Saturday, June 10, 2006

Designing Sweaters

I've been trying to design a sweater myself, and it's not easy. I found this page, which helps in charting patterns, except the font for the spreadsheet seems to have problems. If I wanted to make cables with both purl and knit stitches, the font doesn't work. I don't know if it's the font or my computer, or what. It works well for other stuff, though. Another thing is that it's difficult to figure out where lace patterns or cables should go on a sweater, so they don't interfere with shaping. It would be easier to make a sweater that has no shaping, but I don't like how those fit. I also realized that I need to learn how sweaters fit, and how the amount of ease affects it, and basic information about shirt construction. In a lot of patterns, I like only certain aspects of it, but I don't know how to change them, and have the altered sweater fit right. I can't find information on how exactly to knit different collar and neckline styles, and have it work with the sweater. Designing sweaters and knitted stuff myself seems to be the next step for me. I can learn more about the overall construction, instead of just blindly following the pattern, not really knowing why I'm doing the increasing at a certain point, or whatever.

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