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Episode 5: Design Process
195 Plays3 years ago
I ask Denise questions about her process for creating the two one-of-a-kind wedding dresses she has made in the last few years. We discuss where the inspiration came from, as well as how she decided on materials, stitches to be used, and how she made all the decisions regarding shape and design. Then we examined what she could do next time so she could write the pattern when she was done.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome to Knit, Design, Edit, Sleep, Repeat with Lisa Conway and Denise Finley. Let's listen in and see what's happening, who's happening, and what's new in their world.
Design Process Inquiry
00:00:37
Speaker
Today, I'm going to ask questions to help Denise explore her design process and to figure the steps she could take the next time that will assist her in writing her first pattern. Hey, Denise. Hey, Lisa. Is the sun shining where you're at?
00:00:55
Speaker
It's snowing. Okay, so no sun. Sorry. It's a lovely, soft, gentle, mid-range, you know, not super huge wet flakes, not super tiny dry flakes. It's like in between. Well, it's 60 degrees here in Sun Chinese, so you probably hate me.
Custom Dress Design Insights
00:01:15
Speaker
Oh, quite honestly, if I could just curl up next to a fire with a book would be like the perfect day. Exactly. Denise is I'm going to step you through what you did in the design process of the two wedding dresses you made. Yes. So that we can examine what the process looks like, at least for you, because
00:01:37
Speaker
You know, everyone goes through it differently. Correct. Right. But your design process and then examine a little bit of how you could have taken those next steps so that you could have shared the pattern and built a business on selling the pattern so that other people could create the same thing you created. Right. Now,
00:02:04
Speaker
Whether you really wanted to do that with your granddaughter's wedding dress may not have been the case, right? You might have wanted that to stay a one of a kind. But if you had wanted to turn that out into the world so that other people could create it too, what were the next things that you could have done to do that?
00:02:24
Speaker
Right. Well, it'll be good information for all of our listeners, but also for me in case it ever happens again. That's right. You know, how, how do you take those next steps? What do you need to be doing during the process that helps you complete it by writing it down? Right. So, so today we are going to look at what you did. So the very first thing that always happens in creating a pattern, and I don't care who you are, is inspiration.
00:02:53
Speaker
So what information did your granddaughter or your friend provide you that created the basis of the design for their wedding dress? Well, surprisingly enough, each one of them gave me a sketch.
00:03:16
Speaker
My granddaughters was, uh, how can I say this? It was much easier to follow. She did it in red ink. It was easier to see. And she is somewhat of an artist herself.
Understanding Client Needs
00:03:30
Speaker
So that made it easy, easy to work with. The second, uh, Danielle, I'll say her name, her, uh, sketch was very light and hard to see and
00:03:43
Speaker
Because she showed me about halfway through the dress, some ideas that she had for the train, we had to do a few adjustments. And those ideas came from photos that she sent me of another dress that someone else had created, and that's available commercially. So for the most part, both of them came from sketches.
00:04:12
Speaker
OK. And their inspirations created those sketches. So when they gave you the sketch, what questions did you ask that helped to clarify what they really wanted? Or was the sketch enough for you? OK. The sketch for Carlin, my granddaughter, was very clear.
00:04:42
Speaker
But there are always those questions, what kind of drape do you want? Do you want it to be a stiff fabric or did you want it to flow? Were you going to wear an underdress? Because let's face it, if you're crocheting something, 99% of those kind of dresses need to have an underdress under them. And what color is it going to be?
Material Choices and Challenges
00:05:10
Speaker
How much of it do you want to see?
00:05:13
Speaker
There were, with Carlin's dress, there were over 8,000 beads on that dress when I finished it. So we talked a lot about bead placement. With Danielle's, we thought we were going to go with a lot of beads, but I custom designed the sleeve specifically and
00:05:44
Speaker
It just didn't look right, with beads anywhere except where we finally placed them, and that was at the bottom of a bell hem. They were both very different dresses. I have called Carlin's dress the pineapple dress because the skirt was beaded pineapples.
00:06:08
Speaker
I have called Danielle's dress, Lady Guinevere meets the corpse bride because the bottom and the train of her dress is from a corpse bride. I took the inspiration from a corpse bride.
