How to Know Whether You’re Getting a Good Knitting Pattern

Using a knitting pattern written by someone else is, ultimately, an act of trust. You’re trusting that the designer understands the construction of the item the pattern is meant to make, that the pattern is clear and error-free, and that the instructions will result in an item that’s actually usable. We also trust that we’re buying from a legitimate source where the designer will be appropriately compensated. All of us trust that the designer isn’t wasting our time.

With the rise of generative AI, though, there are more and more creative scammers looking to make a quick buck. Many online pattern sales platforms are riddled with AI-generated patterns that have had zero input from an actual knitter. On top of that, there’s the perennial problem of websites selling stolen patterns or offering paid patterns for free.

So what’s a cautious knitter to do? As they say, forewarned is forearmed. The best thing you can do is know how to spot red flags.

Today’s blog post will help walk you through some important questions to ask before you buy a knitting pattern. They’ll be helpful in any situation, but especially if you’re buying from an unfamiliar designer or an unfamiliar site. Even if everything on this list checks out, though, if your gut still says something is off, listen to it.

Preliminary Step: What Is a Good Pattern?

Before we get into the meat of today’s post, let’s talk about what we mean by a “good pattern.” That’s kind of a vague phrase, right? That’s like saying “budget-friendly” or “healthy” or “interesting.” All of those phrases can mean different things depending on what criteria matter most.

So when I say a “good pattern,” I mean the fundamentals: a clearly written pattern that follows broad industry standards and will result in a usable item that matches the pictures used to sell the pattern.

Beyond that, though, you may have other criteria that are also important to you. For example, when I choose a garment pattern, I always look for one that’s size inclusive. You may want a pattern with accessibility features, like a low-vision accessible version or a PDF that’s screen-reader compatible.  Maybe it’s important to you to support designers from a particular part of the world or from a specific group of people (like LGBTQIA+ designers or disabled designers). Perhaps you’re a knitter who learns better from video instructions, so you look for patterns that include video tutorials.

Take a little time now to think about what your personal criteria are. Jot them down somewhere if that’s helpful. You’ll be able to refer back to them as you go through this process.

Criteria I Use to Find a Good Knitting Pattern Online

Now that we’ve got the preliminary stuff out of the way, let’s look at the four key factors that will almost always help you figure out whether you’re buying a good knitting pattern.

1. Look for obvious AI tells

Step one in your evaluation process is to look for obvious signs that a pattern was AI-generated. The photos in the pattern listing can be one of the strongest clues. That’s because if a real designer knit a real sample to accompany their pattern, they’d just photograph the sample.

An AI-generated image tells you there may not be a real sample at all. That should raise alarm bells for you, because it might be a sign that the pattern won’t help you knit the sample in the image. It might even mean that it’s not possible to knit that sample.

The copy describing the pattern might also sound vaguely robotic or not the way a normal person would write it. Be careful about jumping to conclusions here, though. Language use varies even among native speakers. Writing can sound strange if it comes from a person living in a different region, with a different educational background, or with different neurology (autistic writers are disproportionately likely to be falsely accused of using AI).

There are two additional reasons you should be wary of AI-generated knitting patterns. One is practical, and one is ethical. Feel free to skip this part if you’re already on board with avoiding AI-generated patterns.

AI-Generated Patterns Lack Expertise

Generative AI does a great job of scraping up vast quantities of information, figuring out what that material most frequently says about certain topics, and letting the most frequent stuff float to the top. That can be helpful sometimes.

The problem is that generative AI doesn’t have independent judgment. Generative AI has certainly never knit something by hand before (not surprising, really, since it has no hands). That means it can pretty quickly digest *what* we do as knitters, but it has no experiential basis for evaluating *why* we do things the way we do them. It can read other knitters’ explanations for why we do things, but as we all know, knitters often disagree about the best way to do something, the best yarn for certain projects, and whether a step or technique is essential or can be skipped.

