Original Pattern - My Design Process Explained

A recent cable afghan yarn project fail (basically, it was ugly), left me with 10 skeins of Lion Brand Heartland yarn in Grand Canyon (a taupe color). Since I hated how cables looked with this yarn, I decided to design my own afghan. Here are the steps I follow when I design a project for some yarn I have on hand. 

 1. How much yarn do I have? In this case, it was pretty easy because the yarn is from an afghan kit I purchased several years ago from Craftsy (remember them?). Most of the time, I have a few skeins of a yarn that I want to use so I must figure out what I can make with what I have on hand. I look for online patterns that use the yarn to get ideas of how much is needed to make various types of projects. If no patterns are available, I will get the yarn weight (worsted, DK, etc.) and find patterns that use same weight and see if I have enough total yards to make the project. If I do, then I will work a gauge swatch to confirm. 

2. Once I have determined what my project options are, I will narrow it down to one specific type of project. For example, I might have enough yarn for a scarf, mittens, socks or small shawl. I figure out which one of those I want to make, usually going with the project that will use most of the yarn. I hate having tiny little balls of yarn piling up. 

3. Next, I consider what type of project do I want to work on – knit or crochet, easy or challenging, skill building or relaxing. For this project, I decided to do a relaxing knit project that used simple knit/purl combinations resulting in different textures. Once steps 1 – 3 are complete, I gather my pen and paper to write down notes as I work on the design details. 

4. Which stitches to use? I pulled out my trusty MonTricot stitch dictionaries and had some fun testing various stitches that met my criteria. Using some DK yarn, I tested about 15 different stitches. Some were quickly discarded after only a few rows so I ended up with a swatch with about 9 different stitches on it. If I had kept going, it could have easily ended up as a scarf. Once I had a good variety, I had some decisions to make about which stitches to use: 

    a. Do the different stitches play well with each other? The width of the swatch can vary wildly between different stitches. A rib-like stitch will be much narrower than a moss stitch for example. For my afghan, I wanted to make sure that all the different textures produced a swatch about the same width so my afghan would have straight sides. 

    b. What does each side of the stitch look like? I want my afghan to be attractive no matter what side was facing up so looking at both sides of the stitches was important. In some cases, the stitches were the same on both sides. Others were only attractive on one side. Some look different on each side but both look nice. All of the stiches I chose look good on both sides. 

5. What do I want my finished project to look like? A blanket made of only one stitch? I seriously considered this option because a large area of an interesting texture can be lovely. Need proof? Check out Purl Soho’s free patterns, especially the Slipped Garter Blanket. In the end, I decided to use 4 different texture stitches work into stripes, divided by garter stitch sections. Why? I thought I would get bored doing only one stitch and would put the project aside before I finished it. In my test swatch, I tried to use the moss stitch to separate the sections but the added texture blended in and did not offer the visual border I was looking for. 

6. Using the notes I had made while doing my swatches, I wrote out a sample afghan pattern. My notes include comments about each stitch I did a swatch on – did I like it, was the 1st row the wrong side or right side, did the edges curl, etc. 

Test Swatch in Progress

    a. One of the trickiest parts of this process can be figuring out how many stitches to cast on. The four textures I chose require a multiple of either 2 or 3. Based on the gauge of the yarn, I just did some simple math to find a number that was evenly divisible by 2 and 3 and would be afghan size. 

    b. For the reversible stitches, which side did I want facing up on the right side of the afghan? 

    c. How wide did I want my garter sections to be?  

7. Now, I have started stitching using my pattern. As I go along, I will tweak the pattern to get the finished product. Once it’s done, it will be ready to share. 

I have learned the hard way to always write down patterns as I create them. There have been several instances where I wanted to recreate something I designed years ago. With no notes, the process is much harder (if not impossible) because I have to study my previous project and figure out the pattern. Tedious at best and impossible if I don’t have the original item anymore. I have a notebook with several crochet motifs I designed years ago. I don’t remember what any of them look like so another lesson is to include a picture of the finished project with my pattern. Once day, I will have to stitch up those motifs to see what I’ve got. I’ll let you know if it’s anything good.

Pattern Surprise

In 2020, I used patterns from higher end yarn company (Shibui and Lana Grossa) for the first time and made an interesting discovery. Much to my surprise, I liked these patterns better than ones I had used from companies like Lion, Red Heart, Berroco, etc. A whole lot more. I’m just not sure exactly why. Full disclosure, I received all the patterns free with my various yarn purchases (all on sale). The first pattern was for the Shibui Medley Stole. Honestly, this one is so simple, I could have probably figured out how to make it without a pattern. However, I appreciated the designer’s explanation as to why she didn’t slip the first stitches of each row. It was printed on nice, thick paper that didn’t require a clip board which I also liked. This pattern really lets beautiful yarns shine and I would make it again. On the Shibui website, this pattern is $10.00. The other patterns were two PDF booklets from Lana Grossa that I got with the purchases of closeout Cashmerino yarn. The first is called Luxury Shades and has 7 scarf/shawl/stole patterns, 4 crochet, 2 knit and one that is a combo of knit and crochet (something that I wish was seen more often). All of the patterns used charts which is OK with me. I have made two of the crochet projects in this one and found that I didn’t need the charts anymore after the first few rows. The other is called Shades and has only one patterns for a crochet shawl. I love this pattern so much I’ve already made two – one for Mom and one for me. Again, this pattern uses charts. I don’t care for PDF patterns so I need to print these out. I like paper patterns because I can add notes, highlight, etc. One thing I love about these patterns is that they have interesting edging details that really make the items shine. My successes with these patterns has me much more interested in other pattens by higher end yarn manufacturers. Recommendations?

Exciting Discovery

While preparing my earlier post about my Mon Tricot 800 Stitch Dictionary (published 1963), I discovered that they had a 1300 Stitch Dictionary (published 1979).  I tracked down a used copy on Amazon and ordered that bad boy.  The 800 version has stitches that I have never seen anywhere else.  Although I know there will be a lot of repeats with the new book, the potential for up to 500 unique stitches was impossible to resist. 

I did some research trying to find out more about Mon Tricot.  It was a french knitting magazine that does not seem to be in business anymore.  They started coming out with stitch books translated into English.  There are several versions with varying numbers of stitches.  I’ve heard rumors about a 1,500 stitch version but it does not have a crochet section, so I’m not interested in that one.

One word of caution.  These books were translated in the UK and use terms like wool instead of yarn.  The terminology is very different with crochet (sc is the US is a dc in the UK).  If you buy one of these books, make sure you know if it uses US or UK terminology.  I keep a piece of paper in my books with a guide to the US vs. UK terminology – problem solved.