My Design Process Part 3: Making Changes

When you begin designing something, you always have an idea of how you want it to look. However, there are occasions when you have to make changes to one or more aspect of the design.

I had to make changes to both of the projects I am using to illustrate my design  process. One was for aesthetic reasons, the other for both aesthetics and ease of construction.

For the Join The Crew cowl I had finished working the border and began work on the short row section. It dawned on me that the middle section was going to look a little plain, something was needed to add some interest to this area. As the border would require the knitter's attention, the middle section had to be a lot simpler. The simplest thing I could think of was an eyelet lace, which would fit nicely into the space I had to work with. To add further interest to the look I worked the lace motifs so that they would face a different direction to the motif in the adjacent panel.

This was an easy change, as it didn't affect the rest of the pattern. However, with Feather Family, I had to change the construction completely. As mentioned in the previous post, the original design would require me to work three different stitch patterns at the same time and the top and bottom panels wouldn't look the way I wanted them to.

The diagram below illustrates what I had originally intended. With this method, when worn, the top and bottom panels would be going from right to left instead of from bottom to top.

This second diagram shows how I ended up working the panels. They are each worked bottom up, with the Lovey stitch pattern still going from right to left. To achieve this I had to work the Lovey stitch first and then do the others afterwards (you'll have to get the pattern to find out that bit of the secret sauce 😉).

Once the patterns were finished, it was time to write them up. Check in next time to read about the writing process.

What has been the biggest change you have made to project?