Dear Jan,
I am finally finding time to make headway on my project for the Fiber Fusion Design class taught by Steven Berg at his StevenBe Workshop. Steven had a career in Big Fashion before becoming one of the most creative and beloved LYS owners in the country, and he is teaching us how to apply some of the approaches they took to making designer knitwear.
Basically, you work from a sewing pattern to identify basic shapes that work with your inspiration. My inspiration was the small skeins of various handspun wools I have, including some rare breeds. I thought something like this tunic would suit streaks of knitting in various colors.
We traced the rough design of the pattern pieces on tag board, I sketched in my rough plans for shaping and knitting direction, and away we went. I finished the right front back in December and today got much of the way through the left front. It goes fast at this gauge!
Lisa is taking this course with me. You can see her progress on her Ravelry page (actually, I think she is already finished - she ain’t called Turbogal for nothin’!) She and Steven want me to keep the little rubber butterflies that were part of the art yarn I’m using to liven up my natural colored handspun skeins. I want me to be able to wear this sweater in public, so I’m not sure how long they will last. For now, I guess it is kind of fun to have them hovering over the work.
Time to go hover over the pillow.
Love,
Ellen
Jan and Ellen are identical twins who have always had an innate fashion sense. Crafting is an integral part of their lives and they stay stitched together sharing their love of knitting, family and community.
January 17th, 2013 at 9:23 pm
I would love to take that class. Please be sure to show your finished piece. And I’d vote for leaving off the butterflies, cheerful as they are.
January 17th, 2013 at 9:29 pm
What a very interesting class! I know that I thought about knitted garments very differently after a week-long course in garment fit - I also buy my clothes differently now. Your tunic is a fabulous confluence of the class and your spinning; and as much as I think those butterflies are fun, I might be with you and come down on the side of broad public wearability…
January 18th, 2013 at 12:28 am
Cool! Can’t wait to see how it comes out!
January 18th, 2013 at 4:56 pm
I’m glad to see this! I’ve been wondering about the butterflies all along…wanted to be sure they weren’t moths.
January 19th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Looks like fun! I would love to combine pattern drafting with knitting a little more explicitly someday (I do it all the time in my designing, but not this directly, and this seems much more interesting.)
I have to say that the butterflies would go if it were me making the decision. This surprises no one, though, because I am not the statement-clothing type (it is a well-established fact that, when it comes to clothes, I am no fun). Oddly, I think that I would be more inclined to keep them if they were bigger, brighter, and bolder. They’re somewhere in the middle here; not quite prominent enough to be a “feature”, but not quite quiet enough to blend. They are fun, though…I do like the whimsy that they add.
The natural yarn colors are beautiful…I am sure you will find them wonderfully wearable, no matter what happens to the butterflies!
March 19th, 2013 at 7:05 pm
[…] process was and the result is exhilarating. I explained the process in a prior blog post. The result is going to be in a showing of Steven’s work at Third Place Gallery in […]