I posted about my love of squared paper on Instagram a couple of years ago, but I’ve decided it’s worth sharing to the blog. I made sure that everyone who signed up for the last round of my knitwear design course got a pad of squared paper! It’s one of the most important tools for knitwear design development.
(The original caption text is below in case the embedded post doesn’t work for you.)
I have lots of squared paper on reserve and I use it whenever I have a design idea. Whether it’s cables, colourwork, or lace, it helps me to see a visual representation of the stitch pattern. Knitting stitches are more like pixels than vector lines, and that’s one reason why I don’t rely too heavily on sketches or line drawings.
Sketches are far better for silhouettes and capturing the character of a design. If you’re working from something detailed, you have to choose what you lose when interpreting your ideas for knit. Squared paper forces you to pixelate the original image, simplify the visual, and be more imaginative about what you can capture in stitchwork.
By drawing on squared paper, I can also feel how a stitch pattern or motif is going to work (or not) for my knitting design.
I can see:
- the repeat units in rows and stitches
- the rhythm of the knitting
- where and how to tweak
- future directions for more design development as the lines and motifs take shape.
This clip is of me filling in a cable chart with my trusty 2B pencil. It’s a peaceful, mindful moment when my brain has simmered down, and a pause before knitting the swatch.
How big should the squares be? What kind of squared paper should I use for knitwear design?
I usually go for 0.5cm squares. If you work in inches, the closest is 0.25 inch paper. For large-scale tessellations or colour charts, you can also use graph paper, which has 0.2cm squares (0.125 inch). This is handy because you can see how the design lines work from afar. This change in perspective is scale in a different format; you might not use it as often as the larger squares here, but it’s good to have on standby.
You might also find knitter’s graph paper useful. This is sometimes called proportional knitted graph paper, and is another good resource because the squares aren’t…well, square. We all know that knitted stitches aren’t square, and you can type in your tension/gauge to generate the size you need. This is better for refining details, though. I always do the working on regular squared paper first, and usually it ends there. The information you get from development on a pad is enough for me to see whether something will work. With time, you can train your eyes to get used to the dimensions.
What else is squared paper good for?
There are many more uses for squared paper besides surface pattern design. Long-term or eagle-eyed readers will have seen it pop up in posts about grading. You, really, really, REALLY don’t have to be beholden to Excel. There are plenty of times when I don’t use Excel for designing patterns. It’s most important to make sure that you understand your own design and can communicate the concept or progression to someone else. If you need a visual, give yourself a visual. Don’t make yourself suffer unnecessarily. Your brain works as it works; don’t change yourself, find a tool or method that works for you.
Below is a drawing of how I drafted and graded the short row shaping of the Gaspra cardigan sleevehead. There is NO WAY in this or any other universe that I could’ve done this in Excel. I couldn’t do it at the time, and I don’t know if I could manage it now. Nor am I going to try!
The beauty of visuals is that our eyes are so adept at processing information. If you’re keen on design, you’re most likely brilliant at visual communication, so make that strength work for you. You clearly have the muscle, so why not?
How do you use squared paper? Do you use squared paper? Let me know – and if you found this post helpful, please share it or pin it to Pinterest so that other knitters can find it. Thank you 🙂
You can find out more about how I used paper – especially squared paper – for knitwear design in these courses:
Visual Communication: Pencil control and the greyscale | Knitwear Design Initiation taster course
Knitwear Design Initiation | Visual Communication taster course
A 1-hour introductory drawing course or refresher for those who haven’t used their art materials for a long time.
It’s accessible to anyone who wants to make a start on or improve their drawing skills, but the techniques covered prepare you for the nuance of illustrating soft textures of knits.
This class on pencil control and the greyscale was designed especially for drawing out your latent sensitivity and artistry. The marks you make on the paper will range from the wispiest grey to the earthiest charcoal. This vocabulary will also improve your observational skills because you’ll have the means to draw what you see.
The Visual Communication taster is the first step away from the frustration of not being able to draw from life, or the disappointment of your drawings not looking the way you want them to. In just over an hour, you’ll never look at pencil and paper the same way again!
