How to sell quilt patterns
Developing a Quilt Pattern to Sell Online
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hi guys and welcome back to fabric
fridays with me
merry morning star johnson from rivian
violet designs
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i'm excited to talk to you guys today
about how to
develop a pattern to sell either on your
website
or in your etsy shop um
i am not necessarily an expert
but it is something that i've been
looking into myself
and i've just been taking resources from
lots of different places and so i just
thought
that i would share with you guys
where i'm at in my pattern and
um my steps that i have kind of come up
with myself
um in how to develop this so i hope that
you guys enjoy
step number one so in this first step
you're going to want to design your
block
um i use just a sketchbook
and my sketchbooks generally tend to
have
graph paper in them i
save inspiration
and i keep all of my ideas written down
and i think that graph paper helps when
designing
quilts because you can make notes as to
sizes and it helps you jot down to a lot
for your seam allowances
and that's just something that i've
always done um
i know that some people it's hard for
them to remember or think about seam
allowances
i think that my background is sewing up
garments
i think that i mean it was definitely
hard for me to switch from a 5 8
seam allowance to a quarter seam
allowance but now that's just sort of
i guess how i've hardwired my brain to
just think in quarters
um and i basically just
i i have my own system and you'll
probably develop your own system
but i just count and i just know that
when i
when two pieces are meeting up together
i know to account for a half if it's the
edge
i know to do a quarter so that's sort of
just my
little go-to rule that i use when i'm
writing out my designs
but graph paper helps because you can
determine how many inches you want one
block to be and go from there plus
quilts
tend to be pretty geometric unless
you're doing something like paper
piecing or if you're sewing with a lot
of curves
i don't i don't do either of those
things too often
if i'm paper piecing which i do love to
do
i'm generally working off of a pattern
so for
right now i'm just sticking with a
little bit easier designs
so anyway um
definitely i don't know if it's my
illustration background
or um or what i
i just prefer the paper
and pencil method uh some people have
computer
programs and they design off of those i
just really do
prefer paper and pencil
so um if if designing on the computer
is something that is comes easy to you
and you would rather design your
patterns that way
that's great um otherwise i mean i think
just getting a piece of graph paper and
a pencil
and a ruler and you'll be good to go
step number two in this step
it really can be interchangeable with
step number one
but it's picking your fabric if you're a
fabric designer
you probably already have you know your
fabric that you're going to use
and you've probably even already thought
of a design that you want to do
if you're not a fabric designer and you
want to move forward with designing your
quilts
i think that picking your fabric is
the most fun part at least for me and in
this pattern
i actually talked about it several
videos ago
i'm using tula pink fabric i am
in love with tula pink fabric i did my
last video on tula pink fabric
this video i'm not using any of the line
work
in this pattern this is all just her
colorful
um not that
line work wasn't colorful but these are
all of her colorful
prints and not all of them but a
selected
version of them what i could find and
so definitely picking your fabric is a
next
important part sometimes if you're
somebody who
sees the fabric first and wants to think
of
the pattern later there are definitely
some of those people and
i tend to do that occasionally um
in this case i had kind of come up with
this pattern
and it just seemed to me like to the
pink fabric would be the perfect fit for
it
so um anyway i think that step one and
step two can be interchangeable but
again that's
that's totally up to you step number
three
so in step number three you want to
actually
make the quilt so what i like to do
is have a big design space depending on
the size of quilt that you're going to
design
and sell and i like to lay it all out
and sometimes if it's just one block and
it's repeating
that might be you know maybe it's not
necessary
to lay out a super elaborate design wall
in this specific quilt that i'm
designing that i'm going to call ode to
tula
and i wanted to lay it out because i
wanted to use
lots of her colorful fabrics and
sometimes it's hard to know what those
colorful fabrics are going to look like
next to each other and within each other
so
i wanted to sort of lay out
you know the color of the hearts the
color of the stripes next to it and then
this big design block that i'm going to
use to actually showcase
specific sections of her fabrics so
um i think that gritting it out
with this it's this is um like a
seamstress tape
i just pinned that to the board and
measured it out
and then i also included my border at
the top so as i get down below
i didn't have quite enough room to make
the queen size quilt
size that i wanted i think it's about
two rows short but that's okay
