As the workers create the foundations of our home, I get to the foundations of the sweater to wear there! The foundation for my designs is excel. I start with a template I created in Jill Wolcot’s “A System of Grading” course and go from there.
This is the time I do all the rough calculations to see what sizes to publish. Size 30 and 32 both had insufficient stitches for the back panel and dart design, so they are out. Leaving the tentative size range (assuming the math works out nicely in the fine tuning) as 34 (36, 38, 42, 46, 50)”.
Another thing I learnt in Jill’s class was don’t reinvent the wheel with each design! The cast on went through many iterations while I settled on the style and in the end picked shoulder cast ons with a back neck join. So out came Remix Sweater’s pattern and the start was copied into this design.
Swapping out the numbers for the new gauge, of course 😉.
I also finished creating the stitch mastery chart and am working on the presentation language. Oh, and in the “rough calculations” ended up making a tweak to the back panel design element going from a 44 row repeat to a 38 row repeat so that I could achieve 3 full repeats. This also gave the opportunity to use excel to calculate the chart start number for each of the sizes, so they all end at the same point.
For this design I picked the same end since the collar will hide the start a bit.
One thing I’m still noodling is whether to add complexity to add the stitch pattern into the shoulders or leave the shoulders (it’s 3 Short Rows each side) in Stockinette and place markers and start the design when the neck is joined. Knowing me, I want the former. Knowing my TE, advisers, and input from other designers, KISS Lindsay! (Haha, yes, I have to tell myself to KISS a lot 😉 ). Hmmm, maybe I’ll decide “on the needles”.
Meanwhile in Maine, the foundations are poured! So ready to move on to Cast On as the walls go up… but that’s another blog.
