Harrisville, NH

An intensive four day workshop on designing cabled garments from the invention of new cable stitches to their use in innovative modern sweater structures.

On day one, we’ll begin by exploring the cable tool box. By knitting cables made from ribs, mini cables and lace in unusual and useful cable structures, you’ll become familiar with a new vocabulary of cables and will prepare you for designing new cable fabrics and planning garments in the following days.

The second day brings an exercise in teamwork. You’ll learn how to gather and organize design inspirations. We’ll act as a design team while you learn about thinking in stories and themes, practice sketching on paper and on your iPad, and see how to organizing a multi design project.

On Day three you’ll be learning about stitch resources and begin making up your own stitches. Learn how to put your own new cable stitch patterns on graph paper (or on your lap top if you have one). You’ll be swatching and perfecting fabrics to make your sketches come to fruition.

We’ll concentrate on making your ideas real on the fourth day. After a broad over view of sweater structures and schematics, we’ll more closely study three examples, one a pieced classic shape, one a top down “set in” sleeve, the 3rd a circle based construction. You’ll choose the construction that best suits your sketch or re-sketch to fit your new ideas and then get it all down on paper in the form of a properly scaled schematic.

The goal for the workshop is to have a sketch, swatch, newly invented pattern stitch with chart, and schematic complete and ready to begin writing instructions. The class’s work as a whole will represent a “collection” of knitwear designs.