I was on a facebook group the other day and I heard a seller of pattern software say “designers will make you think they spend 100 hours on a pattern, but you can do it yourself in 30 seconds!” Whilst this sounds like a great sales pitch, it put my back up. You see, whilst I’m not a designer per-say, this just isn’t true. For a few reasons. So, I decided to make sure the message was straight when it comes to pattern making.

Does it take 100 hours to make a pattern?

Sometimes

Does it take 100 hours to make a commerical pattern?

No.

How long does it take?

Well, it might take 100 hours, it might also take 30 seconds. Yes, I see how confusing that is.
I have spent 100 hours making a cross stitch pattern, and I’ve also spent 30 seconds. When it comes to pattern making, there are a few things you need to take into account: Complexity, experience & quality.

Complexity

I’ve spoken many times about finding the right cross stitch pattern software for you and I’m always talking about what you need it for. Some patterns are simply harder to make thanks to different elements. Let’s take a few of my patterns as examples.

The first is my transforming cross stitch which whilst having a simple color palette, was totally new. There wasn’t an image to work from to start, there wasn’t a guide on how pieces could go together, and there wasn’t a nice easy way to make the pattern. As a result I had to put each stitch together, in such a way that it made sense when making a series of boxes, that then get strung together to move. This pattern took me 100 hours.

However, the next example is my N7 mass effect cross stitch. I took an image, put it through a pattern maker, and stitched it. It took me 30 seconds.
The difference between these two was how complicated the pattern was, and how much I could work from to start. Pattern designers need to stay away from anything possibly copyrighted, so have to make everything themselves, which takes time.

Experience

The second thing is experience. If you’ve been making patterns a while, you get the software, you get the way you need to make a pattern, you get the tools and can picture exactly what you want before you start. As a result, it doesn’t take that long. Again, let’s use some examples.

The above two patterns were roughly the same amount of work. They have similar stitch counts, similarly complex and they’re similar in design. However, the difference, is they were made a year apart. The first, the Portal tattoo cross stitch took me 100 hours. The second, the Pokemon tattoo cross stitch took me 5. Yes, that’s 20 times less, in only a year.

Quality

The final thing is quality. We’ve spoken about the quality of pattern makers before in our post about if free cross stitch pattern makers better than paid however lets put that to aside for a moment, as pattern makers themselves aren’t to blame here. You can make a 30-second pattern in any pattern maker, and you can make a 100-hour pattern in any pattern maker too.
The difference is what you do with the time. You can add dithering, you can reduce stitches, colors, add in effects, change the tones, you can rearrange stitches and move things around. The pattern you make in 30 seconds, is going to be a considerably worse pattern thanks to that. If those extra 99 hours and 59 minutes and 30 seconds were worth it or not is beside the point.
Designers want you to spend your money on their patterns. As a result, they want to give you a quality product, so they spend more than 30 seconds on a pattern.

So do designers take 100 hours on a pattern?

Well, it’s hard to say. However, I doubt it.
We know their patterns are detailed, they can’t work from imagery so have to make it themselves, and they make high-quality patterns. However, it’s their job. They’ve been doing this professionally for some time, and as a result, should be significantly faster than the rest of us at pattern making. So yes, they might take 10 or so hours, but not 100. In fact, the two projects I’ve shown above that took me 100 hours, were the only two, and they were both made only 1 year into me starting to cross stitch.
That said, I can guarantee you that any pattern designer worth their salt can make a considerably better pattern than any 30-second pattern maker.

Going back to the original quote “designers will make you think they spend 100 hours on a pattern, but you can do it yourself in 30 seconds!” I would have to say, by in large, its kinda correct. Designers do spend a long time making patterns, and you can make one yourself in 30 seconds. But those two patterns aren’t comparable.