Saturday, July 22, 2017
Pattern Pitfalls
I'm grateful to all the designers of beaded crochet ropes who have made their patterns available online. Without them, I'd not have been able to learn the craft. But patterns are not all created equal. Yesterday I printed out a pattern that showed the sequence for stringing the beads, but not the draft of the pattern showing which bead goes where. No problem, I thought, I'll make my own draft. I worked one pattern repeat, it looked good, so I spent a couple of hours stringing several repeats. I should have looked more carefully. The pattern repeats didn't follow on from each other. It wasn't going to work.
I spent half an hour this morning unstringing beads. My advice would be that before you print a pattern, make sure it has Draft, Corrected, Simulation and Report, or at least Draft, Simulation and Report.
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That is sad. It looks like it was going to be very pretty!!
ReplyDeleteHow frustrating! I've run in to pattern problems in every craft I've tried. Sometimes I think it's just that the designer and I think differently. Other times, I think editors change things around without consulting the designer and that causes problems. I agree. It is important to double check everything before getting too involved!
ReplyDeleteYou're right, mistakes creep in everywhere and are by no means confined to bead patterns.
DeleteGood advice! We will learn from your adventures :-)
ReplyDeleteNot having ventured into it yet, I am wondering about the terminology - draft, corrected, simulation .... they seem "unsure", if you get my gist? Why not a final pattern - what does the 'Draft' do here?
I don't know anything about the terminology, but you can see it's consistent. The draft shows the actual placement of the beads. Because each bead is pushed half a bead width to the right, the draft looks very different to how the rope is going to look. Hence the correction, showing what it'll look like. But the correction is still flat, so the simulation shows it in the round, how it will really look. Then the report shows how the beads are to be strung, 2 red, followed by 4 green, or whatever. It is of course in reverse order to how the beads will appear. I've learnt all this as I went along, any beader free to correct me!
DeleteIt all makes sense now!! Thanks for explaining, Jane :-)
Delete(((Hugs)))
I have been there with different crafts, I think we all have at one time or another, shame on designers who do not check their work or have someone to test it before they publish it,
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