Every sewist has a pattern they love too much to cut up: a dress bodice that finally fits perfectly, a sleeve you altered three times to get right, or a skirt panel you want to make again in a different fabric. Cutting the original tissue means it is gone forever. Pellon® 111 Tracing Paper solves that problem — you trace the pattern instead of cutting it, so the original stays safe while you sew from a copy you can adjust, mark up, and replace whenever you need to.
What Pellon® 111 Tracing Paper Is
Pellon® 111 Tracing Paper is a lightweight tracing paper made from 100% wood cellulose. It comes on a generous 30" x 70 yard roll in white, so a single roll carries you through many patterns and projects. Its listed application is sew-in / trace and remove, which describes its two main roles: tracing patterns and markings, and providing delicate stabilization for projects that need gentle support rather than a firm interfacing.
Note what it is not: this is paper, not a fabric interfacing, and it is not fusible. There is no adhesive to iron on and no heat step involved. You work with it the way you work with any good tracing paper — lay it over your pattern, trace, cut out your copy, and use that copy for cutting, altering, and sewing.
What It Is Best For
Pellon's own description names three jobs. The first is pattern alteration: trace the original piece, then slash, spread, overlap, or redraw on the copy to change fit without ever touching the original. The second is arts and crafts projects, where a lightweight paper for transferring designs and markings is handy to have on the worktable. The third is projects that require delicate stabilization, where the support needed is light and temporary rather than structural.
The 30" width is a real advantage for garment work. Larger pattern pieces like bodices, sleeves, and skirt panels fit across it in one pass, so you can trace a full piece on a single sheet instead of taping narrower strips together and hoping the joins stay true.
How to Use It
Start with a flat original. Smooth your pattern piece out flat on a firm surface and lay a piece of tracing paper over it, cut a little larger than the piece on all sides. Weight or tape the layers so nothing shifts while you work — accuracy in tracing becomes accuracy in the finished garment.
Trace everything, not just the outline. Copy the cutting lines, but also the markings that make a pattern work: grainline, notches, darts, dots, and any alteration or placement lines. Write the pattern name, piece name, size, and cutting instructions on your copy, too. A traced piece without its markings is only half a pattern.
Cut out the copy. Cut along your traced lines and you have a working pattern piece. Use it to cut your fabric, and make your fit changes on this copy — that is the whole point. If an alteration goes wrong, trace a fresh copy and start that change over.
For delicate stabilization, sew in and remove. Where a project calls for delicate stabilization, the paper can be sewn in as temporary support and then removed once its job is done, following the trace-and-remove application Pellon lists for this product.
Tips and Care
Trace with a pencil or fine pen you have tested first, and use a ruler for straight edges and grainlines so the copy stays true to the original. Because this is a 70 yard roll, cut only the length you need for each session and roll the rest back up — storing the paper rolled, rather than folded, keeps it smooth and free of creases that could distort your tracing. Keep your finished traced pieces rolled or stored flat with the pattern they came from, labeled, so your altered, perfected versions are the ones you reach for next time.
If you sew garments regularly, a dedicated tracing paper is one of those quiet supplies that changes how confidently you work: originals stay intact, alterations stop feeling risky, and every successful fit becomes a pattern you can return to for years.
Shop the Pellon® 111 Tracing Paper 30" x 70 yards Roll. Color: White. at Linda's Electric Quilters.
