Eventually, you will have to make a costume piece or prop that was originally too small or too big for you. It has happened to all of us. When this happens, you have to scale the pattern – which is a fancy way of saying, “making it bigger or smaller.” I don’t think that we have ever been able to use a stock pattern at Savage Light Studios – Kit is a hobbit at 5 feet tall, Rilla is a Valkyrie at 5’9″ and Feral is an orc at 6’9″.
All of this is to say – we always have to scale our patterns up or down.
This tutorial isn’t about how to adjust sewing patterns, though I am sure I can convince Kit to write one of those soon. What this is, is a tutorial on how to scale the patterns you can find at places like Svetlana’s awesome Kamui Cosplay, Willow Creative, or even here (eventually) and get them fitted for your use.
The easiest way to do it is when you print the pattern out from the PDF. This is GREAT for things like helmets, hats and masks, but can be problematic when attempting to scale armor pieces because all bodies are different and someone my height may have a bigger or smaller circumference thigh or bicep.
I am going to show you how do this in Adobe Acrobat, but it can be done in other applications as well.
For this tutorial, we are going to be using the Magician Hat Foam Pattern from Kamui Cosplay. I chose this particular piece because it is a good build for beginners, and we are making one right now for the haunt season over at Bernie Baxter’s. This technique will work for pretty much anything like this, though.
The key is pretty much math. *insert dramatic cinema sting here*
Anyone who is selling patterns will include their basic measurements. These are the measurements they built their patterns on. It will either be on the creator’s website or in the PDF file. Svetlana includes it in her patterns, while Willow Creative has the pertinent data listed with the patterns in their shop.
For the hat, the measurements are listed as a 56.5cm/22.2inch circumference.
The first step is to measure your head. The way you measure will depend on the fit or style of the hat you are making. The following images show you the two most common ways to measure for headgear and they are pretty self explanatory.
REMINDER: If you are making a piece for a costume that requires makeup or masks – measure your head while wearing these things. Since we are making a mask for Bernie, and he is in a thick mask, we had to take our measurements with Bernie in the mask. The actor’s head barely fits in the hat I made for myself, with the mask on, it wouldn’t fit at all.
Bernie’s head is 24.5 inches. We want to give him a LITTLE wiggle room, we are going to scale it to 25 inches.
Here is the math.
Divide your measurement by the original measurement. It’s that simple. To make sure that you are doing it right: if your measurement is bigger than the original, the number will always be a number bigger than 1. If your measurement is smaller than the original, the number will be smaller than one.
In this case it would be 25/22.2=1.126.
If you are scaling things by hand, you literally just multiply your pattern measurements by this number for all dimensions t which it applies.
If you are printing a PDF pattern, you have to convert the number to a percentage. First round up to two decimal places (1.126 becomes 1.13). Then multiply by 100 – or move the decimal two places over (1.13 becomes 113%).
“But what do I do with that number???” I hear you asking. Don’t get ahead of the story!
For this tutorial, I am using the latest version of Adobe Acrobat, but any PDF application should work. Hit the print button.
After that, it’s going to bring you to the print properties dialogue. Which looks like this:
In some cases, the pattern PDF is going to be a single page, but in most cases, they will be multiple pages. You don’t want to scale up and print the whole PDF, just the one with the pattern. In this case, the pattern is on page four. So, tick the button for pages and enter the page number. It will look like this:
Under Page Sizes & Handling, you are going to click Poster. Tile Scale is where you enter the number we calculated earlier (113%). The overlap is important. I leave it at the default setting, but you might have to make some adjustments based on your printer. Cut marks (in my opinion) are absolutely necessary.
Hit print. Your printer will spit out a bunch of pages. Depending on what you are making, you are going to get anything from 2 pages to a lot more. We are working on a set of bat wings for a build, and it spit out 24 pages.
Now, all you have to do is trim the edges and tape it together. Depending on your specific workflow and abilities, it might be a little more complicated than that. For example, due to the nerve damage in my hand, I tend to paste my patterns onto poster board to make them a little tougher. I get small spasms and trembles that rip the edges when tracing them onto foam or cloth.
But that’s all there is to it – it’s pretty simple when you know how.
Happy crafting!
September 29, 2025
