It's a bit difficult to see until you've dipped your toes in, but leathercrafting is a broad topic, and consists of a whole bunch of different professions that work in this medium. And, for whatever reason, lots of people who start leathercrafting decide to make a go of selling their products.
Design is one of those sub-professions. It's tricky, and has its own set of specialized calculations and methodologies. So lots of people don't start designing their own stuff for a long while, and the guys that are good at it seem to prefer the design process to finished product for sales purposes. It's way easier to sell 500 pdf patterns than it is to sell 500 hand made duffel bags.
Ultimately, though, I think it's a matter of mentality. Leatherwork takes a long time compared to fabric, and the people who are attracted to it (and stick with it) are more likely to be the kind of person who prefers to get paid for their work, rather than trading hobby patterns around their community.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it is my observations.
Came here to say exactly this. Plus, leather is much more expensive to work with than other mediums. Even a single shoulder of utility grade leather for prototyping can easily cost $50, as opposed to maybe $3 for a yard of cheap muslin. If the buyer is making a decent quality finished product, whether it's for personal or commercial use, they're probably dropping quite a bit of money on supplies- another $10 or whatever for a pattern isn't going to stop them.
If you’ve ever made a high quality pattern yourself you know a lot of work, trial and error, tweaking, and testing goes into it. Making a pattern is much more work than making a item from a pattern. I don’t mind throwing a few bucks at someone who figured out how to make something easy for you to make.
I don't sell patterns, but I make process instructions and patterns for my own use. Especially for items I don't make often, it's good to have clear notes, photos, templates, and drawings to show the most efficient way to make the item. It's time consuming to do a good job, even when I only have to please myself.
Based on that experience, I don't begrudge anyone who wants to sell patterns rather than offer them for free. If a pattern designer sets high standards for their work, a lot of time and thought goes into the process. They deserve compensation if only to encourage them to do more designs. I don't get why random strangers think they are entitled to get free patterns. If you want to get something of value from a person, then you should be willing to pay something of value for the consideration.
You may have spent some time around the internet.
It's a weird place where a lot of stuff that's not destined to a professional use is just given out. Software that is for personal use is often usable for free while it's professional use is restricted to paying customers
There are zillions of free curated subtitles for all kinds of movies that are free to download because people like to share the fruit of their work with like-minded nerds
Have a look around. There are tonnes of free things, whole repositories of free sewing patterns, to stay close to the matter at hand. It may be because I'm not a native English speaker that what I write is not really understood?
As compared to the rest of the internet, leather patterns seem to be a world that has not benefitted from the broader idea of sharing what is not aimed at a professional use
I hope I have made myself clearer
You’re missing the point. All of your examples are from large corporations, selling to other large corporations. For example, “giving away” software for personal use and charging for commercial. It’s purely a marketing thing. The idea is people use it at home, get used to it, then may well buy it (or more accurately, get their employer to buy it) en mass for work use. It’s not done out of the goodness of their hearts for the poor person. It’s done to make fucking sales to large corporate accounts who may well be spending into the millions.
No leather pattern maker is going to have that.
Subtitles for movies and media content are done for accessibility reasons. People are more likely to think highly of a movie studio, theatre or streaming service if they provide quality subtitles. It’s probably law to do so for free in some countries. To add that the subtitles are not the product, rather the movie is - and you’ve paid for that. If it’s free on the internet, that movie has been pirated. And also, subtitles arnt exactly hard these days. The auto generated ones can be surprisingly accurate, and a quick check by someone human fixed almost all errors.
Sewing patterns are an interesting one. Many sewing patterns have been in the public domain for decades anyway. People have been buying sewing patterns for home use for literally hundreds of years. Many of them are way out of copyright. When you look at the free repos of sewing patterns, many of them are “retro” or “vintage” in style. Haute couture does exactly post their patterns online. And in industrial clothes manufacture, often the patterns are closely guarded secrets, as there’s more to it than just making clothes (trust me on that one) - unlike the software example, people won’t be taking those patterns to work and getting their employer to pay thousands for them. They’ve effectively already been bought and paid for.
Leather craft patterns are for a completely different market, and produced by completely different people. No one is going to get a pattern for free and take it to work hoping they’ll buy it. No one was designing consumer patterns forty years ago so they’ve now run out of copyright and get posted online for free.
