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First of all, I must confess that I don't really use a "pattern" in the conventional sense, when hooking my snowmen. I did use one for the very first snowman I hooked, but I soon discovered there was an easier way for me to do it. Here's my method...
I start by tracing around the bottom of a pop can or drawing a similar sized circle for the head, and then I hook it.
To make the middle, I draw another circle, about 1/2" below my hooking...and try to keep it in line with the first one. I hook and fill this circle and then hook an additional 2-3 rows around it, attaching it to the head.
To make the bottom, I draw another circle (similar to the last one) and then I measure 10.5-11" down from the top of the head and draw a line across the grain of my backing. I hook and fill the circle, and I also hook across the bottom line. Then I hook around the circle several more times (likely 5-6), attaching it to the middle and also the bottom line.
I like to make the bottom a little larger, just to give the little guy more to stand on, and so I extend the bottom line beyond my circles just a little bit and bring it up on a steep angle to attach to the bottom snowball (as illustrated)
A couple of other miscellaneous tips...
• If you top and tail them (alternate between heads and feet at one end), you can fit more men on your backing.
• You don't need to worry about keeping the circles perfect...I often just freehand them and if they end up being ovals, that's okay, too!
• Use lots of different lights to make them more interesting and fun to hook
• Once you start decorating them with buttons, hats, scarves, etc., the hooking shifts to the background...so you don't need to fuss too much with making it perfect.
• Doing the hooking is the "grunt work" part of making the snowmen....so I like to hook a bunch at once, and then reward myself with the decorating. (Plus it's a more economical use of your backing this way!)
