Red flags of free knitting patterns: How to tell the good from the bad
The Internet is full of free knitting patterns, but unfortunately a lot of them are not very well-written and may be riddled with errors. That’s not to say all free patterns are bad, but sometimes you get what you pay for (or don’t pay for).
As a tech editor who has seen first hand how much time, effort, and money goes into developing a knitting pattern, I feel pretty strongly that designers should be paid more fairly for their work. But that’s a whole other other blog post… My point is, I get that selling patterns for the industry standard of $5-10 is too low for designers to be making a good profit, and the purpose of this blog post isn’t to tell you never to buy a pattern again, but rather to give you a framework you can use to assess the patterns you come across.
There are a few main reasons why a designer might decide to offer their pattern for free:
A successful designer is bringing in enough blog traffic that ad revenue and affiliate links on a free pattern are enough to cover development costs and then make a profit, or a yarn company is releasing a pattern designed in their yarn, where the real product is the yarn they’ll sell when people go to knit the pattern. These are “good” free patterns, in a lot of cases.
A designer with a large catalog is trying to give potential customers a taste of what their patterns look like. These are also likely “good,” because the designer knows this will make or break someone’s decision to buy their other paid patterns.
Someone knit something, wrote up some instructions for it, and threw that up online. Probably a “bad” pattern.
To the average knitter, it can be difficult to distinguish between the three. As someone who has been tech editing knitting patterns for years (and knitting them for way longer), I’ve come to be pretty discerning when it comes to what makes a good pattern. And that has translated to knowing pretty quickly when a pattern is worth the time before I commit to knitting it.
Here are my tips for how to know if a free pattern is well-written, likely to be error-free, and will not have you throwing it in the closet for time-out.
The basic elements of a knitting pattern should be there
The pattern should include the bare minimum information you need to know to knit it. This includes gauge in a specific stitch pattern, suggested needles, yarn requirements, an abbreviations section, finished measurements, and specific instructions for the whole pattern.
Check for obvious typos
Tech editing isn’t just looking for the errors in the pattern, it’s also copyediting the pattern. If there are simple grammatical errors, then I assume the pattern hasn’t even been proofread, let alone gone through the tech editing process.
See if there’s a pattern testing page
Seeing a pattern testing page can be a great reassurance that the designer is serious about their pattern, because they’ve spent the time to put it through that process, which hopefully resulted in some useful feedback from testers on how to improve the pattern. It’s also a good indicator that there aren’t errors in the actual instructions, because you know at least a few people have knit the item successfully.
Check the pattern hashtags and Ravelry projects
In a similar vein, if Ravelry is accessible to you and if the pattern has a listing there, check the projects tab and the comments. If the comments are full of people asking questions (and not getting responses from the designer), that’s a red flag. The projects tab is another way you can verify that multiple knitters have knit from the pattern and sometimes read about their experiences making those patterns.
You can also search the pattern name on social media and see other peoples' projects that way.
Look at the comments on the blog post
For similar reasons to the previously mentioned points, if this pattern is posted on a blog, scroll down to the comments. See if people are asking questions about things missing or things being wrong. Also, see if the designer is responding to comments on their post, because you may need their help too and want to make sure someone is checking those comments and helping with problems.
Check for suspicious wording in the blog post or social media
There are a couple of red flags I see in the wording of social media posts or in the blog post containing the pattern. Here are a couple example:
“Just finished designing this and I’m looking for testers!” — This indicates that they are going straight from design to testing and skipping tech editing.
“I knit this up and thought it was pretty so I figured I’d share pattern so that others can make it too.” — This indicates that they haven’t gone through a design process, they’ve just knit something and are posting the instructions they followed.
Pretty much any wording that indicates that the process has been sped up or skipped steps is a huge red flag to me!
Determine the popularity / success of the designer
I put this towards the end, because popularity isn’t always an indicator. I have definitely bought patterns from really popular designers and been disappointed in their quality. Sometimes people are just really good at social media and marketing. But for the most part, if someone has grown a big following and has lots of people working their patterns, they probably have done something right.
Conclusion
So there you have it. These are a few things I take into account when I’m trying to determine if a free pattern is worth the time. It may take some extra time up front, but will save you a lot of headaches to make sure you’re knitting a good pattern!
All of these are generalizations, so your mileage may vary, but I feel like if I’ve gotten satisfactory answers to all my questions, I can be pretty confident in quality.
It’s also important to mention that just because you paid for a pattern doesn’t mean it’s any better than a free one. There are plenty of designers out there who don’t bother to tech edit or test knit their pattern, who will still charge actual money for it, and you can follow this framework to assess those as well.
Let me know in the comments if you knit from free patterns and if you have any red flags you look for.