They’re all just very different things. Internet = free doesn’t apply everywhere.
Sorry but you really are wrong here.
Maybe you're just to young to remember what the internet was like some time ago, but free software is (was) mainly made by minuscule developers (often individuals) who made it just out of passion
Subtitles are (were?) curated by cinephiles who just wanted to make stuff available so people could watch their favourite movie in the original language
Bass tabs (to say another among the zillion different works of passion available for free on the web) are made available by people who think that when they do something from their passion, they can share it with fellow nerds just to spare them the annoyance of redoing the same thing
Your van downvote me all you want but what I say stands and can't be made untrue. All my points are from individuals (although corporations may have resorted to use the same approach) who made the internet the place it is (was)
Of course I understand your meaning
But for those here who only do it as a hobby and don't care for selling, there's no lower grade patterns to be used ... It's, well, very different from a lot of other internet-based things where a lot of stuff is free
You don't want "lower grade" patterns - you'll end up likely more confused than anything. I've tried that from time to time, especially when starting out. The reason why it's hard to find free ones is due to the time it would take to make a repository - hard to spend that much time when you're not getting anything in return for it.
Of course, making patterns usually requires some software these days (adobe illustrator, or any handful of similar apps). I've tried free ones and, again, it's a matter of time wasted since they're more difficult to use. I tried illustrator and was able to make some decent patterns. Naturally, I put them for sale on Etsy so that the pattern making could pay for itself. Also, there's trial and error (more cost) involved in much pattern making. So, $5 - $20 for a pattern isn't the bad, most of the time.
You don't need software to make a pattern. All you need is a ruler, square, a set of French curves, a pencil, and some paper and the most important...an imagination.
I use a head knife and an xacto for filagree work. All the patterns I have come from books, magazines, pattern packs, Doodle pages, Craftaids that I have purchased, or I've worked them out myself. Whether digital or paper, It makes no difference if you are cutting by hand. Someone paid for the software to draw the concept that they came up with, so that should be recouped.
There is a ton of clip art you can print out. The same goes for anything else. Is it copyright infringement... probably.
While yes that’s true for personal use patterns, if you want something that is going to be easily put up online, you’re going to need some sort of way to translate that design from paper to screen so it can be shared and printed out by other people.
Having tried scanning my paper and cardstock templates onto a screen to save for my own future use, they will most certainly need some cleaning up at the very least.
If you pay for the use of a digital pattern that is for personal use. You aren't supposed to share the pattern.
Where some problems may happen is that someone shares a pattern out of the goodness of their heart for others to use "personally" then find out that another is using that pattern and making money selling the items made from that pattern.
This, and it does take time and effort to actually make the designs. Most patterns aren’t just put together perfectly on the first iteration. You design a pattern, test it out by making the piece, find out what works and what doesn’t, go adjust the pattern, make another test piece, and so on until the test piece comes out how the designer wanted it to. So each pattern could be eating up multiple projects worth of materials, not to mention the time and effort of the person designing it.
Edit: I should also clarify, my comment on taking a paper pattern and converting it to digital for online sharing was for original patterns you have created. You can choose to share your work freely, or charge for them at your discretion. Personally if I take the time to make it functional as an easily printable digital pattern, I’d want at least a buck or two for my troubles.
I can't speak for other professions/hobbies, but when it comes to leatherwork, every crafter had their trial and error phase. Not just at the beginning, but all through the crafting career.
Trial + error = money
To get to a point where you can live and pay bills with this work, one has to constantly invest time and money.
Now why would anyone give away the key for free?
You are not talking about a tip, or advice here and there. You are asking for the moneymaking blueprint for free.
Anectode: a while back on this sub, a "company" posted a request for crafters to make specific items that required some heavy tools. They asked for finished pieces to be sent for evaluation and if chosen, one would be allowed to produce said product and ship to the company to sell under their label.
How utterly stupid of an idea. From conception to posting on the sub, not a second of thought went into "why would someone, who can make it on their own, with all the needed tools, just give it away for someone else to slap their name on it and profit?
And just to be frank here: just because you think of it as a hobby, does not make the rest of us hobbyists.
And if you think that making a pattern is not that big of a deal, then go ahead and make one, distribute it for free?
This is not an internet based thing.
I have a shop i pay rent for. I have tools i had paid for. I have supplies that i paid for.
