I'm not sure I know how to answer that. I've never bought a specific pattern, but I have lots of books & magazines that have patterns in them. Over the years, I've made an appliqued quilt top from one of the magazines, a French braid quilt from book directions and am currently making the Farmer's Wife Sampler (using book & templates). Generally, I just get ideas from magazines, books, catalogs, etc., and go from there. I also have MANY nice free-on-line patterns stored on my computer, none of which I've tried as yet.