Whether you’re a newbie at design or a seasoned professional, you all need systems around your design process. Systems help you to become more efficient so that you can spend more time designing and releasing knitting patterns, rather than trying to figure out what you should be doing next. In this blog post, I will share 3 systems I use to help make knitting pattern design feel easier and less overwhelming.
Read MoreIf you’re a new or aspiring knitting pattern designer, you might be familiar with perfectionism and the way it affects your design process. Left unchallenged, it can hold you back from ever reaching your potential as a designer. In this blog post, I’ll share several things you can do to knock perfectionism on the head and start building more tolerance for “failure”.
Read MorePairing the right yarn with the right design can be tricky. A beautiful yarn will not always produce a beautiful outcome if the design isn’t appropriate for it. In this blog post, I’ll teach you how to work out what your yarn wants to be by analysing the ball band, the skein and the swatch. Let’s jump in!
Read MoreUsing short rows is a convenient way to raise the back neck of a sweater when shaping top-down necklines, however, this method of shaping top-down necklines is pretty limiting in terms of the neck shapes you can create. In this blog post, I’ll teach you how to use a method that is far more flexible and can create any neckline, no matter what shape or depth.
Read MoreSpreadsheets are one of the most efficient ways to calculate the numbers in your knitting pattern, as well as grade it into multiple sizes. However, they can be very intimidating if you don’t have much experience with them! In this blog post, I explain how to use four of the handiest functions that I use frequently in my pattern spreadsheets.
Read MoreWhen I was pregnant with Nico, I started experimenting with a couple of baby sweater designs. Whilst I’m still, by no means, an expert, I have learned a few lessons from designing these sweaters. In this blog post, I share them with you.
Read MoreShort row shaping is a brilliant way of discreetly adding 3D shaping to your knitting pattern designs, but it can be a bit of a brain teaser to figure out how to actually calculate it. In this blog post, I’m going to show you a simple way of calculating your short row shaping using a spreadsheet.
Read MoreMy student, Jill Thompson Beach of Beach House Knits, designed her very first pullover pattern last year inside of Sweater Design School. In this interview, she shares the highs, lows and lessons learned along the way as she designed her beautiful Holloway sweater. There are so many fantastic insights and resources that Jill generously shares, so if you’re thinking of designing your first pullover, make sure you read this first!
Read MoreYou want to design your first sweater pattern, but how do you figure out what to do next? In this blog post, I explain why a good understanding of sweater construction is often the missing piece for many new sweater designers, as well as how you can learn more about garment construction to support you in your sweater design journey.
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