A popular question I get from knitters all the time has to do with trying to find a pattern that involves their favorite sports team or cartoon character to knit a project for someone they love.
It seems logical to these people that such patterns much be available somewhere, but they're having trouble finding them for some reason. The reason has to do with the licensing and trademarks associated with such images, which makes it illegal to profit off another person's (or in this case, a corporation's) copyright.
Images of everything from the Dallas Cowboys logo to Dora the Explorer are rigidly protected by the companies that own them. That's why you often see a logo or other notice on a T-shirt with a character on it or a hat from your favorite NFL team that the item is officially licensed.
That means the product was made with permission of the copyright or trademark holder and that person or company is getting a cut of sales. That's fair, because there's intellectual property tied up even in the simplest logo design.
So that's why you don't usually see knitting patterns for sale -- or even offered for free -- that include licensed characters. It's not often that a copyright holder will go after someone offering free patterns using their images or inspired by their images, but it did happen in 2008, when the BBC went after a knitter who posted free patterns inspired by "Dr. Who" on her website. (The BBC ultimately apologized and said it wanted to talk to her about developing licensed knitting patterns, but to my knowledge such patterns never materialized.)
So, what about if you want to knit a project with your team's logo or a picture of Elmo for your grandson and you don't intend to share the pattern with anyone else? That shouldn't be a problem, because the main issue with copyright violation has to do with profiting from an image or logo that rightfully belongs to someone else.
But if there are no patterns out there, how do you develop a pattern to knit for yourself? There are computer programs that allow you to scan in pictures and have the turn out on a knitting chart, or you can use a piece of graph paper and do much the same thing by hand, especially if you're charting a simple shape, outline or logo.
You can also use a program like knitPro, which takes a digital file and converts it (by adding a grid) to a chart suitable for knitting, needlepoint or other crafts.
You might need to tweak your finished chart a bit to make it fit properly on the item you want to knit, but any of these options is still a lot faster than trying to draw out a chart completely by hand.