00:06:27
Speaker
dress that someone else had actually drawn a picture of. I didn't find any dresses with that. And the train is so totally different anyway. It looks like she's standing in a puddle of water. So each one of them had different fabrication slash yarn type requirements.
00:06:50
Speaker
So your questions related a lot to what fiber you were going to use, what size hook you were going to use, and clarifying their picture of what they wanted so that you could make the right choices. Yes, because with Carlin's dress, she wanted something a little shiny.
00:07:14
Speaker
And at that point, I was completely unfamiliar with crochet thread that had a sheen to it. And boy, did I get a crash course on things like that. With Danielle's, she specifically wanted a very Renaissance, medieval type look about her dress. And so we used just a plain crochet cotton.
00:07:43
Speaker
So were both dresses then made out of a crochet cotton type base? Daniels was. I don't have it right here exactly with me. Daniels was a cotton crochet thread. Aunt Lydia's fashion, I think three. It's a heavier weight. It's a much heavier weight than the one I used for Carlin's.
00:08:12
Speaker
Carlin's was a much thinner yarn, the weight of it, and it was, had a sheen to it of course. It took a lot longer to get me going where I was going with hers than it did with with Danielle's. So you had to sample more different types of fibers and that sort of thing on Carlin's dress. Yes, yes. Also I
00:08:39
Speaker
I have played around with different yarns with different patterns often. I don't always use, in fact, maybe I could count on one hand the number of times that I have used the yarn that was actually designated in any given pattern.
00:08:55
Speaker
I always do a substitution. It just seems that way. I like the color better. I like the drape better.
Timeline for Custom Dresses
00:09:00
Speaker
I like whatever. So with Carlin's, it was exceedingly difficult, not only because she wanted, she knew exactly what she wanted. And I enjoy working with people like that.
00:09:13
Speaker
But she lived in New Mexico when I was in Washington state up in Seattle at the time. So we had to mail things back and forth. I did a gauge swatch and I would put it in an envelope and mail it off to her. And then I would do, she'd go, I think this is it. So I would do another gauge swatch with the beads on it and show her how it was going to drape and flow. That was kind of a long process for hers.
00:09:41
Speaker
With Danielle's, we just chose the kind of thread that she wanted and the color. And she's local to where I'm at. So that was a much easier process.
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah. Anytime you have to deal with the delay of sticking things in snail mail. Yeah. That does challenge things a little bit. I wonder if Carlin's dress had been done more recently. If the addition of some of the computer technologies would have made things just a little easier for you. Like Zoom and Facebook, message live and all that. I think it would have.
00:10:25
Speaker
only in the fact that at some point I would have sent the dress to her and had her try it on and then she would have had to send it back to me. Right. Because you can only see and feel so much on a screen. Oh, exactly. And she was, like I said, she knew exactly what she wanted. Those are
00:10:49
Speaker
For my experience, it was a very easy person to work with. Danielle was also very easy to work with. I require a year. If a bride comes to me and says, oh, I saw you do so-and-so's dress, I want one just like it, or I want one similar, will you make my dress for me? I explain to them first of all right off that I need a solid year. When is your wedding date? And with each one of them, I had about 14 months.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yeah, that does make it kind of nice for the design process. It's not a fast get them out out there kind of thing, but at least you have the time to match what they really want because what you're really doing is not designing something that is made for the general public. You're creating a one of a kind.
00:11:38
Speaker
that isn't really meant to be duplicated, although we are going to be talking about how you could have gotten to the point where it could be. I call them bespoke wedding gowns, which means one-of-a-kind designer gowns.
00:11:53
Speaker
So, my next question actually related a bit to what you've already covered, which is how you chose materials. You chose based on each person's wants in terms of Carlin asked for shiny.
00:12:13
Speaker
Danielle really didn't require that so much as something that was a little more rustic. Correct. Yes. So did you ever consider alternatives to cotton? We played around with the idea briefly, but her mind was already set and that is what she wanted. And I have this little thing. I've been in a lot of weddings and I've helped with weddings.
00:12:43
Speaker
My thing is, well, you know what? It's her day, whatever the bride wants. Right. Right. I just wondered because having seen pictures of Danielle's dress, I wonder how heavy it ended up being. It is very heavy. It is not the however many pounds
00:13:00
Speaker
Jennifer Lopez's was on Marry Me. I just saw that this morning in the news. 20 pounds or 10 pounds or something. It's not as heavy, but it did get heavy, especially with the train. The only benefit is that huge train is on the floor. So that takes up the weight of it. Were you ever concerned that that train would pull on the rest of the dress, though?
