Do you want to find free crochet patterns on Pinterest? Are you frustrated with using Pinterest to find them? I will give you all the tips you need in this handy guide so you too can find the best free crochet patterns!
I hear a lot of complaints about finding crochet patterns on Pinterest. Sadly, there are many “scraper” sites out there that steal a crochet designer’s images, place it on their site and then promote that pin on Pinterest to generate page views for revenue. They may provide the link to the actual pattern but it is usually buried somewhere in the post making it very difficult to find. This can be very discouraging for designers and makers!
When I am referring to scraper sites I am not speaking about sites like AllFreeCrochet.com, Favecrafts.com, CrochetPatternsGalore.com and others like them as they are very supportive of designers and provide links directly to the designer’s pattern.
Sadly, there really isn’t any fool-proof way to combat the sites that steal designer images. However, I can provide some simple steps that you can implement in order to find direct links to crochet designer’s patterns!
First of all, we need to think of Pinterest as a giant search engine instead of a social media channel. When you first sign up with Pinterest, Pinterest recommends other active pinners you may know and generally those recommendations are all of your Facebook friends that are also on Pinterest.
Now, I don’t know about you but I know I have a lot of Facebook friends. Many of whom I haven’t seen since high school — and that I didn’t really have much in common with even back then! So, that recommendation by Pinterest to follow John Q. Public? If I do, I am going to see what John pins in my Pinterest feed. Now, perhaps John is an avid crocheter as well and spends all day pinning authentic crochet content…..but somehow I doubt it. ?
So, the first thing we need to do is clean up who we follow on Pinterest!
- Navigate to pinterest.com to your profile page. You will see a list of tabs — Overview, Boards, Pins, Tries, etc. Click on the Following Tab. This will show you all of the people / websites that you follow.
2. Clean up the list of accounts you follow. To unfollow someone, click on the Following Tab. Following will turn to Follow and turn red if done correctly as shown below. You can always click on Follow again if you change your mind!
This is going to be one of the most crucial steps in cleaning up your Pinterest feed! Don’t be shy or worry that your friends will know! They will not receive a notification that you unfollowed them and frankly I would be surprised if anyone really even cares whether or not their friends follow them on Pinterest!
To get additional details about the kind of pins that account pins before unfollowing, click on their name. An Overview of their Pinterest profile will be shown. Click on the Pins tab to see the pins they have pinned.
Be choosy. See if the pins they are pinning are going to actual designer’s sites or to a site stealing designer images. Is the account pinning a large number of pins for information you aren’t interested in? Perhaps they are pinning a lot of content about body building techniques, gluten-free recipes or business information you could care less about — unfollow them!
Being picky about the Pinners you follow will clean up your homepage considerably!
Designers to follow on Pinterest
To make things a little easier for you I have compiled a list of crochet Pattern designers to follow. These designers have all provided me permission to share their information. They are also all committed to sharing only links that go directly to a crochet pattern, tutorial or crochet related post and not to another site first. Bear in mind, these scraper sites are tricky and a few do get through but all of us are committed to eliminating this problem as much as possible!
In the interest of full transparency, even though we share free patterns many designers (if not all) will also pin paid patterns. So we will all have paid patterns in our feeds as well. I know that as a crochet pattern designer it is important to me to support other designers as much as possible which includes pinning their content. Most free patterns are labelled as such and so it is easy to discern the free patterns that are available.
The following links will take you directly to the designer’s Pinterest profile where you can decide to Follow or not. A follow would be much appreciated!
- Nana’s Crafty Home (Me!).
- Kirsten Holloway Designs
- The Unraveled Mitten
- Rich Textures Crochet
- Burgundy & Blush
- Grace & Yarn
- Stardust Gold Crochet
- Cre8tion Crochet
- Creations by Courtney
- Crochet 24/7
- Crochet Sunnshyne
- Stitching Together
- Crochet ‘n’ Create
- Raffamusa Designs
- Hooked on Patterns
- Stitch In Progress
- The Loopy Lamb
- Best of Yarn Hook Needles
- Cats & Crochet
- Joy of Motion Crochet
- ChristaCoDesign
- Dora Does
- Yarn Society
- Yay for Yarn
- 3amgracedesigns
- Loopingly Made
- Loops and Love Crochet
- The Blue Elephants
- E’Claire Makery
- Krazy Kabbage
- Crochet in the Sun
- Through the Loop Yarn Craft
If you are a crochet pattern designer and would like to be added to the list please send me an email to nanascraftyhome@gmail.com so I can add you to the list!
Pinterest Following Feed
Once you have cleaned up the accounts you are following, you can refresh your feed. You may say, “Hey — it didn’t work! I see a lot of pins that are not crochet related!” If you use Pinterest for things other than crochet, you will notice there are pins that are in your feed that may not necessarily be from an account you follow. The reason being is that Pinterest pays attention to your pinning history and will show you pins they think you want to see based upon that pinning history. If you just pinned 30 Keto recipes you will probably start to see Keto recipes show up in your feed – even if you don’t follow any Keto recipe sites.
So — how do you only see pins from accounts you are following? Easy! Click on the Following tab at the top of your feed. This will generate a following feed with pins from accounts you follow. This will give you a much more focused Pinterest feed.
Perhaps you want to follow a designer that also pins a lot of pins you aren’t interested in? Perhaps you follow a crochet/knit designer yet you don’t knit and they are pinning a lot of knitting content. Only follow the boards that interest you! In the photo below you can see that I can unfollow or follow boards for each account. Navigate to the account’s home page, click on Boards and you will see a complete list of their public boards.
Combat Scraper Sites
How can you tell the website source of the pin you are seeing on Pinterest? Check out the screenshot below. This is a partial view of my current Pinterest home page. I have highlighted the Princess Crown pin you can see there.
When I hover over the pin it shows me at the bottom of the pin the source as being yourcrochet.com. You can also see the graphic on the pin itself states “pattern & photos by Ira Rott”. Both of these indicate a problem.
When I clicked on the source and went to the website, the main part of the post is trying to lead me to other free patterns on the same website. At the very bottom of the post is the link to the designer’s actual free pattern. The goal of these sites is to get you to stay on their site — not go to the pattern site. Capturing your attention and keeping you on their website gives them more ad revenue.
The first red flag to me about the pin itself would be the very generic crochet name of the website source as well as the fact that there is an attribution to another designer. Don’t pin this pin! Try to find the original website where the pattern is located and pin from there if possible. This may take an extra couple of minutes but the designer thanks you! FYI – if you are interested in the Princess Crown pattern by Ira Rott here is the link to the free pattern on Ravelry.
I hope this guide has helped you make Pinterest a useable and friendly place to find your next great crochet project! I have tried to make this guide as comprehensive as possible but if you think of something I have missed please let me know!
There is so much information about Pinterest, if there is enough interest you may even see a Part 2! Everyone wants to learn how to search in Pinterest, right? ?. How about a Pinterest Guide for Designers? If this is something you would be interested in let me know!
If you would like daily crochet inspiration be sure to follow me onFacebook,Instagram,Pinterest,YouTube,TwitterandTumblr!
Head on over to the theNana’s Crafty Home Crochet a Long Group! Join other crocheters, ask questions and share photos of your work! Crocheting a long with others is so much fun!
You may also like the following at Nana’s Crafty Home:
- Create Your Own C2C Graph using Stitch Fiddle
- Wrap Me in Sunshine Shawl free crochet pattern
- Spring Me Forward Triangle Scarf free crochet pattern