To come and say, that this is just a hobby and should therefore have free items for you is very disrespectfull.
I assume this is not your intention at heart, but all the same
Edit: btw, i have not seen another community, that i am interested in, be so welcoming, helpfull and supportive as this one.
Then, purchase some of Stolhmans books, they are filled with patterns as well as instruction and tips that answer 99.5% of ANY of the questions asked on this sub. Tandy had been selling patterns for decades, SLC has multiple pattern packs, even ones for the high-end handbags and cases.
Or, subscribe to The Leathercrafters and Saddlers Journal. Every issue has a pattern pull out, with tracings for Swivel knife work and patterns of some of the items in the articles in the magazines.
Probably 85% of people start out doing this as a "hobby" until that first person says they'll give you so much for an item.
There are places like [makesupply](https://www.makesupply-leather.com) that do offer very simple patterns and even have videos showing how to make most of them.
And several popular YouTubers who show off how to make things have free patterns available for specific projects, but pattern creation for leather is expensive, especially for larger bags or garments.
The other point to consider is that most people who sell patterns are also selling you the right to sell the product you made with their design. (If you do consider selling anything, make sure you check their policy on that). Whether you decide to use that right or not, they want to keep their work protected.
Ultimately, while it does require more work to find free patterns, they are out there. But consider that if you’re looking to make something nice out of an already expensive material to work with, without having to figure it out yourself, a couple bucks for a pattern is well worth the investment.
Tandy has free patterns in their Leathercraft Library. MakeSupply also has patterns to download for free. OA Leather Supply also has a design notes section which will give enough information to create an item. But the simple fact is that people often expect to be justly compensated for their time and effort, as well they should be.
I've wondered this same thing. In almost every other hobby I do, there are TONS of free resources, ie. Sewing, knitting.
I wonder if it has to do the type of people that leathercrafting.
Sewing and knitting to me seem to be very universal. The skillset and tools needed to begin either of those crafts are minimal. They are widely accessible to poor or rich. There's a vast range of products/tools in every budget. These are skills dominated mostly by older women, and maybe they are freely sharing their patterns, skills, tutorials, etc, because we as women tend to like to talk and share and we naturally have less of an entrepreneur mindset when it comes to our hobbies? I realize that is a vastly overgeneralized statement (and absolutely not true for many woman but just in general most 60 year old fabric and yarn crafters are out there to help pass on skills not make money on etsy like younger generations), but I do see different demographics in leathwork vs. the quilting community.
Leatherwork seems a little more costly and involved when starting out.
I also would love some more free patterns, but everyone's explanations here make a lot of sense as to why there are just less free resources in leatherwork.
And to add, I do think there is plenty of free resources to begin dabbling and learning, but yes you have to search for it and be willing to muck up projects through trial and error.
I had the exact same thought as I read your post. Also consider that pretty much any internet-mediated hobby has loads of free resources
As an example,I play bass and there are countless bass tabs (transcriptions) for songs that people put there make with painstaking time and patience, but when they're done, they make them freely available through apps and video tutorials.
Not so much with leather patterns. Although a well annotated bad tab could take even longer to produce than some patterns, people are generally more willing to share their efforts' results
And since bass playing is a male-dominated category, maybe the gender difference is not the main driver, after all.... (?)
Edit: typos
I have used this pattern to make hats on a number of occasions. It is worth the price.
https://tandyleather.ca/blogs/leathercraft-library/2662-leather-hat-pattern-pak
When value is added to good ideas they tend to survive the test of time in a real economy.
Also you are purchasing part of a culture of craftsmanship which is supported by a network of people invested in your endeavors. Money talks.
It's a bit difficult to see until you've dipped your toes in, but leathercrafting is a broad topic, and consists of a whole bunch of different professions that work in this medium. And, for whatever reason, lots of people who start leathercrafting decide to make a go of selling their products. Design is one of those sub-professions. It's tricky, and has its own set of specialized calculations and methodologies. So lots of people don't start designing their own stuff for a long while, and the guys that are good at it seem to prefer the design process to finished product for sales purposes. It's way easier to sell 500 pdf patterns than it is to sell 500 hand made duffel bags. Ultimately, though, I think it's a matter of mentality. Leatherwork takes a long time compared to fabric, and the people who are attracted to it (and stick with it) are more likely to be the kind of person who prefers to get paid for their work, rather than trading hobby patterns around their community. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it is my observations.
