I still have to look through the many, many pages, there are no pictures, and I haven't included line drawings from my many other magazines.
Some people have been using a product called Evernote to catalog their patterns. I decided I'd rather use a program I already have on my computer - OneNote. Because OneNote connects in the cloud with OneDrive (free storage!), and I can view it on my Windows Phone, I also use it for grocery lists, info I need to jot down when I'm out and about, and basically any information I want to keep track of. If it seems that I'm very Windows-centric, you are correct. My husband works for Microsoft so I am encouraged to use their products, but honestly I would use them anyway because they are solid, dependable and play very well together.
It did take me quite a bit of time to enter all my pattern information, but only because I have a lot of patterns! And magazines. And I'm a crazy Virgo perfectionist. I created OneNote pages for each pattern, including ones I don't have with me, but I only put in magazines that I have on hand because I scanned some of the pages. For the patterns, I was able to get maybe 99.5% of the pictures and envelope info off the internet - I have a couple patterns that are so old that I will have to scan them when I can.
Here's what OneNote looks like using the OneNote App on my Surface Pro.
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There's one library with sections for each pattern company (listed on the far left), although if I only had one or two patterns I put them in the section "Other." I can reorganize this list to be alphabetical or whatever I want. Each section is made up of pages, which are listed in the second column from the left. One pattern page is displayed in the large area with the white background. I used the screen clipping tool to grab images from the website, and I added a link to reviews on Patternreview. I'll explain how to do all this in a later blog post.
Here's a screen shot of a Burda magazine page entry:
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I scanned the pages that showed small pictures of the garments and the pages that show the line drawings. You can see that not all of the page is visible, but I can just move it around to see everything by using a mouse on the desktop or my finger on a Surface. The page can be quite large and hold lots of information. I can add notes - handwritten or typed in, more pictures, etc. I can even draw on top of the existing images.
The interface is different on the desktop view and provides access to a lot more tools. I use the desktop for editing and the app for browsing.
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Here's a shot of what the pattern page looks like on my phone. I scrolled over to show that you can view the contents. The drawback is that downloading the pictures over the cell network takes forever.
Now that (almost) everything is in OneNote, I can browse my collection quite easily and from my phone, Surface, desktop or any computer with internet access to SkyDrive. One huge benefit is that I can search for and find any words that appear on a page. For example, if I was interested in sewing something with velvet and wanted to find patterns that were suitable, I simply search on "velvet" and the term is found whether it's in a title or in a picture I added (as long as the picture is clear and the text legible). In the below example, the word "velvet" is on the back of the pattern envelope for Simplicity 6807.
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It's not perfect, but I can improve the search results by adding text to the page to "tag" it with terms. And for magazines, unless I scan every instruction page from my Burda magazines (not likely) I can't find Burda magazine patterns that recommend velvet, for example. But this is a great start.
I can tell you that this whole exercise has reminded me of the many great looking patterns I have. I've enjoyed looking at them again. Of course I want to sew all the ones I bought and many of the ones in the magazine, but that's like saying I'll sew up every scrap of fabric I have.
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