Have you ever wondered just exactly what has to happen for a crochet pattern like the Persnickety Crochet Pattern to be published and how long it takes? Why they cost money?

The Birth of the Persnickety Crochet Pattern

Well, let me take you through the time taken from design to publication of the Persnickety Crochet Pattern.   I’m going to be very honest and upfront about it all.  This is the reality.  So much work!  This post will be a long one.  I am not only going to document the time it took me, but also other folks’ time, as well as the costs.

Something to bear in mind as you take all this in are;

• I don’t always do all of the things I will share here for every pattern, and sometimes, there are other things I do that I didn’t with this one
• Each pattern had it’s own list of to-dos.  Some are a lot quicker to get out there, others take longer.
• Of course, I don’t have to do all I choose to do or get all the help I choose to get.  It’s what I have decided to do so the pattern is the best it can be.
• I have developed  my skills, systems and processes to streamline the process over the past 8 or so years.  That means some things I do a lot quicker now than I used to do.  I don’t have to think about pattern formatting, getting things tested, finding people to help, developing relationships with those who help.  If I was starting from scratch, the total you see below would be much larger.
• If you did this whole publish a pattern thing, it’d be totally different.  This is me and my ways.

All the things

I grabbed a new notebook way back when I decided to do this to keep track of the time I spent doing all the different things to get the pattern published.  I kept it beside me and mostly remembered to take note when I did anything on this pattern.   It’s messy, but it did the job.  To date, I have worked on it 195 separate times since I began.

Design work and Making

The easy and quick bit was designing the pattern.  It’s about intermediate complexity so a good one to get an average picture of the process.

The designing of this one was pretty quick in the scheme of things.  Some designs are quicker.  Some take way longer.  There was some frogging along the way, but not too much.  The designing took 2 hours and 23 minutes from start to finish.  As I design, I write down what I am doing.  Sometimes, that involves lots of scribbling out and starting again, but that was minimal this time. It kinda just flowed off the hook.

As I time passed and my ideas changed for this pattern, I designed an extension to make the square 12″.  As I was starting from a 9″ square, each round took longer to do, even though the thinking about what to do was pretty quick with not too much frogging and re-doing. All up, the extra rounds took me 1 hour and 34 minutes to design and make.

As the project idea progressed, I needed to make more squares for explanation purposes and sample making.  I designed a blanket layout and I decided to design a new join for part of the blanket pattern and that took me a whole lot of time.  Then I needed to design the border too, which was pretty easy as it’s based on other parts of the pattern but the numbers and maths took some time to get right.

Total Design and making time spent: 16 hours 38 minutes

Word and numbers work

A lot of what I do is writing words and playing with numbers.  First up, I need to write up the written pattern from my scribbled notes.  Then there’s the naming of the pattern, and writing blog posts such as this one.  For this pattern, I was writing periodic updates for emails and social media of the time taken so far.  Putting stuff out there means you get asked questions, so time taken to reply to those emails and social media comments is included here.

Then came the writing of the actual PDF pattern words – translating into US terms, writing he introduction, working out the yardage and explaining it, writing the detailed help, writing the glossary, the joining, the border, blocking explanation and the thank yous.  Lots of words and numbers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Shelley Husband – Crochet ? (@spincushions)

(You can see all the minute detail of the things I did in the 9 updates I wrote for Instagram if you look at the posts under the tag #birthofacrochetpattern )

I did start compiling this blog post using those words, but the reality was it would have been a book, so I abandoned the draft until now.  It’s come in handy though as I write this, so not wasted time.

Then there’s the pattern descriptions for my shop.

Total Word work time spent: 26 hours 52 minutes

This total will grow after I launch the pattern as I need to write about it being ready in my emails and promotional social media posts.

Visuals work

So much of what I do is visual.  I need lots of photos for social media, the pattern help, my shop as well creating  videos for this pattern.  Then there’s the editing and uploading of all of that.  It takes so long!  And I need to block the squares usually before I take photos so that time is included here as well.

Total visuals work time spent: 13 hours 36 minutes

No doubt I’ll do more of this as I promote it too.

Communication

I don’t create patterns to publish in isolation.  There are a lot of folks who help me out:

• my testing crew
• my graphic designer
• my chart maker
• my tech editor and proof reader
• my chart checker
• my sample maker for this pattern

All of that takes a lot of communication.  There are Facebook groups, text messages, emails, Dropbox sharing, social media messaging.  Lots of little minutes here and there sure do add up!

