Crafts
Patterns
Arts and crafts patterns are only for beginners. Really?! The greatest craftsmen all have a pattern clear in their mind, even if they don’t bother writing it down.
My mother would run off two or three dresses for a friend with her hand operated Singer sewing machine, in a couple of hours, without following any apparent pattern, without using French chalk or pins or anything else that craft stores might offer her. However if she didn’t have a pattern in mind - how did the dresses come out right?
How to Design Patterns
You start an (official or unofficial) apprenticeship by following quilting, or crochet, or cooking patterns exactly. Once you have been doing it for a while you will start wondering why they did it that way, and not another way, so you try the other way and like it better.
This is built solidly on experience, and learning the rules of the game before you even think about modifying them. That is why modern-art painters are such a laughing-stock. They haven’t learned the rules of the game. They believe that self-expression is everything so they don’t need a pattern or any rules. As a result a chimpanzee or an elephant can produce pictures that are just as good as modern art.
It is even fashionable in some circles to knit a skirt or cardigan without a pattern, just adding on stitches and colors and textures as they come to hand. The result is pretty shapeless but it has these benefits
- It’s just as warm as if they had used a knitting pattern.
- The design is so grotesque that it distracts from the shapeless anorexic body underneath it.
Quilt patterns may be an exception to the rules. You can make most of the quilt with random-shaped off-cuts then only straighten up the edges. It’s still lovely and warm, and you have your eyes shut while you enjoy it anyway.
Less Forgiving Crafts and Hobbies
One of the technicians I was in charge of was a welder. He could make excellent welds, but he couldn’t work out how to create right angles. Wood furniture of course offers the same problems - you can’t use it if the legs are different lengths!
An experienced adult can make up free patterns for kids arts crafts, but I can assure you that wood carving of a pattern is just as unforgiving of mistakes as welding is.
Embroidery designs are meant to be looked at. How proud could you be of your work if one stitch was wrong - right out there in the foreground for everyone to see? The same applies to making jewels and even beadwork.
Learn to follow the rules using arts and crafts patterns and eventually, one day, you might even be able to work with the design all in your mind, and none of it on paper. But why should you want to? There are so many good designs out there, and this blog is intended to help you to find them.
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