Looking Back on Looking Glass: A New Designer’s Reflections
Throughout the Looking Glass Top’s development, testing, and pattern release, I wasn’t exactly shy about sharing the pitfalls of the process. But, still, I wanted to write a blog post to immortalize those reflections anyways. Part of this reflection is certainly for me, as I continue to forge my own pathway as a crochet designer, but also for anyone else who wants to peer into the process, and perhaps even learn from it. So let’s start at the very beginning…
As a brand new designer, I took bold steps by not only choosing a garment for my first design, but by designing a top-down yoke construction garment. There were two reasons I chose this path:
Fit was important to me and I wanted to make something I could try on as I went.
I wanted to learn how to grade by jumping in the deep end.
If you want the long story short, those goals were achieved. If you want the short story long, keep reading - there were a lot of frustrating moments and challenges along the way, though do bear in mind the story does have a happy ending!
Stitches n Things
At the outset of designing the top, I was incredibly fixated on the math knowledge I didn’t have. I really thought that it was the only major problem I had to solve (bahahahaha). Little did I know that a lot the work I had done on my sample so far actually would lend itself to future trouble too, so before I jump into solving the math - which is the factor that gives most accessory designers pause on jumping into garment-land - I’ll share a bit about what I now know to be true about the sample. Hopefully it can help you avoid them as you jump into your first garment design:
Complicated stitch patterns. Don’t do this if you don’t have to!
When I started, I really thought that I needed a unique stitch pattern AND a unique construction AND solid details AND a solid fit, and the truth is, you probably only need ONE, maybe TWO of those for a knockout design. (Spoiler: fit and design details are the winners here). The others honestly don’t really matter, especially on your first design!
For me, the complicated stitch patterns led to troubles grading: ensuring that you get can achieve the same look across multiple sizes can actually be quite prohibitive with a tricky stitch pattern. For example, with the Looking Glass Top, you can only increase on very particular rounds, and the yoke split also had to happen at a certain point in the repeat.Complicated construction
As many experienced crocheters will know, yoke construction garments can be a bit of a beast. In the process of designing the yoke, I reached out to some designer friends to ask questions about the process: What should I know? What should I consider? Can I design with my heart or should I be designing with my head - keeping the math at the forefront? How many underarm chains is too many? I’m sure several of them left those conversations thinking I was certifiably nuts for trying this on my first kick at the can, but they gave good advice and suggested that I lean back on the math (I didn’t listen). By this point, I had also split the yoke early (before the full bust measure) thinking this was a good idea. (Spoiler: it was not.)
So all this to say, even if you have a simple stitch pattern, and a simple construction, you can still create a stellar pattern. Which then leads me to… the math. *cue scary music*
Math, with Scary Music
The problem with math was… well… I didn’t know how to do the math.
I’m actually not half bad at general math, but I didn’t understand how it worked in this context. I didn’t know the ways in which gauge translated across the garment and how to make it fit a body that was not my own. The geometry of it all honestly made my head spin. Where did I need to measure? What size chart should I use? How do I use a formula in a spreadsheet? Once I have those numbers, how on earth do I translate them to a pattern? One that actually fits all those different body shapes out there?
Oy vey.
Enter Courtney from Tinderbox. Courtney is a master designer, releasing at least one garment pattern a month for the last several years. She has an amazing mentorship program opportunity that I stumbled upon several months prior to beginning the garment design process.
When I had the yoke complete, my brain was already ahead of me, toiling on the math, so I decided to apply for three sessions with Courtney, and well, the rest is history. It was literally an investment in my learning, but also in my business and I couldn’t be happier that I took this deep dive with her. She walked me through the process of grading Looking Glass which was tricky, but it worked! And one day, I just… understood it. That wouldn’t have happened without her.
I need to make one thing clear here if your interest is piqued by Courtney’s mentorship program: Courtney is a mentor; she will not do the work for you. Quite often, we would have our session and then I would stare bewildered at the spreadsheet for awhile afterward, scrambling to commit everything we just talked about to memory, or at least to some scratched notes.
Learning to grade doesn’t stop at the Looking Glass Top, but Courtney’s mentorship gave me the confidence to move forward and apply my knowledge to my future garment designs.
The Character of it All
Last section, I promise. As I look back on the design process, I quickly realized I also carry a few character traits that made this all possible:
A deep willingness to learn
The intent of designing the Looking Glass Top was completely altruistic. I didn’t care about selling patterns or gaining followers or any of that. I cared about learning how to do a hard thing. (And I did it - woot!)Perseverance (also read: stubbornness)
Because I love to learn, I also don’t go down without a fight. This wasn’t an easy top to grade - or even to write the pattern for because there were 5.3 gazillion decisions to make - but I pushed until I had it the way I needed it to be.The humility to understand what I know and what I didn’t know… and frogging until I DID know
I didn’t actually know how to create a circle yoke from scratch when I started, but I did know that I was willing to frog if I didn’t get it right! I researched and looked at a TON (and I mean a TONNNNN) of resources online about it, even if they only gave small hints to the answers I was looking for. From videos to blog posts, I had to piece together a bunch of information from different sources to arrive at my own understandings of the best methods for designing a circle yoke and how to split for sleeves. And now, moving forward, I will hone that again and again on my next top-down designs.
The balancing act: being open to feedback, while knowing what you want to convey
During testing, I was very open to feedback and absolutely LIVED for my testers finding all the nitty-gritty errors or issues inside of the pattern. They truly made the pattern what it is today and I am so grateful for them. That said, you can’t take every single piece of feedback on and you must hold boundaries about what’s important to you as well.
Okay, PHEWWWW. If you’re still with me, thanks for reading. While it is a pretty long-winded reflection, it fits the bill because it was certainly a long-winded process to get from idea to published pattern. This was a joyful, frustrating, inspiring, and wild process, but one I am incredibly proud of. If any of my thoughts or reflections resonated with you, I would love to hear about it in the comments below.
Cheers.
