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Knitting and sewing - freely and legally

Although handicraft fans don't have as many internet resources available as the technically minded, the concepts of shared knowledge and free licenses do appear to hold a lot of attraction for women. A surprisingly large number of blogs written by hobby craftswomen and needlecraft fans are published under Creative Commons licenses. They also vary in quality, and the resource with the largest number of free sources may not automatically be the one with the most interesting content.

When looking for free ideas and tutorials it is always worthwhile to start with browsing Flickr (for example in the Free Knit and Crochet Patterns group), as most of the ideas and instructions are posted there with pictures. Sewing patterns published explicitly under CC can be found at SavySeams – unfortunately, this site is no longer actively maintained. All kinds of craft ideas can be found in the All Free Crafts blog and wiki, although licenses vary. As with almost all the freely accessible websites, the "free" label doesn't automatically mean free according to an Open Source or CC license - always remember to check.

Fitzpatterns contains a collection of freely accessible sewing patterns available under a type of CC license - usually non-commercial use. Interestingly, however, the needlecraft world has its own delicate licensing nuance, which roughly says: "If you do sell the things you made using my pattern at the Christmas fair, that's ok". The CC license itself doesn't differentiate between Christmas bazaars, small corner shops and big businesses. Roxypattern is another site offering sewing patterns explicitly published under Creative Commons.

It is not only hobby seamstresses who publish free sewing patterns - similar to the Open Source world, businesses also publish free patterns. Burda Style offers "Open Source sewing patterns" which come with the explicit message: "Open source sewing patterns are patterns with no copyright. You can use them, change them and whatever you sew, you can sell if you like. We believe that removing copyrights from our designs will inspire creativity and result in multiple new designs – and that's wonderful!"

This, of course, is a good marketing idea; but still the growing impact of the open source concept and the fact that some companies recognise in it promotional opportunities are interesting to observe. Incidentally, sewing patterns also become public domain in due course - fans of the Golden Twenties look, for example, can look up VintageSewing.info and find a lovingly hand drawn lesson in fashion history there. If you understand sufficient French or Italian you might also search for contrat creative commons or licenza creative commons.

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