How to Get Yarn Support
Yarn support is a term often thrown about by knitting pattern designers, but what does it mean and how do you get it? In this blog post, I’ll be answering your big questions about how yarn support works so that you can start collaborating with yarn brands on future designs.
What is yarn support?
Yarn support is when a yarn company agrees to give a designer free yarn to use in a knitting pattern design, whether published or self-published. This isn’t a gift to the designer - instead, it is a collaboration with benefits for both parties.
As a knitting pattern designer, yarn costs can be prohibitive for those on a limited budget, so yarn support helps to reduce the expenses from designing a new pattern. For yarn companies, offering yarn support to designers means that they can inspire their customers with new ideas on what they could make using their yarn. If the designer has a large community, it will also get their yarn in front of a different audience which helps to build the brand.
How does yarn support work?
Yarn support is handled differently from company to company, so once you’ve identified a yarn brand that you would love to request yarn support from, you will need to find out how it works with them.
Some brands offer information about how they handle yarn support on their website e.g. The Fibre Co. who I freelance for. I manage their Yarn Support Programme which opens up every six months for submissions.
Other brands who share yarn support information on their websites include:
If the yarn company that you’d like to collaborate with doesn’t have any information about yarn support available on their website, just drop them a friendly email. Introduce yourself and your work, say that you’re interested in designing a pattern in one of their yarns and ask whether you could send them a design proposal. If they give you the go-ahead, you can get started on the proposal.
How to Create a Proposal for Yarn Support
Before they agree to anything, yarn companies usually want to see a design proposal from you. My yarn support proposals usually look just like the proposals that I send to magazines and publications.
Aside from that, the yarn company will likely request additional information from you, such as when you intend to publish the design, what yarn you’d like to use and the estimated yardage requirements for your sample.
Make sure that you read their yarn support guidelines extremely carefully so that you provide them with all of the information that they need. If you don’t, your proposal is likely to get rejected.
What happens after the design proposal?
Dealing with Rejection
As with most things in the world, you will likely get more noes than you do yeses, especially at first! If your proposal is rejected, don’t be discouraged. It’s nothing personal! Your design was just not right for them. Feel free to repurpose your proposal with other yarn companies, adapting it to best suit them.
What if your proposal is accepted?
If your proposal is accepted, congratulations! Now, it is your responsibility to behave professionally and to follow the terms of your yarn support agreement.
For a start, you must follow through on the design you proposed! You can’t just accept the yarn and tell yourself you’ll get to it when you feel like it. You are now committed to producing this design according to the timeline you gave the yarn company.
You must also keep the yarn company in the loop. If your pattern is being published by a third-party, they will usually do this on behalf of you, but if you are self-publishing, it is your job to keep the yarn company updated on things such as:
Confirmation that the yarn has arrived
How the design process is going
Any changes to the publishing timeline
Promotional information/photos they can use to help you promote the release
If you want the yarn company to promote your new design alongside you (which you should! It can make a big difference), you must aim to make it as easy as possible for them. Give them all of the photos and promotional information they need at least two weeks before the pattern is published, so that they have time to schedule their own marketing activities.
Changes to your yarn choice
Whilst a yarn company might accept your design proposal, they may not offer you exactly the yarn and colourway that you initially requested. This might be because they are getting discontinued or the yarn company will soon be releasing something new and they would like you to help promote it with your new design.
This happened to me before I started freelancing for The Fibre Co. I proposed a mini-collection in their Luma yarn using varying shades of blue. They accepted my proposal but asked me to reselect my colour choices because they were releasing some new colours they’d like me to promote. I gratefully agreed and loved getting to work with something new!
Behave like a business
The biggest thing I want you to learn from this article is to take the responsibilities that come with yarn support seriously. Do not take it for granted.
Behave like a business! Even if you’re only designing knitting patterns for fun, the yarn company you’re collaborating with is a business and will expect you to act like one too. This arrangement should benefit both of you, so keep to your word and communicate throughout the process to ensure you both have a great experience.
