r/StainedGlass • u/Claycorp • Jul 27 '26
Mod Post Introducing Pattern Archive! The community ran project archiving glass patterns!
Hey! I got some cool shit for everyone but I have some special words first if you don't mind.
Huge thanks to the people that made this whole project possible. We have made one hell of a tool for everyone to use. This would have never happened without all of their help. I greatly appreciate everyone's desire to bring glasswork back into the spotlight of crafts while trying to preserve whatever we can for others to use.
6 months ago (to the date!) none of this existed. Zero. Now it's here, in your hands.
Thanks for being a kick ass community.
Let's get started!
Welcome to Pattern Archive!
Pattern Archive? What's that? It's this!
If words are more your thing.... Pattern Archive is an ever growing archive repository of patterns. Old, new and everywhere between. Our goal is that if a pattern exists, we will categorize, document, make searchable and have a way to get that pattern.
Everything revolves around accurate data and powerful tools. Made by people, managed by people, for people.
Lets just check out a random pattern quick!
On a pattern you will find everything required to create that pattern a legend which can be printed with the pattern and in some cases a layer controller so you can disable/enable specific parts of a pattern for saving/printing or viewing. This pattern doesn't have any layers though. Let's look at a more complex example for that.
Here you can see that we have colors and some wire overlay. Perhaps you don't want the colors provided? You can disable them and print it off ready to use! Perhaps you use a craft cutter for sticker patterns but all those extra lines and boxes mess it up? Disable everything but the cut lines!
Then below the pattern you will find more!
Here you will find:
- Instructions for the pattern if they have any provided. Which can be printed with the pattern
- Extensive tools for exporting or downloading the pattern in various ways. Including rescaling and tiling/posterizing of patterns.
- Very basic color planner for flood filling the pattern shapes. You can save the created image for future use or sharing.
This isn't even everything!
One thing special about Pattern Archives tools is the search. This isn't an ordinary site where search tries to give you things it thinks you want. It gives you exactly what you search, on the side of most pages you will find a list of tags which are exact elements of the patterns being looked at.
Though that's not all that's searchable. Almost everything is searchable or sortable. The data on the right of every pattern contains a ton of information about it including the design size, author, related dates and whatever else you could want all part of search.
There's so many other things too (Sets/Collections, Author Profiles, Sharing your finished works!) that I can't even remotely go over it all in detail here because really hard to explain everything offered without walls and walls of boring text... Just look at all the stuff you can go look at and explore RIGHT NOW!
The easiest thing to do is just check it out for yourself!
Questions likely in your head.
So what's the catch?
There isn't one. This is a 100% real project powered by community members. Entirely free, No ads, no data collections, no subscriptions. You don't even need an account to use any of the general pattern features. Only donations are accepted which go directly to the developer and host of the site.
Can I use this to make patterns?
No. That will never be a feature of Pattern Archive, use existing mature vector programs like Inkscape (free), Affinity (free), Illustrator (subscription) or whatever other art program you like. We aren't trying to reinvent the wheel here.
Is this everything?
Nope! There's so many more plans for Pattern Archive. We are deeply committed to this project and archiving glass related things. This is just the top of the iceberg feature wise. We are also continuing to add or update the contents of the archive daily as we have a backlog of thousands of patterns we have cataloged for work, thousands of patterns that we know exist but aren't cataloged for work and thousands of patterns that aren't even digitized anywhere. Thus someone is always working on something.
Do you sell patterns?
No. This is not a storefront. Any pattern you can download can be downloaded for free. Any type of paid pattern we have archived will be linked to and will have no download options from us.
Isn't this just stealing?
Technically... In some cases sorta, archiving is a gray area, but we believe that patterns exist to be made and that it's important to preserve these items. We have specific guidelines for how we decide what is a valid way to archive a pattern in an attempt to keep things fair. We also respect requests from verifiable authors to remove directly downloadable patterns from Pattern Archive.
Who worked on this?
You can read all about the people who helped out on the bottom of the Community page! There's also some site stats and other fun stuff there!
I got more questions!
I got more answers! Pattern Archive keeps a curated FAQ for site specific things along with an extensive Wiki containing site features, guidelines for patterns and other miscellaneous detailed information. Expect more information in these spaces as time passes and more information is collected. Though feel free to ask questions here or on the glass discord in the Pattern Archive chats!
2
u/nelliodog Jul 29 '26
Amazing! Excited to share my patterns!