00:13:31
Speaker
and more or less deform it on the day. We talked about that and I told her that that was a distinct possibility because it was getting exceedingly heavy.
00:13:46
Speaker
And she said it didn't matter to her. She is going to wear two and a half inch heels on these cute little English boots that are just lattice cut out. They're amazing. A blue, one of the blues that's in the puddle. And she decided that
00:14:07
Speaker
her walk down the aisle isn't going to be very long. It wasn't like a huge church, or she's getting married outside. And there will be a runner, and I don't know if it's cloth or plastic at this point in time, but she knew that her look, the puddle that she's standing in, won't be in place until she's standing at the altar.
00:14:32
Speaker
She knew that she'd be dragging it down the aisle actually, but it was quite heavy. And I told her, I said, well, it might pull a little bit on the front, like right around your arms and something when you're walking. But she's practiced in it and she said it does not do that.
00:14:51
Speaker
Okay, good, good. So how did you decide on which stitches to use? I know in Carlin's dress, for example, the pineapple became a really important part of the dress. I also know it took you a couple of trial and errors before you found the right thing. What was it that settled you on that particular stitch and know that that was going to do what you wanted it to do? On the pineapple or on the top?
00:15:22
Speaker
On the pineapple in particular, but any pieces of it, how did you choose? What was your process? I started at the top because it was a top-down dress. And I found a pattern on Ravelry that was similar. It was a free pattern. And I reworked. Here is what I did write down, and it's somewhere in my storage area behind me.
00:15:52
Speaker
The pattern that I copied was worsted weight with a size either H or I hook. I was using a 2.0 almost a metal hook with very fine crochet thread.
00:16:08
Speaker
But I wanted that wave ripple seashell look that that's what she wanted. And so I just kind of translated it to that. You don't really do it hard to explain. Then I had to work on the increasing and the decreasing for her bust line and for the waistline. The stitches that I was using
00:16:37
Speaker
are very simple double crochets. And you just place more than one of them in each stitch to make an increase. Once I got going on it, when I first started, it was very daunting. I thought, I don't think I'm ever going to get this done. But once I got started on it and then created the sleeves, it was just like it just came out of me.
00:17:06
Speaker
So it wasn't like you went to stitch dictionaries and dug through. Carlin basically told you this was the look she wanted, so you went and found what matched that image. Correct.
Unique Design Decisions
00:17:20
Speaker
That is exactly what happened.
00:17:22
Speaker
And on Danielle's dress, was it that simple as well? Yes. Or did you have to do more searching? Nope. She found a pattern. Actually, I found about a dozen patterns because I really didn't know what she wanted after I saw her sketch. It could have gone either way in a lot of different areas. And there wasn't any specific stitch patterns like Harlan's had.
00:17:45
Speaker
So I said to her, I said, well, do you want something like this? Or would you prefer more of a mesh or would you prefer a shell pattern up on the bodice? And she's wanted super plain. She just wanted really simple. And one of the patterns I showed her, well, much of the dress, again, I just used a portion of the bodice as inspiration, was a mesh. And I showed that to her and she's like, that's it, that's what I want.
00:18:13
Speaker
And that's what she got. So in some respects, for both of these dresses, you took someone else's design and then altered it rather than starting with a stitch and creating from scratch. Oh, I did not create a stitch, but I also didn't use very much of their design.
00:18:40
Speaker
Right. You used their design as inspiration. Yes. I'm not saying that you took their design and changed it. What you did was you said, this is the look I want to go for. This is the stitch they used to create that. I can use this stitch and then do my own thing. Yes. Yes. I had to have a picture of it.
00:19:03
Speaker
The sketches were great, especially Carlin's, but I didn't have enough experience of my own of creating my own thing. I have always called myself a good pattern follower. So that's what I did. I did what I knew.
Client Feedback and Satisfaction
00:19:21
Speaker
But you still changed it enough that it could have become your own pattern without any issue. It was just using their,
00:19:31
Speaker
specific stitch to create the shape and knowing, okay, now I want to change it for this shape and this overall. Plus the fact you probably didn't use all of their design. I know in Carlin's, for example, when you got to the skirt and started doing the pineapple, there were a couple of different ways that you played with doing that.
