Majority of the patterns I made have disappeared. What did I do wrong?

Hello everyone, 

New user here. I've recently been designing textile pieces for a portfolio using the pattern tool in photoshop to make repeating patterns so they can be printed. I need to show progress/development for my ideas, and I thought I would do this by printing the up to 50 patterns that I had saved when you create a new pattern when I was trying different styles out (positioning, size, colour etc.). I was getting ready to print out all of these as evidence for my asseessor when I opened the patterns tab to discover maybe only ten of my oldest patterns. I looked everywhere I could think of but I cant find my patterns anywhere. I've accepted theyre lost and its all fixable, but I really want to make sure that I dont inadvertantly lose work again. I dont remember doing anything such as quitting photoshop before saving, or having problems synching (apart from a copy of a document apparently being corrupt or something?) but who knows. Does anyone have an idea of what might've happened to my work? It was very confusing and distressing to see them gone since I had closed photoshop so many times and they had always been there when I opened the patterns winder regardless. Silly of me to assume they saved automatically, and I will now be taking photos of my work.

Thank you in advance for any replies!