Knitting & Crochet Pattern Cover Pages: What to Include & Why (Free Templates Inside!)

Well-designed knitting and crochet pattern cover pages are your pattern’s first impression—and in the digital age, it’s often the deciding factor between “I’ll make this!” and “I’ll save it for later.” Whether you’re a new designer, or looking to refine your professional patterns, this post will guide you through what to include on your cover page, why it matters, and how to make it stand out. As a bonus: Download my free Pattern Cover Templates (inspired by vintage and modern designs) to get started quickly!

Want to write professional crochet or knitting patterns, but don’t know where to start? In this blog post we will start on page one: How to create the cover. In future blog posts, we will explore all the different sections that are needed for a professional pattern that will create happy, repeat customers.What should be on a cover page for a knitting or crochet pattern?

The ‘too long/didn’t read’ summary:

The cover should include:

• A large, clear image of the full finished item, showing all of its features
• The pattern name
• The pattern description or type of item
• Sizes
• Your name and/or brand name
• Your logo and/or other branding
• A distinctive and recognisable style
• Yarn weight
  

Download your checklist here, print page one for colour, or page 2 for easy printing black and white option. tick off each item as you create your next pattern cover page:

Knitting and Crochet Pattern Covers from the Past

To explore why these are so important, let’s first take a short trip down memory lane, and consider what a cover used to look like., Then we can ask how things might have changed, or what is still the same.

Throughout the blog post are patterns from the age of print, which I have in my pattern stash. Mostly knitting, a couple of crochet, and one sewing pattern, just to show how the same formats work even there. The patterns start from the 1960s, and span the 70s, (Inhereted from aunt and mother) 80s, 90s and 00s. (bought by me) The newest one was a late pre-covid purchase as I recall. It was one of those patterns I was glad I had when lockdown hit. I have hundreds of other patterns. Trust me, they all follow the same format that the big publishers always use.

Each one has: A brand name/publisher (circled in red) A pattern code/unique identifier (green short line) Yarn weight (orange squiggle) Sizes (purple X)

In all cases this text is small, in the corners or top or bottom, to allow the cover image to take centre stage.

Two of the patterns also have prices. 10p and 12p. Wouldn’t it make you want to cry? Imagine buying a pattern for 10 pence sterling!

Shopping for patterns in the age of print

When I was a child, in the 1980s, I would accompany my mother to the local yarn shop. There, in that wooly wonderland, the walls would be lined with so many yarns in every thickness, colour and fibre. Squishy heaven! And in the middle of the floor sat a big table with chairs, and the pattern books. These were huge heavy folders full of knitting and crochet patterns. We would spend hours looking through the patterns, choosing our next projects.

The individual patterns were encased in plastic wallets inside the folders, with the cover page showing. But you did not take the pattern out of the wallet and put your grubby fingerprints on it until you knew that was the one you would likely buy. Not unless you wanted a thick ear from your Mother, and a stern glare from the shop owner.

So you needed to see, on the cover, everything you needed to know about that pattern from the cover page alone, before slipping it out of the wallet.

The information on a pattern cover that informed choices

The information my mother would focus on, would be:

Craft type

How often I heard ‘Oh that’s lovely, look at this one, Ciara’ followed by an instant change of tone. And an angry mutter of ‘crochet’ followed by a rude word that I would never have got away with. My mother, you see, could not crochet, and for some reason I can’t quite explain, chose never to learn.
But note how, all the way up to the patterns published around lockdown, if it’s crochet it says so on the cover. If it’s knitting, that’s assumed. No text saying ‘knitting design’.

Yarn weight

Another regular cause of curse words would be patterns in 4 ply yarn, as we called it in then (fingering weight). My mother believed life was too short for 4 ply, and would only knit in DK or Aran. Personally, I love finer yarns. And crochet. When I’m feeling super rebellious I may even crochet a project in lace weight yarn. See me be a hard core rebel! Ha!
But joking aside, everyone has their preferences, and they need to be able to see at a glance if the pattern matches those.

Sizes

Will this pattern fit the person we would like to make it for? This used to mystify me in my younger years. In that time, patterns were still using inches. But the metric conversion in Ireland was under way, and we were being taught centimeters in school. Each pattern would have text on the cover somewhere saying the chest size in inches. That would mean nothing to me, but everything to my mother, who would know with confidence which pattern would fit which person in the family.

Pattern Covers for Digital PDF patterns.

Today, far more patterns are sold as PDF documents on line. People still do visit their local yarn shop. And do still browse through pattern folders, for patterns from the big companies. But the age of the Indy designer and the digital pattern is here. Most of us are buying and selling our patterns online.
Are there still professional standards? Should we still be creating cover pages in the same way? Or are the needs for a cover a little different in the digital age?

Annie Howard, who has designed professionally for many publishers including Wendy and Making Stories, says:

“I tend to think of the online pattern page, on Ravelry or wherever, as the front page nowadays, as I don’t currently print them out or sell physical copies. So I don’t have a full page image, just a smaller image and some garment info.”

Anni is totally right about one thing:

Cover pages no longer need to sell the pattern.

Instead of sitting at a table, looking directly at the pattern itself, we browse Ravelry, Etsy or other online platforms. We can’t see the cover page. What we see is a pattern listing. This gives us much more information than a cover page. Here is a Ravelry listing for one of Anni’s Patterns, (the Dr. Who scarf, bottom left) along with 5 other designs. The patterns are, from top right, by Lynne Rowe, Carmen Heffernan, Joanne Fowler, Karen Hubbard, myself (Ciara Doyle) and Anni Howard. You will notice they have all the same information as an old pattern cover would have, plus a whole lot more! We still have the sizes, the yarn weight, and craft type. But is anything missing?

