The Journey of a Crochet Designer { Entry 3 – July 2023 }

Are you currently embarking on a crochet adventure? Have you ever wondered about the inner workings behind those intricate crochet patterns? Perhaps you find yourself in a similar phase of launching your own pattern design business? You’ve come to the perfect place – welcome! “The Journey of a Crochet Designer” is my monthly series where I delve deep into the highs and lows of being a crochet pattern designer, with a special focus on Amigurumi (toy) design.

Missed the first post? Go check it out here!

July Overview

July was a fairly busy month! I redesigned my Bluey-inspired Bandit Pattern (Read more about the why’s of that here) which also launched the Bluey-inspired Family Crochet Pattern Bundle. I worked out the first draft of my new Bull Ant Pattern (hopefully coming soon!), and worked on a secret side project that you’ll learn more about at the end of the year 🤫

If you’ve been following along with my Instagram stories, you’ll also see that my husband and I have purchased a new caravan and are redoing it from the ground up…not crochet related, but maybe a good explanation as to where my crochet time is going these days.

As an aside, this post is very late for good reason…at the end of July my laptop of six years decided to breathe its last mechanical breaths 😩 Mr LittleSealDesigns was happy for me to purchase a new one straight away, but it still took its sweet time to arrive! The iPad was an okay stand-in for some work things, but I couldn’t bear the thought of writing something this long on it. Hopefully the replacement laptop keeps my posts coming with much more punctuality!

Patterns & Makes

As mentioned above, the redesign of my Bluey-inspired Bandit pattern launched this month! The pattern marks the end of my Bluey-inspired toys, and I’m looking forward to creating much more unique designs in the future. These four patterns taught me so much, and I’m really happy with my spin on them, but I want to make sure I can make a name for myself rather than the patterns only being liked because folks know the characters they’re based off of. My daughter continues to love the toys, and I hope they can bring other children just as much happiness while sparking imaginative play with their simple Waldorf-inspired design.

Check out the discount bundle here

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Another pattern that took up a good amount of my crochet time in July is my upcoming Bull Ant Amigurumi as requested by a friend as a gift. I don’t normally take commissions, but could see the potential for a new pattern that would go nicely with my Spider. I learned far more about ant anatomy than I had ever thought I would, and ended up with my biggest pattern yet. The ant was okay, but felt it was lacking something…then I made another with pipe cleaners in the legs and antennas, and that made all the difference. Hopefully the pattern should be cleared by my pattern testers and ready to go early September.

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✨ Did you crochet something this month? Or have ideas for future things you’d like to see made? Let me know in the comments below! ✨

Business Insider Info

After two slow months, July has proved to be my best month yet! It’s still at a small scale, but seeing these numbers is definitely a morale booster, especially when the sales can cover extra business expenses like my domain name registration.

Sales (in $AUD)

Etsy: $37.08
Ravelry: $14
Ribblr: $7

Expenses

Fees (Taxes, Listing Fees): $8.18
Business Upkeep (Domain, Gmail): $28.53

Total Business Income for July: $21.37

✨ Comment below on how your crochet business went this month! ✨

Things Learned

1. If I need to redo a pattern for the benefit of it going forward, then that’s okay! It shows I’m growing as a designer.
2. Taking on extra challenges can be good for my creativity
3. While its nice to get the extra attention making patterns inspired by copyrighted characters, that’s not the direction I want to go with my business and am looking forward to standing on my own two feet.

Wrap Up

Business is slowly but surely picking up, with more in store. I’m becoming more efficient with the snippets of time that I get while my toddler sleeps, and we’re making progress! Thank you so much for reading this far, and I can’t wait to share more of this journey with you!

✨ Is there another aspect of a crochet pattern design business that you’d like to see in future posts? Let me know in the comments below! ✨

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