Are Free Patterns Worth It?

I’m a member of a lot of knitting groups online, and it’s always interesting to me to see people asking for help finding knitting patterns. Often they will specify that they only want to work with free knitting patterns.

There might be a lot of reasons for this. They could be new knitters and they don’t want to spend money on a project they might not understand, or a craft they might not stick with. They might not have the budget for a $12 sweater pattern. They might have worked from free patterns before and had a good experience, so they expect that to always be the case. They might be cheap.

I would hope that they don’t want free patterns because they don’t think the work of writing patterns is worth paying for. But sometimes that’s what it feels like.

A lot of my career (at About.com, on my own blog, here at Craft Gossip/CraftBits) has been spent writing patterns that are given away. I’m generally OK with it because I’m getting paid in some way, whether from the pattern itself or because of advertising on the pattern page. But I understand that in no way does that money represent the worth of the pattern or my labor and skill used to write it. The most popular knitting pattern on my blog right now, for example, has made me a little more than $18 in the past three months, barely more than the yarn cost to knit it.

As a designer I want designers to get paid fairly, and I want knitters to feel like it’s worth it to pay for patterns when designers choose to sell them. I regularly buy patterns — more than I’ll ever make, to be honest — because I want this industry to continue.

So I guess you could say I see all sides of the issue. I’m always interested to hear other people’s thoughts, so I enjoyed reading this post from Frog & Cast called “The High Price of Free Patterns.”

It’s mostly about the disservice yarn companies do to designers by offering free patterns, because they often aren’t paying designers what they should and they don’t share in the profits when patterns become super popular.

I would love to know what you think about this issue. Do you buy patterns? Do you look for free patterns first? Have a favorite source for (free or paid) patterns? If a designer has patterns on their website for free but also sells PDFs, will you buy them? How can we all support independent designers more?

Next Pattern:

Many times when I write these posts I will say something like “you can use any yarn you want” or “this would be a great stash-busting project.” That’s just how my mind works. And my stash, too, since I probably have sweater quantity of two or three yarns at most, but tons of singles and odd balls and leftovers.

Blankets are generally a really good way to use up those bits, but in this case, I think you’re going to want to plan it out a bit better.

Looking at photos of the Color Study Blanket from Purl Soho, it looks like it’s made with two yarns held together, and that block in the center is worked with one of each color from the adjoining sides to make a mixed up color.

But that’s not actually how it’s done. This is three separate colors (four, really, with the neutrals in the corners) chosen form a yarn with an expansive palette so they play off each other. The project calls for a worsted weight superwash wool, which is a great choice for a blanket that’s both warm and washable.

This pattern was originally designed by Laura Ferguson and was updated by Hiromi Glover. It is worked in one piece in garter stitch intarsia, which is a great way to learn the intarsia technique if you don’t already know it. It comes in crib or throw sizes.

Despite the introduction to this post, I am going to go ahead and say that, yes, of course you could do this blanket with scraps or odd balls or even just choose five colors that don’t blend together so easily. But I really do love the look of the color play, and I think it would be worth your time to find colors that play well together to get a similar effect.

This pattern is available for free from Purl Soho.

[Photo: Purl Soho]

Next Pattern:

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