Knitwear Design Initiation | Design Development taster course
An introduction to idea generation techniques for knitwear design, taken from the Design Development module of the Knitwear Design Initiation course. This focuses on garment silhouette and tessellations (designing repeating patterns).
The two techniques in this taster course will shed light on how you can create several ideas out of one, or none at all if your starting point is a stitch library. You’ll feel brighter, more inspired and confident about developing your existing design ideas.
They are adapted from exercises I learnt as a fashion student, and use two frameworks as starting points: the showstopper and the ensemble.
These idea generation techniques will help you to mine for gold in the depths of your imagination and avoid feeling like you’ve run out of ideas. Once you realise how much creative energy you have, you’ll feel brighter and more confident about being a successful knitwear designer.
Design Development: Two techniques for idea generation | Knitwear Design Initiation taster course
Pattern Drafting: Applied maths and the geometry of sleeves | Knitwear Design Initiation taster course
Knitwear Design Initiation | Pattern Drafting taster course
This knitwear design short course is especially recommended if you want to design sweaters, cardigans, and other types of pullover.
This taster course on pattern drafting for knitwear covers two important principles: applied maths and sleeve lift. Understanding human anatomy and how the arm moves gives you the perfect foundation for designing all styles of sleeve.
Knowing how to use mathematical formulas to calculate the stitches and rows you need for a pattern is key. Why mathematical formulas? You’ll need to use the MSG equation triangle to calculate the dimensions needed for EVERY knitting pattern you’ll design, whether for yourself or others. Take a sneak peek at MSG here if you’re more of a reader.
A mix of theory and practical makes the knitting pattern drafting taster course stand out. Be prepared to cut and stick pieces of paper together to create mini patterns or toiles!
Knitwear Design Initiation | Pattern grading taster course
You don’t need to be a maths whiz to be good at grading. The only mathematical principle you need to grasp is algorithms.
Algorithms are what you plug into Excel (if you’re using a spreadsheet), or use as a basis for visuals, if you prefer to draw.
The visual relationships that make your design successful are the secret to understanding how best to grade your pattern. Seeing your beautiful work as a composition – not as something to ‘scale up or down’ to fit different bodies – and appreciating the depths of its moving parts will help you to work out where to begin with grading knitting patterns.
All the information you need to grade your knitting pattern is contained within the pattern itself, because algorithms = patterns. You just need to extract this information using the right processes, and this 1-hour course will give you a start.
Hi Natalie, this was SO interesting and took me back to when I studied Fashion Technology at my local community college, though I have to say it took me a minute to figure out what squared paper is! Oh, graph paper, that’s what us guys over here in America say! Anyway, I’m with you, I prefer graph, or squared paper to knitters graph paper and I’ve used both. For some reason I found the knitters paper confusing, perhaps because I wasn’t used to it, and so went back to regular squared paper. But I love seeing a graphed design. When I first started knitting, almost 45 years ago, at least here in the USA, patterns were written out, line by line. I trudged along, following the pattern, but when I first saw a charted design it was such a revelation! The whole design, in one glance! Wonderful! I used to chart my own knitting designs, but got too lazy, and only knit for kids and grandkids anyway so now I keep it in my head and once I’ve done the set up row, the design flows from there.
Thank you, Natalie, for this fascinating blog post.
💕 thank you, Heather! That’s a fascinating story about your personal journey with squared paper; I love how you’ve described the change from written patterns to charted patterns. Many U.K. ones (Sirdar, for example) are still written out line by line, and my mum and late grandma used them for my baby clothes too ☺️
Also, apologies for confusing the name of the paper. I have two pads of squared paper, but one is called graph paper because it has heavier lines on 10×10 squares. I personally don’t care, but I no doubt got a bit muddled up whilst writing! I will check it and add some clarification to the post soon. Thank you 🙏🏾
Thank YOU, Natalie, wonderful post!
I like graph paper for playing with ideas for knitting and other crafts, and also just for writing on. It’s one of my favorite office supplies. I even found graph paper post it notes, and those make me so happy. Thanks for showing your process.
My pleasure, Meredith – and thank you for mentioning graph paper post-its! I’m off to look for them now ☺️
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