Free Course for Aspiring Knitwear Designers

Lots of knitters have design ideas they’d like to see published, but they might not know how to get started publishing patterns with third-party publications like yarn company websites, magazines and books.

Knit and crochet designer and mentor Tian Connaughton has produced a free six-part video course with Knit Picks and We Crochet that aims to help new and aspiring designers get started.

Get Published covers the following areas:

Things to do before submitting a design proposal
How to submit a design proposal
What to do when your design is accepted
What to do when your design is rejected
How to communicate effectively
How to receive yarn support

The course is free and open to all but was specially designed to empower Black, Indigenous and People of Color who might not see themselves in the knitwear design industry.

It also includes interviews with new and established designers to help inspire aspiring designers to get started.

I’m watching it right now; if you check it out I’d love to hear what you think!

Next Pattern:

As I write this, it’s probably time to start thinking about winter knitting if you haven’t already. And it’s definitely time to think about gift knitting if you have any of that you plan to do for the holidays.

The Dreamy Waves Scarf from Knit Picks, designed by Stacey Winklepleck, would be a great project to go in either category.

It uses two different multicolored yarns and a simple repeating wave pattern to make a project that looks a lot more complicated and dramatic than it is. The gradient look happens naturally just by switching which yarn you’re knitting with.

This pattern uses worsted weight yarn so it’s a pretty quick project even though a scarf is large and this one is pretty wide. It measures 8.5 inches (21.5 cm) wide and 63 inches or 120 cm long. Of course you can make it longer or shorter as you like. As written it takes one ball of each color so it’s a pretty economical project, too.

It’s rated for intermediate knitters but if you know how to do various increases and decreases you’ll be all set. The pattern uses knit 2 together, make 1 left and right, centered double decrease and slip slip knit. All of the stitches are explained in a glossary in the pattern so even if you haven’t done all of them it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

The pattern also includes tons of options for different colorways in yarn that Knit Picks sells, so you can see how different combinations knit up before you buy the yarn. That’s such a great idea!

Of course if you already have two multicolored yarns with long color runs on hand, you can absolutely use them, too. It might also be fun, but would give you a totally different look, to use a solid color and a bunch of scraps or one multicolored yarn to see how the different colors play together. So many options!

You can grab this free pattern and check out all the color options at Knit Picks.

[Photo: Knit Picks]

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