How To Design Crochet Patterns

I love being a crochet pattern designer. There is something very rewarding about creating something from scratch. Using your skills to produce a unique product. I enjoy following crochet patterns, but the real buzz I gain from this hobby is in crafting something new. The questions of how to design crochet patterns is not one that can be answered for all manner of designs at once.

So in this article I am just going to show you how I go about creating crochet toys. Giving you an example of my most recent commission creation, a purple crochet Panda!

Simple Steps To Design Your Own Crochet Pattern

I have a set method for crochet design.

Step 1: Pick An Animal
Step 2: Image Search The Animal
Step 3: Draw Outline Sketches
Step 4: Choose A Style
Step 5: Translate The Shapes Into Crochet Shapes
Step 6: Pick Yarn Type
Step 7: Pick Colors
Step 8: Pick Eyes
Step 9: Prepare Your Crochet Equipment
Step 10: Make It!

Let’s take a look at what each of these steps entails.

Step 1: Pick An Animal

The very first step to becoming a crochet designer, is deciding what it is you want to make. The initial crochet design can give you the confidence to carry on, or frustrate you to tears. Make sure you pick the right thing the first time around.

Start Simple

If you have been crocheting for years and made lots of toys following other people’s patterns, then you will already have in your brain several key skills like shaping heads and attaching body parts. But it still pays to make the first thing as simple as possible.

I recommend beginning by picking an animal with a straight forward shape. This means that you can create it without worrying about how to actually make the composite pieces. Creatures like my beloved guinea pigs are basically a large cylinder with legs. A caterpillar is a lot of balls stuck together.

Start simple, find your feet before you get stuck into the trickier patterns. I have used a panda, not the most straight forward thing I have ever made, as the example here. This is because I have only just finished this commission and still have all my workings laying around conveniently to share with you!

Also, pandas are cute.

Step 2: Image Search The Animal

When you have picked your animal, you will want to look at a lot of pictures of it. However familiar you think you are, don’t skip this step. Make use of the Google Image Search tab, and make sure your search term is clear and concise. Just put the animal’s name into the search bar, then click ‘images’ and scroll down.

Choose A Selection Of Images From Different Angles

Don’t choose the prettiest images, or those that are the best quality. This isn’t important right now. What matters is getting to grips with a variety of views. Toys are of course three dimensional. This means that people will see them from all angles, not just the one or two best ones you select to share online.

For you to feel happy with your creation you need it to be recognisable as the animal you intend it to be, however you happen to view it. Here are some of the different images I stored for the crochet panda I made recently:

Collect these images into a folder for your own personal use (remember, Google images belong to real people. You cannot share these without permission. The images shown above came from a stock photo site, and are therefore copyright free.

Step 3: Draw Outline Sketches

I am not a natural artist. Despite having a great amount of enthusiasm for drawing, no matter how hard I practiced I was mediocre at best. Hands on, practical crafts have always been more my thing.

So I hope you won’t be too disappointed to hear that the next step of the journey involves putting pencil to paper (or using Paint or Photoshop). Drawing outline shapes and sketches of your chosen animal will help you to see what individual shapes you will need to crochet. Here are the sketches of the crochet panda:

Although, I must admit that I didn’t actually draw them myself….

Truth Time……

Before I go further, however, I have to admit something to you. Whilst I normally do these drawings myself, using the methods above, this isn’t always the case. On two memorable occasions, this example and my crochet mouse included, things went less like the above and more like the following:

1st – I look at lots of images of the animal I am going to make.

2nd – I draw it in the form of individual shapes.

3rd – I find my own drawing disappointing, screw it up and throw it away.

4th – I repeat Steps 2 & 3 at least seven times.

5th – I call my husband into the room

6th – I watch as he draws a perfect cartoon representation of the animal

7 th– I praise him for his good work, but ask him to do it again just with the outlined shapes I asked for beforehand. Because, you know, I need to crochet this from them.

8th – He draws the animal in outline shapes. Really accurately.

9th – I ask him to draw it again from a few other angles too.

10th – He draws it from many angles. Really accurately.

11th – I thank him, he leaves the room. I feel unfairly irritated and jealous of my husband and his stupidly good, incredibly helpful drawing abilities.

12th – I return to my crochet designing.

The sketches of pandas here are not mine. You can tell, because they look like pandas. Likewise on the crochet mouse pattern, I share the sketch because it was nice. It was nice, because unlike my normal sketches, I didn’t sketch it….

However…..

Back To The Sketches

I maintain that my inability to accept my own less than perfect drawings doesn’t matter. Don’t like drawing? No problem! Print out your images or bring them up in Paint or Photoshop. Then draw the basic shapes over the top, like this:

If you can’t draw an animal, as long as you can find some way to visualise the shapes that make that animal up, then you will be fine.

Step 4: Choose A Style

Once you have started to think about the shapes that make up your chosen animal, you will need to consider the end product.

• What style of crochet toy do you want to make?
• Is it going to be as realistic as possible?
• Do you want to amp up the cute factor with big eyes?
• Are you wanting the human touch, with elongated limbs or the possibility of adding clothes?

With the crochet panda we are looking at today, I wanted to go for a quite traditional style. I therefore retained the approximate proportions of the real animal.

The commission requested was a ‘purple panda’, so it needed to have a fairly obviously panda-like style to it, in order to be quickly recognisable as that animal.