Category design

Much Ado About Drafting

Catherine Leave a comment

I’m going to share a dirty little secret with you: I don’t have the room to drape garments in my living space.

I currently reside in 450 square feet (41.8 sq meters) inside the heart of New York with my partner. Like me, they too have hobbies and friends and work to do inside the same 450 sq feet. Lay on top of that a needy cat, a kitchen, a bathroom, never enough closets and a need for an office desk; just the thought of having a dress form and space to drape is all but a fever dream.

Naturally, I can drape upon myself and I have draped on others in order to achieve a good fit, but when you lack space sometimes you’ll need to turn to other conventions.

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Designing A Sweater: The Things I Learned

Catherine Leave a comment

Early in 2020 I was asked by my live-in partner if I could make them a custom sweater. I’ve knitted sweaters before, but I’ve never designed one. At first I was a little hesitant, because designing sweaters means math. As much as I love math, math does not love me.

Credit: The Mincing Mockingbird

After a lot of thinking, a lot of research, and a lot of knitting, a sweater came from my hands. From one crafter to another, here’s some things I learned from designing my own sweater.

There’s Lots of Frogging in Your Future

Learning how to make and measure gauges will save you a lot of time, but all the predictive math in the world won’t save you from the frogging needed if you want the sweater to fit as best as you can. If I could make this sweater again, I would probably make more gauges than i did the first time around just to make sure that the pattern I developed could be scaled properly.

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