In her PBS series "Knitting Workshop," Elizabeth Zimmerman seems to instantly know the gauge for her yarn. That's because she used the same yarns over and over again, meaning she didn't have to bother with gauge swatches so often. Genius move!

In today's video, I show how to use an existing sweater as a giant gauge swatch, plus how to build a basic schematic for key elements of fit. 

Where does inspiration for a new sweater design come from? Which comes first, the pattern or the yarn?

When I first had the idea to make a stashbusting handspun sweater, I planned to find a pattern online and just follow it. But as I was browsing patterns that fit my gauge, I wasn't finding anything that really sparked my fancy. 

I decided to design my own pattern. This sounds fine in theory, but in practice, there's a lot that goes into a sweater pattern.

The fit and shaping of a sweater are like the "bones," or architechture that hold everything together. How it sits & fits on your body will affect both the look and feel of any visual patterns that are knit into it.

​Some things to consider:

• What fit are you looking for? Something relaxed, or something a little more polished?
• What's your most comfortable sweater right now? What are the measurements of it? 
• Is there a type of sweater construction you really like wearing or knitting? There are tons of options, like yoked sweaters, raglan sweaters, sweaters with set-in sleeves, sweaters worked top-down or bottom-up. These will all influence your design.

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One of the great thing about designing your own sweater is that you don't have to be stuck with what's on the shelf in retail shops.  

I do like to see what's "trendy" before I design a new sweater. Since it's such a huge investment of time and money, I don't want to make something that's going to be tired and dated before I'm even done. That doesn't mean sticking to the "classics," though - it means that I'll have a look through online shops, fashion shows, and perhaps some magazines. 

The first stage is just gathering information - lots of it. I'll usually have 20+ browser tabs open, as I search runway shows, style blogs, Ravelry, Pinterest, and more. 

It's not necessarily about copying trends (although trying to recreate a design you like is a great learning tool). 

It's about seeing what's current, and using that as a jumping-off point. 

This go-round, the trends I identified with were checks, plaids, and variations on scale. Some of those were presented in pretty traditional ways, and others were pretty out there, like this Comme des Garçons ​runway look.

You may want to make a moodboard by assembling some images of your inspiration and color palette. This can be a great way to narrow things down. 

​Sketching designs is also great. For my current project, I distilled all the ideas I'd gathered into a simple sketch of a scoop-neck sweater with a check pattern. I used a fashion journal for my sketch, but also really love MyBodyModel for customized croquis. 

If you haven't already chosen your color scheme, now is a great time. Choosing colors you like and feel confident in is always a great idea, as is filling in any "holes" in your wardrobe.

Knowing what you like goes a long way here. Hate things against your neck? You probably don't want to design a turtleneck!

​This is the point where I usually circle back to the first step. Sometimes what I found in the trend-spotting phase tells me that I'll want to do a certain sweater construction - maybe tailored cardigans are THE look. Other times, the motifs I want to work with will dictate the design of the pattern. Fitting the visual design with the pattern construction is part of the whole design challenge. 
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It IS possible to just start knitting a sweater at this point, and hope for the best. But an even better idea would be to get more of your design down on paper, starting with a schematic, a swatch, and written instructions. 

There are tons of design books out there, but one I turn to frequently is Sally Melville's Knitting Pattern Essentials. In addition to giving you the math for working out sweater patterns, it helps you think through some of the design combinations that are possible with sweater patterns. 

I'll go more into gauge swatches and schematics in my next post, but at this point, it's a good idea to have a rough idea of how the sweater's fit and construction. Will it be long or short? Snug or loose? Top-down or bottom-up?  All of these will help you move from mere inspiration to an actual pattern that you can work with.​

On January 1, I woke up feeling like I had the worst hangover ever. This was odd, since I hadn't partied, and had gone to bed early.  It turned out that after nearly four years of dodging covid, and being fully vaccinated, it had finally caught me. 

Once I was feeling a little bit better, but still isolating to keep my husband to keep from getting sick, I decided to start working on a destash sweater. 

The plan is to do an allover stranded colorwork pattern using leftover handspun from two different sweaters.

