The pattern development process

There are so many steps in developing a pattern for publication, and every designer does things differently. Here’s what the One Wild process looks like!

Start with a collection

A collection is a theme we want to explore, whether technically, socially, or artistically. For example, One for All and Septima’s Movement are part of Stitch Night Club. Collections might be released all at once, or over time.

For Stitch Night Club, we thought about what we like best when getting together to craft with friends. The shared interest, the flexibility, the fun. The chance to wear and show off your makes to people who understand.

And maybe most importantly? These nights bring together so many different makers of different experience levels and with different identities. This is what makes our community shine, and we wanted to design for that social experience.

Define the collection criteria

• Which characteristics need to be present?
• Which should not?
• Who is the collection for, and what do they want and need?

Stitch Night Club needed to be fun, approachable, “noisy-café-friendly”, and accessible. Obviously we always create size-inclusive patterns. But for this collection, we decided to include:

• Familiar construction
• Lots of “set-it-and-forget it” (either stockinette or an easily-memorized stitch pattern)
• Yarns that are easy to substitute
• Yarn weights that hit the balance between “quick knitting” and “not too heavy to wear inside all day”
• Forgiving silhouettes
• A new size chart (our Men’s Chart)
• A new craft (sssh, we have a crochet design coming later!)
• Beginner friendly instructions

Knitting pattern design process: iterate and finalize individual designs

In this step, we come up with lots and lots of ideas, and then choose.

In a way, we treat ourselves like a magazine or yarn company that puts out a call for submissions. The rigor of having choices and deciding together means we have better patterns at the end and can benefit from each other’s strengths.

The Stitch Night Club collection includes five patterns, all of which have optional bust darts. Here's what we planned to make sure our Stitch Night Club would create the fun, inclusive, and community feel of a meetup night.

Sappho's Love

• Lightweight pullover
• Women’s chart
• Seamless body
• In-the-round with seamless set-in-sleeves
• Elegant neckline and breezy body
• Quick-knitting open gauge
• Easy stockinette

Who Could Stay

• Sportweight pullover
• Men’s chart
• Easy mattress seaming on the sides of the body
• Seamless construction for the sleeves and shoulders
• Easily memorized waffle stitch
• Supporting articles on the website to help knitters get a great fit
• Shown on three models

Septima's Movement

• Sportweight cardigan
• Seamed raglan for portability and easy directions
• Easily memorized basic cable
• Hip shaping
• Vintage college look, modern fit

One for All

• Sportweight pullover
• Familiar seamless, top-down, raglan construction
• Easy German short-row neck shaping
• Waist-agnostic bell-shaped body
• Effortless stockinette

Secret Crochet pattern

• We’re not telling!
• Pieced
• Guest-designed by respected knit and crochet designer Kirsten Joel
• The One Wild fit - in a crochet garment
• You’ll have to look around for secret pictures of one of our favorite knitters wearing it ;)
• More to come!

Knitting Pattern Design Process: Design, write, and grade the garment

Did you know that knitwear designers do the jobs done by many different folks in the larger fashion industry? They:

• Design (plan how a garment looks and wears)
• Write and grade the schematic (determine the dimensions for every size); and,
• Write the instructions (the technical writing part).

Knitting pattern design process: hire a technical editor

As I tell my daughter, even grown-ups have someone check their homework!

Our technical editors (TEs) do some heavy lifting for us. They review the pattern draft to make sure it’s accurate and the numbers and instructions match up with the sample and schematic. But they do so much more:

• Check for typos and grammar problems
• Review the finished dimensions and make sure they will fit
• Compare the instructions to our style guide and make sure we are consistent in our writing (to reduce confusion)
• Make sure we haven’t left anything out (like, um, the “Finishing” section where we tell you to block it and seam it and whatnot. Not that I’ve done that or anything…)
• Make sure all of our abbreviations and techniques are present
• Point out where instructions are confusing or dense
• Make sure the illustration is helpful and accurate
• Double check our links
• Serve as cheerleaders!