So, in short, the cover page no longer ‘sells’ the pattern. The listing – on Etsy, on Ravelry, on Shopify, etc, does the heavy lifting for that task. And so, to get a knitter or crocheter to buy our patterns in the first place, we need to focus on the listing. But there is something missing from the listing, even so. The big red circle from the vintage patterns is now nowhere to be seen.

The cover page still has work to do.

It is my belief that the cover page still needs to do 3 very important jobs. A great example of a crochet pattern cover page is that by Karen Hubbard, above, with her Chantilly Rose crochet pattern, seen above. These are:

What the buyer knits or crochets isn’t always the same as what they buy.

Many crafters joke about ‘PBLE’. That stands for ‘Patterns Beyond Life Expectancy’. In other words, they have already bought or downloaded more patterns than they could actually knit or crochet in their lifetime. It’s not surprising. People do this with yarn, too, and yarn is expensive. With patterns often costing less than a cup of coffee, people will often buy a selection.

Sometimes, it’s even more dramatic than that. In the last month I’ve been in 2 blog hops where I gave away free PDFs as part of the blog hop. Between the two, a little more than 1,500 people downloaded my patterns. Each of those people will have also downloaded the other patterns in the hop. That’s 30 free patterns for one of them, and 72 free patterns in the other blog hop. No one uses 72 patterns. From those 72 patterns someone downloaded in the blog hop, it’s reasonable to assume they pick out 2 or 3 to make, from a wide choice they now have stored on their phone or computer.

To grow, I want my buyers to make my patterns

I don’t want people to simply own a copy of my PDF, stored somewhere on their phone. I want them to make it. On all kinds of emotional levels, of course, I want the satisfaction of that. Any artist wants to know others are engaging with their art. Crochet and knitting designers are no different.

But there are also cold, hard business reasons. If someone downloaded 72 patterns in a blog hop, and crochets one of them, they will most likely:

In other words, our businesses can only thrive when people use our patterns. Owning them isn’t enough. And the cover page is what people see when they flick through the patterns they own. Whether it’s in their ravelry library, their Google drive, or other online storage. The cover page is still what they see. So the cover page still dictates: will my pattern be the one they make out of the 72 they recently acquired?

To do that, it needs:

To present one clear Hero Shot image of the full finished item.

Close ups of stitch detail make great Pinterest pins and social media posts. They spark curiosity, and get people to go look. But the pattern cover should be a clear shot of the whole item.
I recall buying a beautiful, and well written, pattern for a pair of toe up socks. When I got to the cuff, I got stuck. It was a minor issue, but I was wondering ‘why do it this way, instead of the normal way?’ Only at that point, I noticed, none of the photos showed the cuff. In an otherwise excellently written pattern, I consider that a (minor) failure of the designer to meet professional standards.

The cover page should show the full item. Inside the pattern, it’s good to include close up shots of details of stitch patterns, work in progress shots or stitch tutorials, perhaps a close up of the cuff, a close up of the heel, a close up of the toe. But the cover photo is the main place where you put the picture of the whole thing.

To identify our pattern with our brand.

Did you notice that what was missing from the Ravelry listings above, but present on the vintage patterns, was the big red circle? The brand. As we said, people don’t initially see the pattern cover. What they see is the listing on Ravelry, Etsy or elsewhere. But listings have a problem, they are very homogeneous. Ravelry listings are Ravelry branded. Etsy listings are Etsy branded. When a buyer buys a pattern from one of these platforms, the platform uses all kinds of marketing and psycological tricks to get them to think of the pattern as coming from them, not you. There is very little that we can do about that. We must use their template. To create a brand identity our makers will remember and recognise, we need to use the pattern itself.

Pattern covers for copyright

And finally, a huge problem of the digital age is pattern theft. There is no foolproof way to avoid this. But when your pattern cover is very clearly and distinctively branded, thieves may just, one hopes, move on to lower hanging fruit.

In short

To summarise, our pattern covers need to do 3 things, each of which is quite important. Every cover page should very clearly and distinctly brand our pattern so that people associate it with us as the designer, not the platform they purchased it through Secondly, it should contain a very clear hero shot of the knitted or crocheted item so that the maker can clearly see what it is they’re making and how it should come out. Finally, it should be attractive and alluring. So that when people are looking through their stash of ‘patterns beyond life expectancy’, ours is the one they choose from a wide range.

How to craft the perfect cover page for your knitting or crochet pattern

Your pattern cover is a silent salesperson—it doesn’t just sell the pattern, it sells the experience of making it. By focusing on a clear hero image, strong branding, and essential details, you’ll turn casual downloaders into loyal makers. Ready to design your next cover? Grab my free templates and checklist to get started.

Thanks and acknowledgements

In writing this post, I was met with much patience from all the lovely designers in Lynne Rowe’s mentoring group, who I pestered with questions all weekend about their opinions and knowledge on this topic. Thanks to all the designers who graciously allowed me to feature their covers and/or listings.

Thanks also to the many vintage pattern publishers for a happy life of knitting and crochet. Images of vintage patterns shown, I believe, come under ‘fair use’ as only the cover is shown, and none of the pattern instructions.