Get started in Knitwear Design RIGHT NOW!
You have been knitting (or crocheting) for a while, you follow knitwear designers on social media, are good following patterns, and now you’re wondering if maybe you could be a knitwear designer too. I have great news for you: you absolutely can!
In this blog post I’ll discuss why it would be useful to learn about Knitwear Design, how you could get started in Knitwear Design, and the basic tools you need to be able to actually do Knitwear Design. So keep on reading if you are curious about it!
Why learn how to design Knitwear?
There are a few important reasons why it would be useful to learn how to design Knitwear. The most obvious one is that you’d like to become a designer yourself, create your own garments, and even more so, share them with the world.
Another reason would be that learning knitwear (crochet, too!) design will give you a full understanding of how handknitting works, how your favorite designers conceive their patterns, the structure of a garment, the design elements, etc. This is amazing, because it will give you the tools to modify patterns by other people that you already love, but maybe were not a right fit for you or your body type, or maybe you can use them as inspiration! Once you know how the structure of different pieces is calculated, changing existing patterns will be easy easy peasy.
Tools for Knitwear Design
The tools for Knitwear Design are so easy to get that you will laugh at me for even listing them, but I want you to know how truly accessible they are, so you can begin anytime you want!
Pen and paper (somewhere to take notes). There you go. You can go as basic as pen and paper, or you can use your phone, tablet, laptop, etc., as long as you can write down notes and do calculations.
Calculator. You can do them yourself, but a calculator will speed things up quite a bit. a more advanced version would be a spreadsheet (Excel, Numbers, Google Spreadsheets), and I have a FREE version for you below, and you can even automate the whole design process!
Measuring tape. You will need one to, you guessed it, take measurements! Measurements are essential for knitwear design, specially for garments, so this is a non-negotiable.
Someone to design for. It could be you, your partner, your children. I say, the easiest would be yourself, plus, you get to knit (or crochet) for yourself if you happen to be one of those selfless knitters who is always making stuff for everyone else.
Food scale. This item will become invaluable to do yardage calculations, and even grading, if you get adventurous!
Yarn, needles (or hook) and a swatch. Don’t kill me! You will need them, after all! However, you might need only the yarn for the swatch itself, and then plan the whole design, and then do the math to know how much more yarn you will need!
That’s pretty much all you need. I bet you have all those things laying around, so you could start designing right now!
How to begin Knitwear Design?
Just like with the tools, getting started with Knitwear Design is not difficult at all. The first thing you have to do is get inspired. By fashion, by nature, by other designs. This will give you an idea of what you’d want to design.
Then, you’ll need to figure out how to create the shapes of the item you want to create. For example, how to shape a type of neckline, or a raglan shoulder, how to space the decreases or increases you will need, etc. To do this, there are many free and paid resources online and offline (books, my friends), and even the patterns that you’ve been following already have some of the information you want, if you have time to reverse engineer them. Or, you can keep on reading for the amazing resource I have for you (for FREE), that will get you started ASAP on Knitwear Design!
You will also need to make a swatch with the yarn, needles and stitch that you want to use for your design, and make it big. At least 8 inches (20 cm) long and wide. This will give you more accuracy than a smaller swatch. After the swatch, you will do the calculations in order to figure out how many stitches and rows you need per inch. This is very important information!
And you will need your measurements, or those of the person you intend to design for. Depending on the garment you are creating, you will need different measurements.
Finally, you will translate the stitch and row per inch information to the measurements of the garment, and voilá, you will have a design. If you want to share the instructions for your design with other people, you can write them down, and have your own pattern!
Start designing RIGHT NOW!
The Knitwear Design bug bit you and you’re dying to start designing RIGHT NOW? I have an amazing tool for you! With the spreadsheet you can download below you’ll be able to create a custom fit sweater in a matter of minutes (after knitting and blocking your swatch, of course!). The spreadsheet itself has all the instructions, and I’ve included a video that teaches you how to use it, just in case. You won’t have to figure out any sort of calculations, just follow the spreadsheet step by step!
I hope this article has been helpful in clarifying why it would be useful to learn about Knitwear Design, how you could get started in Knitwear Design, and the basic tools you need to be able to actually do Knitwear Design. And that you enjoy the incredibly useful resource I created for you!
Have fun knitting!
Xo,
Kate
