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?

Knitting and travel are two hobbies that are highly compatible. Travel often involves waiting or time spent on planes, trains, boats, etc., time that can easily be filled by knitting, a portable and productive craft you can do most anywhere (and yes, you can take your knitting on a plane most of the time).

Krista Ann combines knitting and traveling regularly and ended up visiting every continent in 2022 with her knitting needles along for the ride. The Wandering Knitter explores travel, knitting and learning new knitting skills no matter where you are.

This isn’t a book for beginners, but if you’ve wanted to learn techniques like brioche, cables, lace, colorwork, mitered squares and short rows, there’s a set of more beginner level patterns followed by ones that are bigger, more detailed or required a little more skill. For example a brioche washcloth is the beginner pattern, while a brioche sweater (with unexplained exceptionally long sleeves) is the stepped up project. A basic mesh lace scarf becomes a more complex lace kerchief. A giant mitered square cowl graduates to a mitered square tote bag.

Interspersed among the patterns are essays about traveling to different continents and what she saw there. There are also tips for traveling with your knitting and tips for reading charts, but no tutorials for knitting skills (other than a written explanation of how mosaic knitting works).

Some of the projects would be useful to have when traveling, such as fingerless gloves, a warm headband or a colorwork hat. The travel angle is an interesting hook for a book, but I would have enjoyed essays more about specific incidents or shopping for yarn in a different country or something more than the general essays about things she’s liked and places she’d like to go back to.

Still, if you’re looking for a skill building book that doesn’t focus on the basics but gives you some wearable, attractive accessories, this book is a good one to check out. Just maybe make the sleeves shorter if you knit the sweater.

About the book: 128 pages, paperback, 20 patterns. Published 2026 by Quarry Books. Suggested retail price $24.99.

Have you read?