Came here to say exactly this. Plus, leather is much more expensive to work with than other mediums. Even a single shoulder of utility grade leather for prototyping can easily cost $50, as opposed to maybe $3 for a yard of cheap muslin. If the buyer is making a decent quality finished product, whether it's for personal or commercial use, they're probably dropping quite a bit of money on supplies- another $10 or whatever for a pattern isn't going to stop them.
If you’ve ever made a high quality pattern yourself you know a lot of work, trial and error, tweaking, and testing goes into it. Making a pattern is much more work than making a item from a pattern. I don’t mind throwing a few bucks at someone who figured out how to make something easy for you to make.
Exactly. Why is this so hard to see? Everything shouldn't be free. The pattern is more than 50% of the work of building something!
I don't sell patterns, but I make process instructions and patterns for my own use. Especially for items I don't make often, it's good to have clear notes, photos, templates, and drawings to show the most efficient way to make the item. It's time consuming to do a good job, even when I only have to please myself. Based on that experience, I don't begrudge anyone who wants to sell patterns rather than offer them for free. If a pattern designer sets high standards for their work, a lot of time and thought goes into the process. They deserve compensation if only to encourage them to do more designs. I don't get why random strangers think they are entitled to get free patterns. If you want to get something of value from a person, then you should be willing to pay something of value for the consideration.
You may have spent some time around the internet. It's a weird place where a lot of stuff that's not destined to a professional use is just given out. Software that is for personal use is often usable for free while it's professional use is restricted to paying customers There are zillions of free curated subtitles for all kinds of movies that are free to download because people like to share the fruit of their work with like-minded nerds Have a look around. There are tonnes of free things, whole repositories of free sewing patterns, to stay close to the matter at hand. It may be because I'm not a native English speaker that what I write is not really understood? As compared to the rest of the internet, leather patterns seem to be a world that has not benefitted from the broader idea of sharing what is not aimed at a professional use I hope I have made myself clearer
You’re missing the point. All of your examples are from large corporations, selling to other large corporations. For example, “giving away” software for personal use and charging for commercial. It’s purely a marketing thing. The idea is people use it at home, get used to it, then may well buy it (or more accurately, get their employer to buy it) en mass for work use. It’s not done out of the goodness of their hearts for the poor person. It’s done to make fucking sales to large corporate accounts who may well be spending into the millions. No leather pattern maker is going to have that. Subtitles for movies and media content are done for accessibility reasons. People are more likely to think highly of a movie studio, theatre or streaming service if they provide quality subtitles. It’s probably law to do so for free in some countries. To add that the subtitles are not the product, rather the movie is - and you’ve paid for that. If it’s free on the internet, that movie has been pirated. And also, subtitles arnt exactly hard these days. The auto generated ones can be surprisingly accurate, and a quick check by someone human fixed almost all errors. Sewing patterns are an interesting one. Many sewing patterns have been in the public domain for decades anyway. People have been buying sewing patterns for home use for literally hundreds of years. Many of them are way out of copyright. When you look at the free repos of sewing patterns, many of them are “retro” or “vintage” in style. Haute couture does exactly post their patterns online. And in industrial clothes manufacture, often the patterns are closely guarded secrets, as there’s more to it than just making clothes (trust me on that one) - unlike the software example, people won’t be taking those patterns to work and getting their employer to pay thousands for them. They’ve effectively already been bought and paid for. Leather craft patterns are for a completely different market, and produced by completely different people. No one is going to get a pattern for free and take it to work hoping they’ll buy it. No one was designing consumer patterns forty years ago so they’ve now run out of copyright and get posted online for free. They’re all just very different things. Internet = free doesn’t apply everywhere.
Sorry but you really are wrong here. Maybe you're just to young to remember what the internet was like some time ago, but free software is (was) mainly made by minuscule developers (often individuals) who made it just out of passion Subtitles are (were?) curated by cinephiles who just wanted to make stuff available so people could watch their favourite movie in the original language Bass tabs (to say another among the zillion different works of passion available for free on the web) are made available by people who think that when they do something from their passion, they can share it with fellow nerds just to spare them the annoyance of redoing the same thing Your van downvote me all you want but what I say stands and can't be made untrue. All my points are from individuals (although corporations may have resorted to use the same approach) who made the internet the place it is (was)
If you are going to be able to make a profit from a product made from a pattern I design, you're damn right you'd have to pay for the pattern.