Total Communication time spent: 6 hours 48 minutes

Miscellaneous tasks time

There were lots of little things that needed to be done that took time too. Ordering yarn, winding yarn for samples, admin tasks like paying people, recording data, setting up the pattern in the shop and lots more one off things.

Total Miscellaneous time spent 3 hours 43 minutes.

Total my time: 67 hours and 37 minutes.

Other folks time

All the things others to do for me take a heck of a lot of time too.  Here’s a quick break up of their time spent on this pattern.

Testing – each written pattern and revision was tested as well as the charts by 7 different folks.  Total testing time: 51 hours 23 minutes.

Graphic design  So much work goes into creating the PDF for you.  Sure I could do a simple word document and create a PDF (and I did used to do this), but I choose to make them look so much better than I could ever do by employing a graphic designer.  Once the PDF is done, there is a lot of editing to be done.  We got up to revision 7 for the Persnickety Crochet Pattern.  Sometimes, it’s less, sometimes more.  Total GD time: 18 hours and 43 minutes.

Chart maker time Once upon a time I tried to learn how to create charts.  I am bad at it and hate it so I found someone who loves doing them and is  brilliant at it to do them for me.  Total charting the Persnickety Crochet Pattern (including revisions) time: 2 hours.

Tech edit and proof reading  Man.  I am no good at this!  I think things are pretty darn fine, only to get them back from my tech editor with LOADS of corrections. Missing commas, extra spaces, inconsistent formatting.  Same goes for proof reading. I think I have been clear but no.  Not really.  Ha. Total tech edit and proofing time: 6 hours 32 minutes.

Chart checking time  I run my eyes over the charts comparing to the pattern, yet again, probably because I know what I mean, I don’t see some things.  Lucky my chart checker has super duper eagle eyes for all the small details.  Total chart checker time: 2 hours.

Sample maker time  I usually make blanket samples, but this time around, I had the lovely Eva not only come up with the colours for the pink blanket, but she also made the sample for me.  That’s a lot of work!  Total making time: 66 hours 20 minutes.

The total time spent by all of these awesome folks was: 145 hours 58 minutes

Total time

All of that adds up to 213 hours and 35 minutes to create and release the 35 page Persnickety Crochet Blanket Pattern up to this point. All that for a little square pattern that took me a couple of hours to design.  I still have a lot of promotion work to do – emails, social media and the like, so this time is not all it will be.

Costs

Apart from the time it takes to create a pattern, there are costs involved too.

Direct costs

Yarn for the pink Eva sample cost $269.   Plus, I pay for work done for me.  The specifics and rates are between them and me, but the total paid to others for the work done on the Persnickety Crochet Pattern was $1,667.  Total direct costs $1,936.

Indirect costs

I have ongoing costs that help me run my business.  There are so many!  Website hosting, domain registration, email program, shop platform, payment platforms and other behind the scenes subscriptions to programs that help me for social media, creating documents and the like.

Minimum wage

Let’s say I pay myself at minimum wage for the time spent on this pattern.  That cost would be $19.84 an hour here in Australia.  My time spent on this pattern was 67 hours and 37 minutes  Let’s add on the Eva making time, as usually I’d do that too  That is 133 hours and 59 minutes.   let’s call it 134 hours.  So that would be $2,638.72.

In an ideal world, I would pay myself a fair rate for the skill and expertise I am creating from and passing on in the pattern.  What I do earn, is not that ha.  I wish!

The pattern costs A$12.  I need to sell 264 patterns to cover paying me a minimum wage.  To cover direct costs and minimum wage as well, it’s 458 patterns. (I’m not going to include indirect costs, but obviously, if I did it would make the number of patterns I need to sell to cover them a lot more.)

Will the Persnickety Crochet Pattern sell enough to cover costs?  Who can say?  Patterns I think will do really well, sometimes don’t and vice versa.  It’s often a long time before I do remake what I spent creating a pattern.  Months, years even for some, and some never cover the costs.

Time in another sense

Sure it took 213 hours and 35 minutes specifically, but 2020 time wise, I designed the pattern initially on 31 May 2020 and am publishing it today, 3 December 2020, so basically a 6 month process.  Ok, yes, it could have been done quicker, but I was not working on this in isolation.  I am also working on my next book of 40 patterns and 10 projects, as well as the odd commissioned design as well, so times this by that and you’ll get some concept of my busy brain.  Juggling all that patterns through this process.

I hope this shows the value you get in a crochet pattern for the cost of a couple of cups of coffee.  Really?  Crochet patterns should cost a lot more for the work that goes into them, but that is a whole other post about why they cost what they do for another day.  Documenting all this has tired me out.  I need a break before I tackle the next big thing!