because at least if i can get the top
section
started and be pretty good with that i
think that i can
tie in the bottom two rows of the quilt
so making it is really important too
because you're not going to be able to
write out
a sensible pattern in my opinion
without making it knowing your sizes
learning as you go as to what to avoid
and what to do and when you're writing
out a pattern knowing exactly how many
five inch strips that you're going to
need
and just the the little parts and pieces
that you don't think about until you're
actually
into it and making it step four
in this step you're going to want to
write out your pattern
so at this point you have made the quilt
you know your sizes of your blocks
you've accounted for seam allowances in
between
your blocks you know what your border
is going to look like how big it is
you're going to have all of your
measurements
and have it all made and you will have
already learned from all of your
mistakes
in making it so now it's time to write
it out
writing it out can be maybe the most
challenging part
of designing a quilt some people
hire pattern writers
some people just write it on their own
and wing it
but i think that you know just sitting
down and kind of going through your
steps and starting with
how many pieces that you need to cut and
what size are those pieces that you need
to cut
and if you've sewn quilt patterns before
maybe reference those as to
how to lay out your steps and
just take your time and you know type it
all out
and then revise it and
that will lead us into the next step
step
number five in this step you're going to
want to have people test your pattern
you may feel like your pattern is
perfectly written
and that your steps make perfect sense
because you've looked over it 10 times
but i guarantee you somebody will read
that pattern
they will find just small little
spelling or grammar errors they will
find
an area that makes absolutely no sense
to them
and i think that that is the importance
of having pattern testers is because if
you're wanting to sell these patterns to
a large audience you can't always know
how other people are going to interpret
your information so having people test
that
having people read it and having people
work it out they will find the kinks
because they don't know it as well as
you do and sometimes if you're like me
and you look at things 10 times
you see what you want to see instead of
seeing
what other people are going to see and
so
having pattern testers is a really
important step
and i would not skip that step at all
step number six so this is the final
step
of developing your quilt pattern you
have
designed the blocks you've picked your
fabrics you've made it
you've written out your pattern you've
had people test it and they've given you
all of their feedback
so now it's time to take that feedback
that you received
revise the pattern make the revisions
that you feel
are necessary maybe they are just
spelling and grammar errors maybe some
of them you needed to
take information out because it was too
much or add information because you
didn't give enough information on how to
complete a step
so whatever those revisions are complete
those
and get your pattern printed you could
print it on your own printer you could
take it to a printer you want to take a
really good photo of your
quilt that you've designed so when you
get it done
have a well lit area take really good
photos of your quilts
and maybe make that the front page of
your pattern something eye-catching
simple that people will be drawn to and
they'll see it
and want to make that pattern and once
you do that and you get it packaged up
you're ready to list it on your site and
sell it
so i hope that this maybe helps i hope
that maybe i've taken
a little bit of the mystery away as to
how people get from
point a to point b i know that i've
spent
quite a bit of time researching this
trying to simplify
it trying to make sure that i'm
completing the steps that i need to to
design these patterns
and i like you i'm also hoping to start
getting some patterns listed on my
website to sell
so be looking forward to that hopefully
oh to tula my goal is to get it done by
this summer and have it available on my
website
and one other thing that i forgot to
mention is sizing
so when you put out your pattern people
are going to be interested
in everything from a baby quilt to maybe
a king size quilt
so you need to decide are you going to
give revisions to your pattern
to be able to size a baby quilt a queen
size quilt a
a full size bed and a king bed do you
only want to just do a queen
size because that fits your specific
design
those are also things that you should
probably think about um
i know that a lot of people when they're
choosing a quilt pattern
they like to have that flexibility with
being able to
make it into a baby quilt or make it
into a king size quilt
but you know maybe that doesn't work for
you and you just want to design
queen size quilts and that is totally
fine that is up to you
but that's definitely another area that
you should think about because you'll
have to
figure out the math to size that
appropriately
for those specific size beds i hope that
you guys enjoyed today's episode
of fabric fridays with me merry
morningstar johnson
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bye
[Music]
you