00:19:54
Speaker
to make that work because of the drape that you needed. Well, in the way that you can make a pineapple nest next to each other, I even tried like alternating upside down and right side up. I tried several different things. I did look again at a, I think it was a prom dress.
00:20:19
Speaker
that had a similar skirt to it, no beads, the pineapples were way further apart, there was more mesh in it. I just wanted, she wanted it exactly the way she drew it in her, pineapple after pineapple after pineapple. And then as you got down to the bottom, you had more pineapples, you know, because you were increasing.
00:20:44
Speaker
So, Carlin actually did the stitch search for you. She's so funny. She does crochet a little bit and she just knew what she wanted and wrote it down. She didn't know she was drawing a stitch when she did it.
00:21:02
Speaker
That's funny. It was. But it was great inspiration because you then were able to duplicate what she saw in her head just because of your experience. The highest compliment I have ever had from anything that I've made for anybody was she called me in tears after she received the final dress and told me, oh, Nana,
00:21:29
Speaker
You have actually taken my vision and brought it to life. That's really cool. And for one artist to say that to another artist, that's huge, yeah. Yeah, that is huge. That's really huge. I hope Danielle is appreciative. Oh, she is. She just can't, her wedding is in six weeks and she can't wait.
Fitting and Shaping Challenges
00:21:52
Speaker
What she can't wait for is for her fiancé to see her in it.
00:21:57
Speaker
I'm sure with all that hard work, I know just a little bit of that. We all kind of have that feeling when we go to get married, especially if we've had the time to put into creating such a unique piece to be able to share it with the world and especially with the man of our choice, the person of our choice. Right. The big surprise.
00:22:24
Speaker
is he has no idea that she changed the bottom of it. He just thinks it's like a regular wedding dress with a regular train. And they're both sort of into that kind of supernatural Tim Burton, you know, that kind of movie stuff. And so when she comes down there and then stands in that train that looks like a puddle, she said he's going to lose it.
00:22:52
Speaker
Were there moments when you did things for these dresses that you said, I just know this is going to work? Or was it a constant? Yeah, this didn't quite work the same way I thought it would. And I've got to rework this. How did that process go? Once I began, there was not a lot of frogging.
00:23:18
Speaker
or ripping out, other than if the stitch counts were wrong or the increases were in the wrong spot for Carlin. For Danielle, she is differently shaped, which was a challenge in a couple of areas. And so the bodice
00:23:40
Speaker
I basically wanted to throw it in the fireplace before I was done with it. But it finally worked out. I finally figured out what I was doing wrong and carried on accordingly. OK. So there was some real trial and error there. Yes. And it had to do with the shaping rather than the stitch choices or the fiber choices.
COVID and Material Availability
00:24:03
Speaker
Yep, correct. That sort of thing. Yep.
00:24:06
Speaker
Did you ever feel like you needed to revisit things like materials or stitch patterns because the fabric you were creating didn't quite match the goal? Not with Carlin's. With Danielle's, I really did question it before I even finished the bodice. Because she is local, I was able to have her over or I went to her house.
00:24:37
Speaker
And to write it on her, explain to her the process and what it was going to look like, that it wasn't going to be like her sister's dress, which was Cinderella's big bridal poofy dress. It wasn't going to look like that at all. And it wasn't going to feel like that either. And she was completely fine with it. She does a lot of cosplay. And so she's worn a lot of different period type dresses.
00:25:05
Speaker
that are heavier. And so she wasn't worried about that, but I was. I thought we were going to have, in fact, at one point we discussed getting a lighter thread. And she just said, no, I don't want it that way. This is the exact look I'm looking for. Now you said you require at least a year. Yes. How long did each dress actually take you from start to finish?
00:25:33
Speaker
Hour wise or month wise? Month wise is sufficient unless you have tracked your hours. I started to track my hours with Carlin's and we ended up moving from Seattle to San Francisco and back to Portland. So I just couldn't keep track of that. In fact, for about
00:26:00
Speaker
I rarely worked on it when we were in San Francisco. It was such a horrible time for us. So for Carlin's dress because of the beads, and I kept running out of beads, I kept having to go back to the store and get more beads, I'm going to say
00:26:20
Speaker
six to nine months with a very wide window because I really lost track of everything, track of time. I completed her dress a month before her wedding day so I could get it shipped to her so she could have it on while her other grandmother made the under dress, which was kind of cool. With Danielle's, I'm going to say probably the same timeframe.
