Below is the first draft of the Myths of FreeSewing article. The idea was to write something that can be posted on the website, perhaps as a Blog post, and that could be linked to in response to inaccurate social media posts.
Frequently Asked Questions (Myths of FreeSewing):
Q: Is this AI?
A: No. The FreeSewing site is not AI and does not use AI.
Q: But, it was written by AI?
A: No. All of our patterns and code was written by hand by actual people, without the use of any AI.
Q: But, those images on the FreeSewing home page, those were created by AI, correct?
A: No. We paid an actual human artist to create those images years ago, before AI tools even existed. (If they look like they were created by AI, we apologize!)
Q: But, the patterns are created by AI?
A: No, the patterns are generated by code that was written by actual people, without the use of AI.
Q: Do you have proof that the patterns aren’t created by AI?
A: Yes. You can look at our Codeberg code repository to see the actual code that generates the patterns.
Q: Was the FreeSewing website created by AI?
A: No, the website was created by actual people, not AI.
Q: Why does the website looks like it was created by AI?
A: The FreeSewing website was created by people who are not web design experts. We apologize if the website doesn’t look as good as it might.
Q: How is FreeSewing free, with no charge?
A: FreeSewing was specifically created by volunteers for the purpose of making patterns available for people to use for free, to make the world better.
Q: If FreeSewing is free to use, how do you pay for the website, bandwidth, etc.?
A: The volunteers who run FreeSewing pay for it themselves.
Q: But, the website has a link to donate to FreeSewing?
A: Yes. But, we take the money and donate it all to charity. FreeSewing doesn’t keep any of it. You can see exactly where the money goes and how much has been donated here.
Q: Why is the FreeSewing website so slow and unresponsive?
A: FreeSewing has been mentioned more frequently on social media recently, and the website has been struggling to keep up with the increased usage from new users. We are working on improving the performance of the website and apologize for any issues you experience in the meantime.
Q: Why do I have to enter measurements to get a pattern? Can’t I just get a S-M-L-XL pattern?
A: FreeSewing’s philosophy is to provide made-to-measure patterns, believing that patterns created using actual measurements will result in better-fitting garments. We specifically do not want to provide generic S-M-L-XL patterns.
Q: The patterns are just one pattern scaled up and down to make them bigger/smaller, correct?
A: No. For every set of measurements used to create a pattern, an entirely new pattern is generated from scratch based on those measurements.
Q: FreeSewing’s patterns are untested, correct?
A: No, our patterns are tested by the pattern designers before being submitted. We also strive to have each pattern tested by multiple people to ensure that our patterns work for a wide range of body types. (However, it is true that sometimes we aren’t able to do as much testing on as many different body types as we would like.)
Q: Are you sure this isn’t AI?
A: Yes. This absolutely is not AI!
