Designing different garment shapes and sizes
There are many different approaches to designing and the method you choose will depend on your own preferences. However it’s helpful to have some basic idea of how to start.
This section gives useful information on designing items. It explains which are the key body measurements to take; how to calculate increases; shows standard blocks for different types of garment and gives standard sizing and body measurements to achieve a good individual fit. The basic shapes for garments include:
There is also advice about tension swatches, adapting and altering patterns and how easily and accurately to calculate increases or decreases.
Alison Peck has provided hints on designing your own drop-shoulder sweater that members can download.
Alison Peck has provided hints on designing your own drop-shoulder sweater that members can download. Members – login to download them.
Source material
Some information in this section is provided by the kind permission of Kathleen Kinder, a Knitting & Crochet Guild member. Some material was in her Resource Book for Machine Knitters in 1979, her Second Resource Book for Machine Knitters in 1980 and other books she wrote for BT Batsford. In 2006 she also adapted some diagrams and notes which she made available to the Knitting & Crochet Guild’s online group. She has generously agreed that this material can be made more widely available as part of the Guild’s website launched in 2011 and we are pleased to include this valuable information again with the latest websites updated in 2015 and 2022.
Other material comes from members of the Knitting & Crochet Guild sharing their knowledge and experience of knitting and crochet.
We have also included links to courses, tuition and workshops where we think that material is generally useful.
Adding a motif to your work
A colourful or stitch pattern motif can make a big difference to your work. But how can you map your design onto stitches?
f you are working with stranded knitting, the stitches are usually roughly square, so you can use graph paper, “quadrille ruled” note paper or dot pattern paper to draw your motif and translate immediately into the number of stitches.
But what if you are working in stocking stitch that usually has a stitch gauge to row gauge ratio of between 2:3 and 4:5? Using graph paper will result in your knitted motif being shorter and squatter than it was on paper. The answer is to use “knitter’s graph paper” that is printed with a grid that isn’t square.
Another option is to use a spreadsheet. You can set the cell width and height, so that printing the cell boundaries of an otherwise blank spreadsheet will give you a grid you can draw on. You can use the (stitch gauge):(row gauge) ratio from your swatch for an even better match. Just set the cell width and height so that the ratio (cell width):(cell height) is the same as the (row gauge):(stitch gauge) – yes, they are the “wrong order”. For example, if your (stitch gauge):(row gauge) ratio is 4:5, you could set your cell width to 5mm and height to 4mm (or 2.5mm and 2 mm, or 1.25mm and 1mm).
What if you don’t have a spreadsheet or aren’t confident in setting the width and height? We have a handy leaflet with the grids for the main ratios. If you are a member, just download it and print the relevant page.
Members – login to download the knitting graph paper.