00:26:48
Speaker
You know, that doesn't seem like very long when you consider these were wedding dresses that were quite involved. Well, in what I'm speaking of, Lisa, is the actual crocheting part. I am going to say that up front there was two to three months of planning, of gauge swatching, of
00:27:14
Speaker
agonizing over, and I'm not talking about the distance between New Mexico and Washington. My mother always taught me, and my mother designed wedding gowns only she sewed them. She hand beaded sewn gowns. She always told me that it was the setup and the preparation that took the longest.
00:27:35
Speaker
I think that goes for all kinds of things, especially the handmade things. I know as a dabbler in weaving, for example.
00:27:47
Speaker
All of your time is at least 50% of the time you spend weaving something is in the planning and preparation and warping of the loom. Once you've got that loom warped, the actual weaving doesn't take that long. Right. Yeah. And it was, it was this, well, here's the horrible thing that happened with Danielle's dress. I ordered
00:28:14
Speaker
about maybe two thirds of what I needed for her entire dress because that's all they had available at the time online, you know, full full blown COVID. And I was getting close to the end of it and I was like, I don't think I'm going to have enough of this. So I started trying to reorder. No one had it available.
00:28:38
Speaker
I panicked. So yeah, word of caution to everybody over order. It doesn't matter how much you have to spend because that was not even worth the mental stress I went through. But then that was when she decided, well, it was, we had decided earlier that we were going to do the blue, the puddle train. And thankfully so, because that was available. I had exactly two balls of 139 yards left over when I was done.
00:29:09
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, that's kind of too close for me. Well, we say over and over again, if you're getting ready to do even someone else's pattern, it's wise to buy extra because as.
00:29:23
Speaker
Okay, as a person who does grading and part of the grading process is figuring out yarn usage for each size, you do add at least 10 to 15% to what you calculate to make sure that the knitter has enough because if their gauge is slightly looser or whatever, they're going to use more than you used.
00:29:45
Speaker
But as the knitter, reading that pattern, even though you know the designer has calculated in that little bit extra for swatching and that kind of thing, it's always wise to buy an extra ball. Well, and here's the thing about the extra ball thing. Carlin's thread came on tiny little spools and didn't carry a lot of yardage on it.
00:30:15
Speaker
I must have gone through a hundred of those little spools. And they came from Turkey, okay? The country of Turkey. I was, and I only had, I think I had like five of those leftover when I got to the end of her grass. But hers I didn't worry about for some reason, it was Danielle's. So I was just very grateful that it all turned out the way it did. I think that there might've been a way that I could have
00:30:46
Speaker
fudged a little bit here and there. But the skirt turned out exactly the way it was supposed to, and it was exactly the correct length with all of the train the way it was supposed to be. So yeah, my advice to anybody is, and I overbuy all the time, Lisa. I mean, all the time. I'm over by. I don't know what happened this time. Well, you said it briefly, COVID. Yeah.
00:31:14
Speaker
Yeah, because one of the things that has happened over the last two years with the pandemic is getting materials Has become a huge challenge. I know that our local big box stores their selection of yarn
00:31:32
Speaker
yeah has dramatically decreased especially the better quality yarn because a lot of it is imported rather than being made in the United States and that means that we're there they're having challenges getting it and that means we can't get it so to design a wedding dress with specific needs
00:31:59
Speaker
for something that probably wasn't manufactured in the United States, or even if it was, the factory likely got closed for at least some period of time. I thought of that, yeah.
00:32:12
Speaker
which means the stores couldn't get it, whether that be online or local. They couldn't get it. Therefore you couldn't
Pattern Transition Potential
00:32:20
Speaker
get it. That's it's been a much more difficult process over the last couple of years. The fact that you managed to do it is amazing. And believe me, people, when you see the pictures of these dresses, you're just going to just your jaw is going to hit the floor because they're amazing.
