Livejournal user lady_whitehaven turned on the Way Back Machine for me today when I found this post over at the Livejournal community quilting.
The dragon is an old design that I came up with way back in 2006 for a project that never quite made it to fruition. That was probably a year after I started designing. When I look at the original pattern, I can really see how much my design skill has evolved.
Sometime in 2007, when I had finally tested the dragon and realized how complicated it was, I pulled it off of sewhooked to be redesigned and then (apparently!) forgot about it. I have since tried to be more careful about what patterns I post untested. If I’m even a little unsure of the pattern design, I’ll hold onto it until I’ve had the chance to test it myself.
New, cleaned up and simplified version:
The original version looks okay, but the pattern is scary, messy & has too many pieces!
First scary dragon pattern
When I woke up this morning, I had no intention of redrawing or reworking a pattern. I had kids to get to school (done!), a hubby to drop off at the airport (done!) and groceries to buy (um…not so done!). Thank you, lady_whitehaven, for inspiring me to have a second look and give the “Green Dragon” a second life.
“Green Dragon” is now housed on the Paper Pieced Pattern page at sewhooked. If you give it a try, or any of my other patterns or projects a try, I’d love to see a photo. Email me or add it to the Friends of Sewhooked flickr group.
Have a happy weekend!
coming soon – Guest Designer profiles!
This is part of my “Way Back Craft” series’; patterns, crafts, tutorials and general crafty memories before the days of this craft blog.
Sewhooked 
Oh wow, nice dragon! I completely relate to early designing woes. I did exactly the same thing with my first fairy pattern, which I can now see is so unnecessarily complicated!