This is the post I wish I'd read before I wrote my first crochet pattern! It's about the little details which are often forgotten but which will make your pattern perfect. I hope it will drastically shorten your learning curve and make the whole process so much easier. There will be a final post after this in which I will talk about the information you need to include in your pattern.
The first thing I'm going to ask you to do is to gather together as many crochet patterns as you possibly can. What you're going to do is start making a list of what you like and what you hate.
1. What makes a pattern easy to read?
Take a look at the font, is it too small or unnecessarily large? Is it fussy or easily legible, or old fashioned? Are there too many fonts or would it help if there were more?
2. What makes it easy to follow?
Are there enough photos so you know what you are making? Does it have a schematic, and does it make sense? Is it broken down into sections so you know exactly what you're making, or is it all mixed up so you don't even know where to start?
3. Is the Pattern standardised?
Are the instructions always written in the same way? Is there consistency in the way the abbreviations are written?
4. What makes it easy to navigate?
Now you're going to begin a process which you will probably never finish! It's about refining and improving your ideas. Start to write the rules for your pattern. Start with the basics. Don't worry about the actual content at this point, that's in the next post!
1. Let's start with Fonts. Let's start with your logo. Even if it's just your name think about it as a logo. Decide how you would like it to look. Choose a font, choose a colour. For every decision you make - record it.
Think about the fonts you want to use in the actual pattern. Will it be one Font? Will your headings be in the same font, will they be in a different colour, will they be bold, will they be underlined?
2. Decide on your abbreviations. When will you use abbreviations and when won't you? Make it a rule so that when you write your pattern it will always be consistent. You might find it helpful to read my How to read a Crochet Pattern post, as it talks about the different ways to say the same thing.
3. What sort of brackets will you use and when will you use them?
4. You've already started to think about bold, underlined, CAPITALS, and italics. So start thinking about these in terms of the pattern instructions. Will you say turn, Turn, TURN, TURN, Turn, or turn? Then try it all again in a colour, turn, Turn, TURN, TURN, Turn, or turn.
5. You might want to write out a few sample lines of pattern to see how it looks. Don't worry about what you're actually writing but how it looks and how easy it is to read, follow and even how friendly it looks. Does TURN make it look like you're shouting!!? When you actually come to write your pattern you'll be so concerned about what you're writing you won't want to have to worry about how you're writing it.
To give you a better idea of what I mean here are some of my rules from my Style Guide.
Rnd1 -there should be no gap between 'Rnd' and 'number.'
Rnd -when capitalised refers to the current round.
rnd -in lower case refers to a previous round.
3Ch (counts as Tr) -instructions like this should be in curved brackets.
[stitch count] -should be in square brackets.
Don't use hyph-ens!
Colour B, Do not turn - use bold for emphasis.
RIGHT FOOT - use bold and capitals in colour for section labels.
RS, WS, -use bold black capitals only with small abbreviations which might be missed otherwise.
Do NOT fasten off -use capitalised words for important instructions.
Size SMALL only -use capitalised and underlined for labels with in sections.
My Grandpa used to say, "If you've something to do and it's hard to begin it, set right about it and don't waste a minute!"
I'll see you in the next post for the very last in my 'how to read and write a crochet pattern' series. I will tell you what information you need to include in your pattern, the building blocks.
No comments:
Post a Comment