You can buy rolls of 2' and 3' (or more) wide kraft or shipping paper from staples or your local or online office supply seller. They work great for this. Don't buy builder's paper from home depot (etc) though. It's too thick and takes up a lot more storage space when folded down.
I use this, it’s a great weight and hold up really well (I never cut printed patterns!): www.amazon.com/Bienfang-50-...
I wish some kind of open archive could be made of these... ... you can get 36" wide rolls of laser printable tracing paper.
well, I mean, pattern designers deserve living wages, so I'm wary of open archives. BUT there is a fair amount of historical pattern-making guidance already on the internet archive. They're draw-it-yourself from your own measurements things, though.
Oh I understand. I'm sure some kind of non-profit equitable sharing where people get fair remuneration could be worked out, if there were enough non-greedy adults in the room. (lol, we're all doomed)
dress like it's cold war 1974... archive.org/details/mody...
that's just it. And if you say it too loudly, you're an "ideas landlord" and the "information should be free" people come after you. Meanwhile, pattern designing (and dressmaking) continue to be ways for women to get real work and be compensated for it that they often otherwise cannot.
so, best kept off of the 'net
or somewhere that they get paid for them. Yeah, it's frustrating.
Anyway... I have a lot of feelings about physical media. ... and not just because this specifically is a vast treasure trove of decades of designs on the (now impossible to find elsewhere) tissue pattern paper... But because software changes and files degrade over time and buying pdfs doesn't last.
... but let me tell you, printing them on wide-format paper at the local print shop is NOT CHEAP! It's one thing to buy a pattern for $15. And a completely different thing to print it for $60. And printing on regular letter paper and taping the design together is... NOT EASY EITHER!
Yeah, I've pretty much gone to about 6 patterns that I traced, and use as blocks. The PDF taping thing is the worst! But if you really want to make your brain hurt, try tracing from the multi-pattern pages that come with the Japanese pattern books. Boy howdy.
100% When learning about data archiving when I was a fed, they said data on acid free paper, properly stored, can last 100 years. Digital data lasts 5 and changes format. So ... I like paper!📝