My Design Process Part 1: Developing The Idea

I have been actively designing for seven years and to date I have published 21 patterns. A few weeks ago I read an Instagram post regarding the way in which designers price their patterns. Reading this got me thinking about how much work I put into my designs and the process of design itself.

When I think back to my earlier designs such as Elise, in comparison to my most recent design Feather Family, there is a huge difference. When starting out as a designer there were a lot of things I failed to do, plus many things I did that weren't necessary.

If I'd known then what I know now, I would have saved myself a whole lot of hassle, which leads me to the reason for this post. I want to help any budding designers out there feel confident whipping up that handmade wonder, that till now, has only been an idea?

Now, I'm not a world renowned knit wear designer and everyone's process is different, but I hope this (in some way) helps you turn that idea into a finished piece.

Developing the Idea

My design ideas will either develop from a shape or a stitch pattern, to illustrate this I'll use the Join The Crew Cowl and Feather Family, both of which represent each process.

Join The Crew, intarsia version

Join The Crew features four triangles, each a different colour. The idea for this came when I was working on a pair of socks, I wondered whether I could use the same technique to join different shades of yarn. I sat on this idea for a while, but it kept coming back to me, I tried to visualise how the different sections would come together and what type of project it could be used for.

This is how most of my designs start, I see a shape and think of how I could achieve this in knitting and what I could knit. It involves (at least for me) a lot of mental knitting, I imagine what stitch I could use to achieve the shape. Do I use short rows, decreases, increases, can it be worked in the round, flat or both.

From this I concluded that both were viable, working in the round would mean doing a little at a time, jumping from one portion to another. Working flat would require using multiple balls of yarn at once, but everything would be done in one go. As I had plenty of minis, I thought it best to make it both ways and see which I liked best.

However, before I could start, I had to have some sort of border. The main part of the cowl was going to be simple, so I wanted a non mindless stitch pattern for the borders.

Feather Family

With Feather Family, I already knew what I was going to make, as this was themed on a book (A Long Way To A Small Angry Planet), I used that as my inspiration. As I read it, I would make notes on things that stood out, character traits, phrases, themes. I also had input from the dyer who had commissioned the pattern.

From this I decided to make the characters the central focus, namely Lovey. Her name, and personality, gave me the idea of using hearts, and as I wanted Lovey to be the centre of the finished piece, I thought that a cable stitch pattern would be the way to go.

So I went in search of a cable stitch pattern that was simple yet stood out. At this point I didn't know how it would be constructed, this would be determined by the stitch itself.

It didn't take long to stumble upon the heart cables, which were easy to adapt. After making a small sample, I planned to work it flat with the other characters worked around the cable. This would require three different stitch patterns being worked simultaneously. For this reason, the other stitch patterns would have to be relatively simple.

Join me for part 2 when I talk about getting the stitch patterns together.