🤖 🧶 Machine Knitting - v1 Sweater Design

Hi friends!

I hope the machine knitting basics I covered last week help set the stage for the next iteration of my project. My ~new~ goal is to knit a ‘waste sweater’ 10x faster (I estimated the first sweater took 50+ hours) and I’m using a new-to-me flatbed knitting machine to help speed up the process.

v1 Sweater - Design

When I knit, I’m used to working from an existing pattern- I’ve never created my own. There are a lot of hand-knitting patterns available online and there’s a growing population of creators selling their designs on social media for ~$5-10 per pattern.

But there aren't as many patterns available for machine knitting. I did find some designs from the 1980s that are a bit dated to use as-is, but they're creative and definitely provide some inspiration! I’ve been poring over these docs to familiarize myself with the format of machine knitting patterns. 

Since I couldn't find an existing pattern I liked, I decided to take a leap and adapt a hand-knitting pattern into a machine knitting pattern. I found a relatively simple hand-knitting pattern I like. This style:

• Has a boxy, oversized fit - this way I can worry a bit less about nailing the measurements.

• Has a drop shoulder - meaning the seam where the sleeve attaches to the shoulder is meant to droop below your actual shoulder (see second photo for reference). This style of shoulder requires less shaping than a set-in sleeve (like a sleeve on a blazer).

I made a lot of drafts on scrap paper to attempt to translate this pattern from top-down to bottom-up. I broke each section into geometric components, documenting stitch counts, row counts, and increases/decreases. I also did a test knit with store-bought yarn because I’ve never knitted a sweater on a machine before (my final project at Textile Arts Center was a sock!). During this dry run, I identified some mistakes in my translation and adjusted my pattern.

Based on the test knit, I’m super excited to try this pattern out with waste yarn - more to come on the materials & sourcing process next week!

Threads of Exploration

• Design resources so far:

  • Books - Designing Knitted Textiles and Hand Knits by Machine have been very helpful for fundamentals.

  • Online libraries - mkmanuals.com has old machine knitting pattern magazines, but they aren’t searchable. I’m sure there are other similar online resources I haven’t dug into yet.

  • Social media - way less common than hand-knitting, but I’ve found some useful accounts like @helenkayeknitwear and @yakshimalhotra. I’ve heard there are some Facebook groups worth checking out...

• Design library:

  • I’ve got a digital folder full of individual knitting pattern PDFs. But now that I’m starting to write my own patterns, I think I’ll need a better way to document & store this information!

Best,
Anne