In other words, the AI-generated pattern might include the most common elements of that type of pattern, but it doesn’t know whether the yarn, gauge, techniques, etc. it recommends for this pattern are, in fact, the best yarn, gauge, techniques, etc. for this pattern.

AI-Generated Patterns Steal from Human Designers

There are also the ethical issues surrounding the training of generative AI products. How did the LLMs learn so much about knitting?

Well, they scraped blogs. Hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs. Blogs like this one. Sometimes they also scraped from books or magazines that were scanned and fed into their data sets.

And generally speaking, they did so without the permission of or any compensation to the humans who spent years building expertise to create those original materials. For many of us, even though we don’t charge readers to access our blogs or free patterns, we still get paid from other sources. Once the AI platform scrapes our hard-won knowledge and spits it out somewhere else, we no longer get any compensation for that work—even though the AI platform would be unable to function if it couldn’t rely on that same work.

(Side note: yes, that’s an em-dash, which I have been fiercely devoted to since way before ChatGPT started dropping it into everything. You can pry it, and the Oxford comma, from my cold, dead hands.)

2. Google the Designer

Step two is to look for information about who, exactly, designed the pattern. If there’s no designer name tied to the pattern, that’s a potential red flag. There are no stakes if the pattern is a dud. It won’t harm anybody’s reputation.

Once you locate the designer’s name, give them a Google. You’re looking for a few key things.

Check for the Designer’s Back Catalog

It’s easy to slap a name on a knitting pattern and make it seem like a human designed it. Heck, maybe a bad actor has slapped the same name on several knitting patterns to make it look like the same person has designed many knitting patterns. People can lie!

But if you find an established designer with an extensive back-catalog that shows they were publishing before about 2023-ish, that’s a good sign. It’s be more likely they’re the one actually writing these patterns. Once you confirm they have a history of publishing patterns, look for reviews of those patterns. This is easy on Etsy and Ravelry, where the reviews are right there on the pattern listing page. It’s a little harder on individual Shopify sites or other websites, but you can Google some of their patterns and see what people have said about them on social media.

If you find the designer has an extensive back-catalog and good reviews on those old patterns, that’s a very good sign.

Now, I want to be very clear here. A new designer isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. They may be very knowledgeable and have done a lot of research before writing their first pattern. Maybe they have an expert tech editor or a more experienced designer giving them guidance. Just proceed with caution and pay extra attention to the other factors in this list.

Check the Designer’s Social Media

Not all designers have social media, of course, and not all designers who do have social media make it a priority. If they do, though, their social media can give you a sense of who they are, how much experience they have, and how their design process works.

For example, my friend Aimee Sher is a garment designer who cares deeply about size inclusive designs and good fit for every knitter. That’s why, over on Instagram, Aimee did a whole series of videos about how to achieve the best fit for different body shapes and preferences.

Sometimes, even if a designer doesn’t have a social media presence, they’ll have an online presence somewhere else, like a blog or a YouTube channel. That can give you similar insights into who they are as a designer.

Just as with new designers and a lack of a back catalog, a lack of a social media presence isn’t an automatic red flag. It’s just something to keep in mind while you evaluate the other criteria here.

Check the Designer’s Experience with This Type of Item

Finally, check to see how much experience the designer has designing the type of item you’d like to knit. That’s because many of us specialize in one or two particular things but have less experience in others.

For example, my Ravelry page has 102 published designs. Based on that, info you might reasonably conclude that (a) I know what I’m doing, and (b) I’ve been doing this a while. That’s broadly true. If you look more closely, though, you’ll see I’ve focused really heavily on socks and, to a lesser extent, other small accessories like hats, shawls, and fingerless mitts. I have very little experience with garments. If I were to publish a garment pattern tomorrow, it’d be reasonable to wonder whether I have enough experience with garments to do the pattern justice.

(I promise you, if I ever do release another garment pattern, I will do mountains of research and work with some pros to make sure it’s up to snuff.)

