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FROM CRAFTS TO HIGH TECH AND BACK
A craft designer's career journey
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"If anyone had told me back at the height of my crafts
career in the 1970’s that I’d someday have a second
successful career - in the field of “HIGH TECH” -
I’d have laughed”, says Bella Scharf, designer,
best-selling crafts book author, and creator of this website.
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Bella Scharf in 2008
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Bella Scharf in the 1970's
with her first book:
"Illustrated Patchwork Crochet"
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“Back then I didn’t know a computer from a cabinet!
And that was probably true for many people.
In fact, computers at that time – “mainframes” – were truly
the size of large pieces of furniture, even as large as rooms”,
continues Bella.
Bella had always dreamed of pursuing a design career.
After graduating from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY in 1970,
Bella freelanced for a nationally known women's magazine,
designing knitted
and crocheted sweaters . That launched her crafts career.
Her work was “spotted” in the magazine by a major yarn manufacturer executive
and she was offered a "design director" position developing “do-it-yourself”
projects.
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Bella appeared on TV multiple times in the 70's to
promote her books and the "Denim Look Yarn" she
had developed for Malina Yarn Company
(Bella is on the extreme right).
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Bella's original designs to knit and crochet
appeared in a national
magazine in 1972, launching her crafts career
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While working at Malina Yarn Company and developing crochet instructions, Bella
became aware of the challenges crocheters faced with deciphering traditional abbreviated
instructions. She began illustrating all her crochet patterns,
and that led to the publication of her first book in 1976 –
“Illustrated Patchwork Crochet”, containing a compilation of her
illustrated patterns for granny squares, strips and other crocheted
components. The book was very successful, selling over 150,000 in a
short time. It was featured by the Literary Guild and Doubleday Book
Club. A second book – “Butterick’s Fast and Easy Needlecrafts”, was
published a year later.(See the "About the Author/Designer"
page on this web site. )
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Above: Bella Scharf's two published books, and a
sample illustration from a crochet pattern.
This web site - PatchworkCrochet.com - offers crochet
patterns that are FULLY ILLUSTRATED
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Towards the end of the 1970’s the crafts explosion that had characterized
that decade had begun to ebb. Crafts seemed to be less popular. After
much contemplation, Bella decided to switch career gears completely –
in fact 180 degrees - in spite of her major success in crafts.
She decided to re-tool for a new field: computer systems design and analysis.
After several months of intensive technical training, she embarked on
her 25-year technical career, working for several large corporations over the years,
and spending the last 16 years at a major New Jersey pharmaceutical
firm, primarily in web systems development.
”I found technical work – especially business systems design - to
be just as creative and challenging as crafts, and I felt thoroughly
fulfilled”, says Bella. “I was successful at it too. I guess both types
of design utilize the same side of the brain”. Towards the end of her
“high tech” career, Bella began to plan a return to crafts by building
this web site, which offers FULLY ILLUSTRATED crochet patterns - probably the only
web site on the Internet to do so. “Interestingly,
the yarn crafts field was exploding once again, and there was a new
generation of crochet enthusiasts in need of easier, illustrated instructions”.
This web site has been developed to help crocheters worldwide to
grow and develop their crochet expertise by the use of FULLY ILLUSTRATED
CROCHET intructional patterns.
See the special $9.99 offer for 140 pages of illustrated crochet
reference patterns.
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Go back to site's Home Page
See collection of fully illustrated crochet patterns
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