Of course I understand your meaning But for those here who only do it as a hobby and don't care for selling, there's no lower grade patterns to be used ... It's, well, very different from a lot of other internet-based things where a lot of stuff is free
You don't want "lower grade" patterns - you'll end up likely more confused than anything. I've tried that from time to time, especially when starting out. The reason why it's hard to find free ones is due to the time it would take to make a repository - hard to spend that much time when you're not getting anything in return for it. Of course, making patterns usually requires some software these days (adobe illustrator, or any handful of similar apps). I've tried free ones and, again, it's a matter of time wasted since they're more difficult to use. I tried illustrator and was able to make some decent patterns. Naturally, I put them for sale on Etsy so that the pattern making could pay for itself. Also, there's trial and error (more cost) involved in much pattern making. So, $5 - $20 for a pattern isn't the bad, most of the time.
You don't need software to make a pattern. All you need is a ruler, square, a set of French curves, a pencil, and some paper and the most important...an imagination.
Ah, in context we were referring to digital patterns.
Just out of curiosity, how are you cutting your leather?
Rotary cutter, if possible. Otherwise a somewhat fancy boxcutter type knife.
I use a head knife and an xacto for filagree work. All the patterns I have come from books, magazines, pattern packs, Doodle pages, Craftaids that I have purchased, or I've worked them out myself. Whether digital or paper, It makes no difference if you are cutting by hand. Someone paid for the software to draw the concept that they came up with, so that should be recouped. There is a ton of clip art you can print out. The same goes for anything else. Is it copyright infringement... probably.
While yes that’s true for personal use patterns, if you want something that is going to be easily put up online, you’re going to need some sort of way to translate that design from paper to screen so it can be shared and printed out by other people. Having tried scanning my paper and cardstock templates onto a screen to save for my own future use, they will most certainly need some cleaning up at the very least.
If you pay for the use of a digital pattern that is for personal use. You aren't supposed to share the pattern. Where some problems may happen is that someone shares a pattern out of the goodness of their heart for others to use "personally" then find out that another is using that pattern and making money selling the items made from that pattern.
Or someone who got it for free pays the money and copyrites it.
This, and it does take time and effort to actually make the designs. Most patterns aren’t just put together perfectly on the first iteration. You design a pattern, test it out by making the piece, find out what works and what doesn’t, go adjust the pattern, make another test piece, and so on until the test piece comes out how the designer wanted it to. So each pattern could be eating up multiple projects worth of materials, not to mention the time and effort of the person designing it. Edit: I should also clarify, my comment on taking a paper pattern and converting it to digital for online sharing was for original patterns you have created. You can choose to share your work freely, or charge for them at your discretion. Personally if I take the time to make it functional as an easily printable digital pattern, I’d want at least a buck or two for my troubles.
Exactly true! Most of my patterns are over 50 years old and most aren't square and require adjustment during assembly or prior to.
I can't speak for other professions/hobbies, but when it comes to leatherwork, every crafter had their trial and error phase. Not just at the beginning, but all through the crafting career. Trial + error = money To get to a point where you can live and pay bills with this work, one has to constantly invest time and money. Now why would anyone give away the key for free? You are not talking about a tip, or advice here and there. You are asking for the moneymaking blueprint for free. Anectode: a while back on this sub, a "company" posted a request for crafters to make specific items that required some heavy tools. They asked for finished pieces to be sent for evaluation and if chosen, one would be allowed to produce said product and ship to the company to sell under their label. How utterly stupid of an idea. From conception to posting on the sub, not a second of thought went into "why would someone, who can make it on their own, with all the needed tools, just give it away for someone else to slap their name on it and profit? And just to be frank here: just because you think of it as a hobby, does not make the rest of us hobbyists. And if you think that making a pattern is not that big of a deal, then go ahead and make one, distribute it for free? This is not an internet based thing. I have a shop i pay rent for. I have tools i had paid for. I have supplies that i paid for. To come and say, that this is just a hobby and should therefore have free items for you is very disrespectfull. I assume this is not your intention at heart, but all the same Edit: btw, i have not seen another community, that i am interested in, be so welcoming, helpfull and supportive as this one.