3. Ask whether the site selling the pattern is legitimate

Stolen patterns are all over the internet. Many designers have given up on trying to stay on top of the issue because it’s just too time-consuming. Sometimes, it’s not even practical to try and get the theft sites shut down.

But you can help combat this problem by not using those sites. Bad actors don’t do things unless there’s profit in it for them, and unsuspecting users give them profit by (a) buying illegitimate copies of a pattern or (b) scrolling an ad-filled site with free patterns on it.

So how can you tell whether a pattern is offered on a legitimate site? Well, it helps to know some of the hallmarks of legitimacy. For starters, every legit site should have a privacy policy. If you don’t see one on the site, that’s a huge red flag.

There are a few common categories of sites where you can find knitting patterns offered legitimately. I’ll break them down for you here, along with what signs you should look for to determine if they’re legit.

a. Pattern sales marketplaces

In the fiber arts world, there are some heavy hitters when it comes to digital pattern sales. Ravelry is one of the main places. Many designers also offer patterns on Etsy, Payhip, Craftsy, and other similar sites.

In my experience, Ravelry is the least likely to be offering stolen patterns or patterns made by AI grifters because of its heavy community moderation. The real power on Ravelry is a team of volunteer moderators aided by strong community involvement.

Etsy, unfortunately, seems to be increasingly struggling with both stolen patterns and AI patterns. This means that even if the site itself is legit, the shop within the site may not be. Proceed with caution.

A good sign that you’re buying from the designer’s actual shop on any of these platforms is a completed profile with some sort of profile picture. If there is no profile picture and no About Me section, that’s concerning.

b. Publications

Many designers publish their designs in magazines, books, or other collections. The magazine or publisher might then offer the pattern for sale on their website.

Most of the time, if the publication is a legitimate one, you can assume that the designer and the publication are working together. Check the publication’s website to see if they have back issues, an editorial board, an About Us page, information about their publisher, and/or links to their social media.

c. Yarn companies and yarn shops

Many yarn companies will hire designers to design knitting patterns specifically to promote their yarn. Those patterns will then sometimes be available on their website.

The same is true of yarn shops. Sometimes they’ll collaborate with a designer to promote their in-house yarn line. That’s what I did with my local yarn shop (The Knitting Lounge) and my design for the Florilegium Socks.

As with publications, the best way to check that this is a legitimate pattern listing is to check out the rest of the website. If it has inventory, an About Us page, details on where the company or shop is located, a calendar of events in the shop, links to social media, etc., those are good signs. They also frequently will say in the listing that they’ve partnered up with the designer and will explain what the special event was for.

d. Designers’ own websites

Finally, designers often sell their patterns on their own websites. While anybody can build a site, it’s rare that somebody will spoof an entire website for one designer. It’s just too much work for too little reward.

Check the URL and look for the usual indicators of a legitimate website that we’ve discussed above. If it links to the designer’s social media and the social media links to the site, that’s a good sign, too.

4. See what information is included in the pattern listening

Finally, before you click the purchase button, take a moment to review the pattern sales page. A good pattern listing will give you lots of helpful information.

At a bare minimum, the pattern listing should tell you what thickness of yarn you need (worsted, DK, fingering, etc.), how much of it you’ll need, what size and type of needles are recommended, and what size(s) of finished object you can knit from the pattern instructions.

A great pattern listing, though, will tell you much more. For example, in mine, I always make sure to include the fiber content of the yarn I used, a list of any tools or notions you may need, and a list of the key techniques used in the pattern. Some of my favorite garment designers include a picture of their schematic with the pattern listing so you can make sure all the key fit points will work for you (or make a plan for modifications).

If the pattern listing doesn’t give you the information you need, you can decide whether it’s worth the risk to buy the pattern and see if there’s more information inside. Maybe there is, but maybe there isn’t. Personally, I don’t like running the risk of wasting my money if I don’t have to.