Guild Wars 2

I’ve been working on my crafting and I notice that I have recipes for crafting the pieces required to create shoulder armor (I have both leather and a cloth crafting I’m working on), and I can find the “hidden” recipes by adding stuff to create advanced versions…but I do NOT have the recipes for the BASIC set of shoulder pieces. I’m all the way up to the third tier of armors and not a single one has basic shoulders available in the tiers, and I’ve been forced to create the advancements instead.

Is this a bug, or did I do something wrong while crafting?

I guess I rushed through crafting so I don’t exactly understand what you’re asking, so let me try to rephrase:
you are asking if crafting white items is possible? Not possible. blue is the lowest grade armor craftable. If you want white armor, there are merchants that sell it (they sell you armor that is a similar level to what level your character is)
might be helpful: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leatherworker http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tailor