Once we all agree the pattern is “done”, it’s time to get it into knitter’s hands.

Knitting pattern design process: user experience testing

You may have heard of UX (user experience) testing – having users try something (a product, a website, etc.), and then adjusting to make it more user friendly. But what does it mean to have a knitting pattern go through UX testing?

What is a UX knit?

In a UX knit, knitters receive an edited copy of the pattern. They're encouraged to use it however they would in real life, and we ask for their feedback when they're finished, or if they're don't finish it, before we make any final edits for release.

The goal of UX knitting is to make sure that knitters have the resources they need to use the pattern in the way they want to. It's not to check the accuracy of the directions, or the fit of the garment (that's what tech editing is for).

Evaluating fit in the UX knitting part of the design process

I should say, UX knit testing is not for checking fit the way you may think. Garment patterns are graded to fit a "fit model" - a set of measurements for a pretend body at each size. Unless a knitter has all the same dimensions as the fit model, the garment will not fit that knitter the exact same way.

So yes, when someone encounters a fit issue in a UX knit, we dig into it. Was it a gauge issue? In what ways do their measurements match the size chart? Is there a change we want to make to the grading, or do we need to provide more guidance on how to choose a size? Should we write some articles about how to address this fit issue with a modification?

In exchange, knitters get a final copy of the pattern and a thank you copy of another pattern. We also help them with any fit mods they want to make, which is sometimes their first opportunity to have someone knowledgeable about fit troubleshoot with them or give them hands-on help.

Feedback from UX knitters helps us make sure YOU have a great time working from a pattern

We take all the feedback throughout the test, and incorporate as we go. We also take some time at the end and look at all the feedback provided as part of an end-of-UX-knit survey. What do we need to adjust, clarify, or provide supplementary?

For example, in the One for All UX knit process we made changes:

• To the overall sleeve length in all sizes
• To the needle size recommended for the collar
• Corrected typos in the raglan shaping for sizes 3 and 4
• Added tips on working the slipped stitches a little more loosely than the surrounding stitches
• Added information to the "intended fit" section about the increases in the body to help knitters be certain they are in the right size
• Added modification tips for how to adjust the sleeve length
• Created a separate Visual Guide PDF to help new knitters have a breezy experience (read more about the Visual Guide and download an illustrated overview here).

Sweater design process: the curse of the expert

The curse of the expert is when you know so much about something, you don’t remember what a less-experienced person doesn't yet know.

Not only are we experienced knitters, but we also were the ones who wrote the pattern so we know what we mean! We’re blind to things that might be confusing, and UX knitting helps us make sure anyone can pick up our patterns and work from them.

But, of course, many of our UX Knitters are also advanced knitters. One for All is specifically designed to be easy for the newest sweater knitters. If someone can knit and purl, read a pattern, and is pretty good at maintaining gauge? We want this pattern to be not just “doable,” but an easy win!

So for this pattern, we invited a reader. Without knitting it, we asked Rei to point out things that she thought might need some additional information. We all know that sometimes things are clearer once you get them on the needles, so having a no-knitting read through seems like a great way to surface places that might be sticky. That feedback informed which steps appear in the Visual Guide.

Rei also found an error in her read through! Even after all the tech edit and testing and pre/re-reviews on our end, she found some instructions to remove non-existent markers. Thanks Rei!

Knitting pattern design process: a final tech edit

Once we incorporate everyone’s feedback, we make final edits to the draft and work with our TE to make sure that what ends up in your hands is as perfect as we can make it!

Go Further

• Interested in becoming a UX Knitter? We typically choose UX Knitters from our Kofi subscribers, folks who support Bess or Jen individually, or One Wild as a team. You can find the One Wild Kofi page here.

• We shared our values around including as many people as we can. You can read our values on our About page.
• The beginning of our patterns are how we orient makers to what they’ll be doing. All the gauge, fit and sizing info, schematic, yarn requirements – it’s at the beginning. We make that part of the pattern free to download before you buy.

• Finally, you can see the whole Stitch Night Club collection here!