First, I dumped all the yarn out on the floor and sorted out the yarn I planned to use. I weighed it to make sure I had enough for a sweater quantity, then sorted by color and value. 

I didn't show this in the video, but it turned out to be really helpful - I used shipping tags to write down the sequence of each color, plus its weight. A lot of the colors are so close in value, that when they get jumbled in my knitting basket, it's hard to tell which is purple #3 or purple #4 - so noting that on a shipping tag attached to each ball of yarn was indispensable. I also noted the weight of each ball of yarn in grams so that I could weigh them as I knit, making sure to reserve enough for the sleeves AND body. 

In the next video, I'll talk more about designing the stranded colorwork pattern for the new sweater, plus how I worked through the design of the sweater itself.

Knitting stranded colorwork is one of my favorite things. It uses both hands so it's interesting enough that it keeps my attention. But it also has a rhythm that keeps it from being too hard. 

In the last few years, all the colorwork sweaters I've done have been from charts I developed myself, and often using my own handspun yarn. How did I get to that point? Or, more importantly, how could you get to the point where you're designing your own colorwork patterns?

We all have to start somewhere, and working from other people's stranded colorwork patterns is the perfect place to start. 

If yoked sweaters are your jam, notice how the increases & decreases are placed in the colorwork pattern. Often, this will be done in the "background" color to minimize distortion of the pattern. Keep that idea in your back pocket as you go forward in your design journey!

The KnitOvation Stitch Dictionary (reviewed in my last post) has some great resources if you want to plug different stitch patterns into an existing design. 
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Using one or more stitch dictionaries, combine multiple patterns. Think diamonds that shift in scale, or different kinds of flowers...essentially, pick a theme for your sweater, find a bunch of patterns that fit the theme, then arrange them in a way that makes you happy. 

Experiment with charting all of them together so you'll get a sense of how they look next to each other. This might lead to:
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You may need to modify the sizes of some patterns, or to move the starting point of a chart. Sometimes this means centering a motif on the front, back, or sides of the body, or it means avoiding awkward placement of motifs. 

Find a colorwork pattern you like, but don't have a chart for. See if you can chart it out!

Remember, at this point, you're still learning, so you shouldn't be trying to pass the design off as your own. 
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Inspiration is all around, and once you've gotten the hang of stranded colorwork, you'll wonder how you can turn your favorite images, symbols, and shapes into colorwork patterns!

If you're struggling with this phase, I highly recommend Felicity Ford's Stranded Colorwork Sourcebook  and Janine Bajus' The Joy of Color. 

Knit stitches aren't square - they're rectangular. The ratios of the rectangles depend on your gauge. If this bothers you at the charting stage, you can buy knitter's graph paper. 

Usually, though, I just use regular graph paper and a simple trick - dots. A dot in the middle of each square for my pattern color is quick, and it approximates the visual effect of a knit stitch. This did take some getting used to, since I started my knitting journey thinking that a dot always represented a purl stitch in a knitting chart! I demonstrate this around the 4:22 mark in the video.

Ah, floats. There's a lot to say about floats. How long should they be? How long is too long? 

I'll admit, I let some of my floats get pretty long when the pattern absolutely demands it. And I don't trap floats, since this usually shows on the front side. 

But as a rule of thumb, a float shouldn't be longer than an inch, or an inch and a half if you're feeling really daring. Remember to consider this when you're creating your designs - usually this translates to no more than 5 to 7 stitches one color in a row.

A strong value contrast (dark and light) will help your patterns read well.

Take a picture with your phone, then converting it to black and white - if the two yarns look like they're the same shade of gray, you don't have much value contrast.

Low contrast can create subtle effects, but it will be harder to see while you're knitting, and the pattern will be less clear when you're done. High contrast patterns are easier to see.

Swatching can help you refine your design. Often, I find that I'm overflowing with ideas, and I've designed two or even three sweaters worth of stitch patterns. Swatching helps me simplify & problem solve so that there's less ripping out once I'm actually working on my project!

​Do you have a tried-and-true stitch pattern design formula? I'd love to hear about it!