First, it should be noted that some of my competitors on YouTube are non-human AI sewing tutorials. It is my belief that my own sewing tutorials have been used to create these (together with the tutorials made by other human sewists and designers), in many cases without our consent.

This is especially true of certain videos that show you how to make and design your own Barbie patterns, although I believe there are also some AI generated tutorial videos that teach you how to sew and design your own 18 inch doll clothes patterns.

It’s a changing world, and AI is shaping the changes in video creation. That’s all there is to it.

With that said, I want to fully disclose that the videos I create and the blog posts I make on this website do use some facets of artificial intelligence. Specifically, I use AI for the following purposes:

Using my Canva account, I sometimes ask AI to help me type descriptions of my images for the blind. This is referred to as “alt text,” and AI helps me make it possible for blind people who sew to have a description of my images (including my PDF sewing patterns) read out loud to them, so they can make an informed decision about whether or not they want to try using that particular sewing pattern.

I also use Canva AI to remove backgrounds on some of my images. So when you see a doll standing in a real-world-looking kitchen or on a real-world-looking backyard deck or something to that effect, I’ve used AI to create that image. I can do this with video as well, so in my “People Who Read” YouTube Short, the library behind the Chelly Wood doll was created using AI.

 

Deborah, who is a regular commenter on my website speaks Portuguese as her primary language, and a while ago she complained that my voice on YouTube is now being translated into AI-sounding Portuguese.

Yes, the artificial intelligence voice truly sounds robotic. That’s annoying, and there’s not much I can do about it… However, by translating my voice on my videos, AI is allowing my sewing tutorials to reach a wider audience, and that’s a very GOOD thing!

For example, according to my “Jetpack” statistics, I’ve only had 1,281 visitors to my website from Japan in the past twelve months (compared to 429,000 visitors from the US), even though there are lots of Japanese people who collect Momoko and Tammy dolls. But because my tutorial videos for making doll clothes for Momoko and Tammy are mostly older videos without any voiceover, these Japanese doll collectors don’t have any way to translate my sewing instructions.

 

So this may explain why I’ve been revising my older tutorials to include voiceover. It will offer YouTube’s translation AI an opportunity to translate my videos into many languages, including Japanese. That way Japanese Momoko and Tammy doll collectors will be able to discover and use my free doll clothes sewing patterns without having to guess how to piece the garments together while watching a video they don’t understand.

This is also why I’ve been converting many of my existing patterns to A4 printer paper. In many countries outside the United States, a different size of printer paper is being used. And since I began this project, I’ve watched my readership grow from 99% US readers to a broader base of international readers.

Today I checked how many people in the US and Canada have accessed my website in the past 12 months. I found that as of today, 73,400 people from the UK and 69,000 from Canada have accessed patterns from my site over the past year. Although I can’t trust these statistics to be 100% accurate due to recent laws that protect citizens of the UK (and maybe Canada?) from participating in data collection — privacy policies — these numbers are up significantly from what they were five or ten years ago.

But information has spread faster to the UK and Canada due to the fact that English is spoken in both of these countries, and I want my patterns to be available to everyone, not just the English-speaking countries!

So I will continue to use AI to translate my YouTube tutorials, and I will continue to revise old tutorials to include voiceover for that reason. It simply makes it possible for more people to gain knowledge about my website and all the free patterns I have made available here. I’m sorry the translator sounds robotic, but there’s not much I can do about that.

I also use AI to help me come up with titles and hashtags that help people find my website. That’s called SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. And I plan to continue to use AI that way. However the text I type into my blog posts is entirely my own, with few exceptions. (I might ask AI to help me generate sewing-related blog topics, for example, if I’m feeling a little braindead!)

But I’m not using AI to create my sewing patterns the way some of my online competition is.

The thing to remember about my sewing patterns is that I do a lot of checking to make sure my patterns are viable. I first design them by hand on graph paper. Then I make a prototype garment (also called a toile). If it doesn’t fit right, I go back to the drawing board and re-design it.

By the time I make a pattern available to you, my readers and followers, I’ve sewn and re-sewn the garment until I trust that the pattern works like it’s supposed to.

If one of you leaves a comment complaining that the garment you made didn’t fit the doll it was designed for, I temporarily remove that pattern from my website and re-assess it to see if I made a mistake. And yes, over the 10+ years that I’ve been running this website, on rare occasions I have made mistakes, but usually that’s not the case.

By comparison, if you get patterns that were strictly made by AI and not pattern-tested by a real human, there will be mistakes in those patterns. That’s a given. So keep that in mind when you download free patterns associated with AI-generated tutorial videos.

In short, my competitors who are making AI patterns and AI tutorial videos can crank out dozens of videos and patterns per week, while I can only make one or two unique patterns and tutorials per month. However, I can pretty much guarantee that my patterns really work and that my tutorials are well-edited, revised, and checked for accuracy before they go out to the public.

What are your thoughts on the use of AI in pattern making and tutorial videos? Do you have trouble spotting the AI-generated content? Do you think there will come a time when websites like mine become obsolete, due to the perfection of AI-generated patterns and tutorial videos? I am really curious about what you have to say!

If you enjoyed this blog post, and you’d like to see my videos, you might want to navigate over to my YouTube channel, ChellyWood1 to look through my playlists.

If you would like to make a donation to this free doll clothes pattern website, please click here. There’s also a “Donate” button in the main menu.

For anyone who would like to expand their dolls’ wardrobes, you should really check out my “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” course and my “Design Your Own Doll Pants Patterns from Scratch” classes on the C&T Publishing online learning platform. Here’s my bio page on their website, where you can learn more.

For any class on the C&T Publishing website, you don’t have to follow a schedule. Just sign up when you’re ready.

It’s a one-time fee for the course, and there’s no specific time limit to finish your course. You can just take your time and learn at the pace that suits you. So go check out my paid courses on the C&T Pub site, using this link.

As always, feel free to share my patterns and tutorials on social media. I only ask that you please let people know about my free doll clothes sewing pattern website, to help spread the word.

To read more about my free sewing patterns and tutorials, please visit the “Helpful Tips” page.

Disclaimer/Credit/Affiliate Marketing Link:

*Please note: when you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include Amazon, Etsy, and the eBay Partner Network. As an Amazon affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases. To learn more about how my website uses affiliate marketing, please visit the website’s Privacy Policy page.

Chelly Wood and the ChellyWood.com website are not affiliated with any of the doll or toy companies mentioned in this blog post, but Chelly enjoys designing her doll clothes to fit a variety of dolls. To learn more about the doll companies mentioned in today’s post, please visit the doll or toy company’s website.