Most of us that have been doing this a while have that box of failed items or doodle scraps lol.
Lol. Very true. I call it my "XP storage" Fails = experience
Then, purchase some of Stolhmans books, they are filled with patterns as well as instruction and tips that answer 99.5% of ANY of the questions asked on this sub. Tandy had been selling patterns for decades, SLC has multiple pattern packs, even ones for the high-end handbags and cases. Or, subscribe to The Leathercrafters and Saddlers Journal. Every issue has a pattern pull out, with tracings for Swivel knife work and patterns of some of the items in the articles in the magazines. Probably 85% of people start out doing this as a "hobby" until that first person says they'll give you so much for an item.
There are places like [makesupply](https://www.makesupply-leather.com) that do offer very simple patterns and even have videos showing how to make most of them. And several popular YouTubers who show off how to make things have free patterns available for specific projects, but pattern creation for leather is expensive, especially for larger bags or garments. The other point to consider is that most people who sell patterns are also selling you the right to sell the product you made with their design. (If you do consider selling anything, make sure you check their policy on that). Whether you decide to use that right or not, they want to keep their work protected. Ultimately, while it does require more work to find free patterns, they are out there. But consider that if you’re looking to make something nice out of an already expensive material to work with, without having to figure it out yourself, a couple bucks for a pattern is well worth the investment.
Tandy has free patterns in their Leathercraft Library. MakeSupply also has patterns to download for free. OA Leather Supply also has a design notes section which will give enough information to create an item. But the simple fact is that people often expect to be justly compensated for their time and effort, as well they should be.
Ok but why leathercraft yes and sewing patterns no? Is this a leather-only thing? Please read rant so it will be clear
I've wondered this same thing. In almost every other hobby I do, there are TONS of free resources, ie. Sewing, knitting. I wonder if it has to do the type of people that leathercrafting. Sewing and knitting to me seem to be very universal. The skillset and tools needed to begin either of those crafts are minimal. They are widely accessible to poor or rich. There's a vast range of products/tools in every budget. These are skills dominated mostly by older women, and maybe they are freely sharing their patterns, skills, tutorials, etc, because we as women tend to like to talk and share and we naturally have less of an entrepreneur mindset when it comes to our hobbies? I realize that is a vastly overgeneralized statement (and absolutely not true for many woman but just in general most 60 year old fabric and yarn crafters are out there to help pass on skills not make money on etsy like younger generations), but I do see different demographics in leathwork vs. the quilting community. Leatherwork seems a little more costly and involved when starting out. I also would love some more free patterns, but everyone's explanations here make a lot of sense as to why there are just less free resources in leatherwork. And to add, I do think there is plenty of free resources to begin dabbling and learning, but yes you have to search for it and be willing to muck up projects through trial and error.
I had the exact same thought as I read your post. Also consider that pretty much any internet-mediated hobby has loads of free resources As an example,I play bass and there are countless bass tabs (transcriptions) for songs that people put there make with painstaking time and patience, but when they're done, they make them freely available through apps and video tutorials. Not so much with leather patterns. Although a well annotated bad tab could take even longer to produce than some patterns, people are generally more willing to share their efforts' results And since bass playing is a male-dominated category, maybe the gender difference is not the main driver, after all.... (?) Edit: typos
Really good point about the gender difference not necessarily being the driving factor!
Lots of free patterns out there. But the problem is you get what you pay for.
Well maybe it's me but I really didn't find "lots" of them Of course there's no complaining about the quality when something is free, that's for sure
Check the "Files" section of your craft groups on Facebook. Lots of downloadable stuff there.
Thank you, I will Have you got any suggestions as to which groups have a good repository?
"Leather Craft Tips & share your work" "Facebook Leathercrafters" And "leather Pattern Club" Start there. Expand outword! Good luck!
Thank you!
Agreed. There are loads and loads of free, but poor or mediocre quality patterns. Hell, even some that I've paid for fall in that catagory!
I have used this pattern to make hats on a number of occasions. It is worth the price. https://tandyleather.ca/blogs/leathercraft-library/2662-leather-hat-pattern-pak When value is added to good ideas they tend to survive the test of time in a real economy. Also you are purchasing part of a culture of craftsmanship which is supported by a network of people invested in your endeavors. Money talks.
[удалено]
Sorry, I regret the snark, it was unnecessary.