00:32:39
Speaker
Thank you Lisa, let me let me just for about supplies we also she has four bridesmaids and I'm the matron of honor and She wanted every one of us to have a shawl and we decided on the lost souls shawl and We I beaded them doesn't ever call for beads not very many people have put beads on this shawl. I've made this shawl hundreds times and That was the challenge was the beads
00:33:08
Speaker
it was difficult to find enough of the same color and the same size for foreshalls. Yeah, beads especially because beads are almost all imported. I was surprised, yeah.
00:33:22
Speaker
especially better quality beads. If you do any beading at all, and I have in fact done some loom beading and that sort of thing, your quality beads either come from Czechoslovakia or from Japan. I needed to get them locally because I needed to get them done before I lost my mind, basically. And I didn't have time to wait for two months for something to get shipped.
00:33:51
Speaker
So it was quite the adventure bead shopping. Yeah, I hear you. I totally hear you. So if you had decided that you wanted to turn either of these dresses or both of these dresses into a pattern, what steps would you have needed to take during the process of creating them and then immediately following to have helped you get it written down so that you could sell it as a pattern?
00:34:22
Speaker
Lisa, I thought a lot about this. I think I would try to use every bit of technology that I have at my disposal. I think I would record a lot of things.
Pattern Writing and Tech Editing
00:34:35
Speaker
I think I would video a lot of things. I think that I would write it down, of course, but I don't think I would rely only on that because my process
00:34:50
Speaker
probably is very similar to a lot of other peoples, but it was new to me.
00:34:55
Speaker
And I would never even know how to go about writing down some of the things that I did. And so I could take that video to someone like you, a tech editor, or a friend that's way more advanced in crochet than I am, and say, how do you even say this? How do you put this on paper? So I think I would take advantage of a lot of my technology that I have in the house. And my two guys live here with me, my son and my husband, that know a lot of stuff. And I would use a lot. I have a little camera that I can
00:35:24
Speaker
Hang on well, my son has it that you can hang on something and you do the work underneath it like for filming for YouTube and I would try to Incorporate that or at least partially not like the whole thing but in different steps that I'm doing I think those could have ended up those could have ended up being great tutorial videos That you could use alongside the pattern as well as reminding yourself. Okay. How did I do this?
00:35:54
Speaker
finding thought of that you're right as far as taking a video to a tech editor we generally don't we look at a video and make sure it matches the pattern you've written we don't generally turn videos into patterns what i might suggest is i found a book a little while back called the crochet
00:36:17
Speaker
complete crochet course. I'm sorry, I had to look over on my desk to make sure I got the title right. There is a section in that book about how to read a pattern. And I think that if you were to take that information, you could turn it to, okay, so then what do I need to do to write a pattern? Oh, okay. I've heard of that book. It helps you refine it once it's written down. Right.
00:36:43
Speaker
And we're really good at saying, well, you know, you kind of created your own abbreviation for this, but that abbreviation already exists in this form. Maybe we should use this instead. Those are the kinds of things that a tech editor would do for you.
00:37:02
Speaker
But really learning how patterns are written, you know, and how to read them can really truly assist you in figuring out how to write them. Learning to write my first pattern really came from knowing the intimate details of how to tear a pattern apart to improve it as a tech editor.
Custom Fitting vs. Pattern Grading
00:37:27
Speaker
You know, I'm going to throw something in right here because you just reminded me of the reason why their dresses fit as well as they did. I did everything to measurement and that comes from my experience as a seamstress.
00:37:42
Speaker
I fitted every unth of that dress to them specifically. Now you were talking about grading patterns and all that. That's what reminded me of it. Yes. And that is one of the challenges in writing a pattern because in trying to make it multiple sized, you can't necessarily custom fit it.
00:38:04
Speaker
But what you could do is once you have your multiple sizes graded, you could then insert tips as to how to modify so that if your body isn't exactly the size,
00:38:24
Speaker
Here's what I did to fix it for this specific body. That's interesting. And you can include those kinds of tips on how to modify your pattern to fit better. For example, in knitting, we regularly have these very straight sweaters. If you want to modify and create some waist shaping,
00:38:50
Speaker
It's easy to write into a pattern. If you wish some waste shaping, calculate your decreases on this angle and then your increases on this angle. And that would
00:39:05
Speaker
Allow the end knitter to say, oh, I don't have to knit it exactly this way. There's a tip here that says this is how I can change it. I actually have a book that talks about shaping and knitting. That's interesting that you should say that.
