So I figured out how to use Adobe Acrobat to tile the oversize pdf patterns properly. Apparently I am just “Acrobatically challenged”… there’s an option in the scaling box in the print interface. Beangirl, you have my permission to smack me upside the head about now (and any of the rest of you who actually know how these programs work). However, after tiling, the lines were too faint—they still showed up on the screen, but for some reason most of them weren’t printing. Fortunately I’m a LITTLE better when it comes to Illustrator than in Acrobat; it only took me a moment to load the original file in Illustrator, select everything, find the line width, and bump it up a couple of pixels. Probably too high, now, but anyway. Lovely clear lines. Back to Acrobat, tile again… print to PDF just so I can see what I’m going to end up with, all right, all set, print a test page to compare with the smaller version of the coat pattern, looks like it will be larger by about the right amount, start printing…
out of ink. And the take-the-cartridge-out-and-shake-it trick isn’t working. Nor can I convince the damn thing that because it has two black ink tanks, it really only needs one of them to be full.
So I guess the project is on hold until I can get more ink. Thursday at the earliest.
*head-desk*
ah, well, more time for writing…
Tanit-Isis Sews 
Ahhh, I hear you ….. so annoying!!!
My printer is out of color ink and it won’t let me print things black and white. I want to smash it.
I wanted to say thanks for sending me to Debbie Cook’s tutorial on fly fronts– it’s great! It may convince me to try again…. maybe.
Oh, mine does that too! SO annoying.
Glad it helped! You can totally do it!
In my area I go to the drugstore and they refill my ink cartridges for much less than new. I don’t know if one of your local stores offer that service, but if so it is quick and cheap when you are desperate for ink.
Yeah, that is always tempting. Unfortunately the first (and last) time I tried this, it clogged up my printer’s ink-jets to the point where they couldn’t be unclogged and we had to get a new printer. Which was not cheap. 😦
I feel your printer woes. The black cartridge on ours is goofed up too. We’ve been working around it by making it use only the color cartridge, but that’s not really ideal either.
Yeah, I had used up most of the black-only cartridge a few weeks ago by making it print everything greyscale, then went back to “full color” (allegedly) which worked for a while but apparently no more. Bleh.
My printer recently abruptly went on strike because it didn’t like the non-HP cartridge I had gotten (a refill.) Stupid printers!
Again, amazed by your perserverance with this pattern printing busienss. I fetched my paper cutter from the basement. Still have not assembled my jenny pattern. Seriously considering drafting my own rather than using up a roll of tape. What is WRONG with me??
I use glue-stick for sticking the Burda ones together as there’s plenty of overlap… saves on tape, at least. I need tape for these home-tiled ones, though, as they don’t come with a nice overlap. On the other hand, I don’t have to trim off edges :). I tend to try and think of it as a separate project, something I do in the livingroom while watching TV with the hubby (it will probably drive your hubby as nuts as it does mine… whether that’s worth it to you or not I will leave up to you ;).
I’ve never had good luck with the generic ink-cartridges either; these days I’m scared to use anything but the expensive brand names. Should’ve gotten a Kodak, my BIL is always bragging about how cheap their ink is ;).
don’t you just love it when a plan comes together???????
Ah, some days are just like that… More luck with the next one. 🙂
Girl, I dump EVERYthing into Illustrator. I am an Illustrator Girl. It’s way easier (as you discovered) to just redo the layout “in the big” (that’s, y’know, a technical term). Glad you got your prints figured out (I’m guessing, based on the posts above this one, that you got some ink).
Hehe. I have issues with Illustrator, though it definitely has its uses. I actually prefer Inkscape, believe it or not ;). Although I’ll use Photoshop for pretty much everything I can get away with.