How to make crochet pattern – ultimate guide

Have you ever wanted to make crochet pattern but thought this would be way too difficult? Well, good news is that you couldn’t be more wrong! Creating your own crochet pattern is in fact fairly straightforward. Just follow 3 simple steps and few basic rules and you’ll be able to make stunning stuff.

I started crocheting probably around 10 years ago and for quite a long time I believed that you need to have some magic skills or a very sophisticated algorithm (btw, that would be sooo cool!) in order to be able to make crochet patterns. I couldn’t understand how on earth those people out there make such thing as a pattern. It’s not possible to predict where to increase, decrease etc. right?

Step 1. EXPLORE the idea

This is single most important step in the whole process. I know you crave to jump into crocheting straight away but hold your horses for a bit and spend some time on understanding the nature of the object you wish to create.

Whether you plan to make a pattern for clothing, home décor or any character (a toy/amigurumi, a person etc.) you want to commit some effort to explore features of that object. Think about shape, color, texture, proportions, temperature (rather warm or cold), feeling it should give (e.g. is it cute and cozy or rather rough and crude).

All of those features will determine types of yarn and techniques used. Believe it or not, improper choice of materials may ruin even the best project.

For any pattern of character, especially if it relates to any pop culture characters, try to understand its personality. Is it smart, dummy, nerdy, angry, happy, goofy, strong or weak etc.? This will impact body shape and embroidery of face details – shape of eyebrows, type of eyes, shape of lips and so on. I typically watch multiple YouTube videos, or sometimes full movies and cartoons, and observe the character to try to grasp its nature. Note down those characteristics. We are going to use it in the next step.

Now that you know exactly what is it that you plan to make, it’s time to use the characteristics to design it.

Start with researching yarns and trying to find the perfect match. Pay attention to yarn composition. Acrylic and polyester would typically give you the cozy effect, linen is very crude, pure cotton typically is stiff too, wool would be somewhere in the middle (well, depends on wool type in all fairness).

Once you found your perfect match – decide upon colors. Be careful with shades. Green and red used together can give us a stunning effect if we choose proper shades of both. Read my article on yarn colors if you want to know more about yarn color mixing and matching.

Spend some time on figuring out components of the object. In general, the fewer the better.

That is because one single crocheted shape typically looks nicer than few sewn together. Even if you use seamless joining technique, unless you are an absolute master, sewing will be visible and may ruin the final effect.

This is particularly important for toys, personas and amigurumis. There are multiple nice techniques to connect the parts without sewing.

Think about component shapes. Draw them. This really helps in step 3 of the process.

Finally, decide on the order in which components need to be done. You want to make sure that proportions between parts are maintained so think which part would be the most difficult to adjust if needed and that part would be done first. For example, for toys typically you want to start with head (although not always).

OK, you know everything by now. You have chosen your techniques and materials. You have your design. So this is the time when we proceed with developing the pattern.

If you have done diligently step 1 and 2, step 3 shouldn’t be too challenging. Of course, even with years of experience in pattern creation it is still a bit of a trial-and-error process. But over time you develop some sort of intuition, which helps a bit.

One hint here – don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Internet is full of free patterns and tutorials which may support your development process. For example, if you need to make a round shape, look for advice on how to do it.

Write down each step or row you crochet. Photograph details and components. This will assist pattern users in understanding what needs to be done.

And this is it. 3 simple steps to create your own crochet pattern.

In the next series of posts I will be discussing in details each of those steps to provide more insight and examples on how to put that methodology into practice – Explore and Design.

Stay tuned!