00:39:23
Speaker
And you can do the same thing with crochet. Sure. Oh, yeah. I'm not as experienced in it. And quite frankly, if I were to have one of your patterns handed to me to tech edit, I would be saying, no, no, no, no, no, you need to go to this friend of mine who's a much better crochet tech editor than I am. Right.
00:39:41
Speaker
And I do have friends who I could turn to and say, do you have time to take this pattern to tech at it? Because you're better at that than I am.
Future Project Changes
00:39:54
Speaker
Well, we all have our strengths.
00:39:56
Speaker
That's correct. And while I do crochet, I've never made a crocheted garment, so I would never attempt to tech edit a crocheted garment. I can tech edit simple things, scarves and blankets and those type of things. But if it includes shaping, I'm probably going to turn it over to someone else.
00:40:19
Speaker
So writing things down using the technology at hand would have helped you get to that final point. And really, my biggest tip, copious notes. Well, I can honestly tell you that for Carlin's, I have copious notes in storage somewhere around here on legal pads.
00:40:37
Speaker
I do. I don't know how far I got with them before I gave up and said, I'm just going to, I have to finish this thing. I can't keep writing stuff down, you know, but, um, I could fake it, you know. That is the problem with a custom design that's being made to fit a specific body. I know in years past, I have done that very same thing. I, in my younger years, and I'm saying much younger years, I did work for a while doing one of a kind sweaters.
00:41:08
Speaker
Well, I think that did you get all the questions that you did? Big thing is, Denise, did you feel like if you were to tackle this again, what would you do to change the process? So maybe at the end of it, you had a pattern.
00:41:27
Speaker
Well, like I said, I would I would use technology. I would write it down more. I would use a recording so I could speak into like my laptop or my phone. I would just make it a more streamlined easier process. But eventually I would get it all on a pattern and written down. I would like that. Yeah. Well, and maybe the next time you start a project like this, you can think a little bit. A little bit of
00:41:56
Speaker
Part of that planning will be, what will I do to make sure at the end of this process I've got that extra piece of information that I need? Yeah, exactly. Which neither one of these were designed for that purpose, but it was a great exploration of the steps it takes to get from point A to point
Wrap-up and Listener Engagement
00:42:18
Speaker
B. It was a push the envelope kind of thing, that's for sure.
00:42:21
Speaker
Yes. All right. Well, I'm going to let you go. It is getting time for a little bit of food on my end. And you have a great day. And I hope our listeners gained something from today's exploration. Well, thanks, Lisa. I enjoyed it. Have a good night. All right. Bye. Don't forget to hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss our next episode when we interview Erin Clayton of Erinine Designs.
00:42:51
Speaker
Erin is a knitwear and graphic designer and is creating courses relating to pattern writing and design.
00:42:59
Speaker
So just to wrap up, remember you can reach us through our Facebook or our Ravelry group at our email at knitdesignedit at gmail.com. And if you would like to learn more about tech editing or grading or other services that I provide, please visit my website at arcticedits.com.
00:43:35
Speaker
I would love to see that. And I would love to see the one that Nathan mentioned on our one of our previous podcasts, the sweater that looked like the landscape during the day on one side and the night and the other. And it was double knitted. You know, I want to see that pattern. I have to be honest, I have seen that pattern. I have not. I would love to.
00:43:55
Speaker
At one, at some point in my life, I saw that pattern and I'm pretty sure it was in a magazine. Hmm. Probably. Yeah. And I don't know that if it, whether it exists online at all, because that would have been, I think that pattern came, actually came out in the nineties. Hmm. Those nineties.
00:44:21
Speaker
how back, how far back that, that goes or further, it might've even been a little farther back than that. But I do recall seeing a pattern that was that concept of a cardigan with the day scene and the night scene.
00:44:42
Speaker
You know, it'd be interesting to try a search. Anyway, Denise, we are running on at the mouth at this point. I'm not really sharing any great information for her. Well, they can listen in on our phone conversation. You know, I'll tell you what, people, if you heard our regular just, hey, we want to chat for a few minutes and ended up talking for an hour and a half. That's the way we run.