Printing E-Patterns– Removing Printer Margins

I am a little ashamed to admit that I only just now figured out how to change my printer margins! I usually try to keep all my Wearing History E-patterns in a scale that will fit both US LETTER (8.5″ x 11″) or A4 sized paper, but sometimes folks have problems printing, so VOILA- I now know how to fix my printer to print patterns I buy that don’t fit within my printer’s automatic margins!

My printer is HP cp2025dn, and I’m not sure if this will work with other printers. So make sure you check out your printer’s manuals online to see how you can change yours if this looks different to you. I am printing from Adobe Reader (which is free), and from a Mac computer.

What is a “margin”? A printer margin means that the computer is telling the printer to NOT print right up to the edge. This is automatically built in to most printers, so they’ll usually have about 1/4″ all around the outside that the computer says “hey, don’t print here.” Which, I guess, can be useful sometimes, but SO NOT USEFUL when printing patterns to scale- especially when buying patterns from a place that doesn’t use the same kind of paper as your country does!

So how do we get rid of those pesky margins? Follow here (yours might look slightly different- and if so- go check your printer’s manual).

After you’ve opened your pattern file in Adobe Reader the print dialogue on a Mac should look like this. The grayed out portion on the page preview at the right is the area of the page that will not fit with regular margins (you can see it’s not an issue with this particular pattern).

Click on “Page Setup” at the lower left hand side of the box.

A new little box will pop up. From the drop down menu your printer should be seen. You can see mine is HP Color LaserJet. Make sure scale is set to 100%. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. If it’s not 100% your e-pattern will NOT be to scale. Make it 100%!!

Now click on “Paper Size” and this new box will pop up. Click on “Manage Custom Sizes” as highlighted in blue.

Now the box looks like this. In “Paper Size” make sure your paper size is accurate. I’m using US LETTER size, which is 8.5″ x 11″. Make sure the paper size is filled in with the paper size you are using. Below that, see “Non-Printable Area”. SET ALL OF THESE NUMBERS TO 0 !! This removes the printer margin so the entire paper area can be printed. Hit “OK”

Now you get back to the beginning box again. Check all the things look good- printing at 100% scale, click on “Print in Grayscale” if you don’t want to print your pattern in color. Make sure “print on both sides of paper” is deselected (I made a booboo in my screen shot there). Then click “Print.”

That’s it! Printing with zero margins! Now go conquer the e-pattern world!

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