Next Season - Collection 1

A deep dive into the conception, production, and positioning of this mini collection

Roughly two months ago, I announced my intention to launch a brand & create a collection of knit pieces made entirely out of waste yarn. This initial ‘sprint’ will ‘go live’ (to borrow language from the software development world) tomorrow - at a pop-up sale @ Rue Saint Paul boutique in my neighborhood! I’m excited to put my work out there IRL, and am so curious to see how it goes - who will stop by? What sort of questions will I get? Will I sell anything?

This newsletter is a deep-dive into the execution of the collection & the pop-up: the design, materials, manufacturing, and all of the other stuff I’ve been doing to prepare! And most importantly, it includes tons of photos…

Sneak peek of the final result!

Collection Inspiration & Conception

I’ve already written a bit about my experience conceptualizing this mini-collection -

Making mood boards like it's my job

The ‘brief’ I gave myself?

• Focus on ‘summer tops’ aka cute & colorful sleeveless tops that are easy to style with classic seasonal wardrobe items (jean shorts, white pants, sandals, etc.).

  • Why? This collection will launch in July, and I’m assuming people don’t want to buy thick, warm sweaters in July (FYI tomorrow’s forecast is 86 F).

• Pick a ‘color story’ that I’m really excited about & execute just a few designs I believe I can do well.

  • Color palette was informed by A) the colors I was feeling inspired to work with (blues, citrus colors), and B) the materials I was able to source.

  • Technical design choices were informed by A) my desire to only make pieces I’m obsessed with / I wish I could keep for myself, and B) my current machine knitting skills & capabilities.

Ultimately this mini collection is comprised of five pieces (three unique patterns), balancing fun & playful with easy-to-wear:

• 2 x simple shell tops

  • marled brown with bright orange trim

  • light blue with multi blue trim

• 2 x strappy tank tops

  • light blue with pops of contrast color

  • blue & orange multi-stripe

• 1 x v-neck vest top

  • blue and white stripe

Design & Patterning

Last month I documented my initial pattern-making efforts. I started with a few hand-knitting patterns purchased from my favorite knitwear creators, and after completely re-writing them for machine knitting and scaling them to match my yarn gauge, I further adapted the designs - removing ribbing, adding trim, etc.

Measure twice, knit once!

I only fully tested 1 out of the 3 patterns before jumping in to knit the final pieces. Not surprisingly I had to redo key parts of the strappy tanks and the v-neck vest before I got them right. But, I find that my efforts spent re-working a design or a garment ultimately improve my pattern-making and machine knitting capabilities - and I appreciate the opportunity to learn and improve!

Once this popup is done I *really* need to take some time to digitally document my patterns & notes - right now they’re all living in a paper notebook.

Materials

As mentioned previously, the majority of the yarn for this collection was sourced from either Fabscrap or Goodwill. The remaining bits came from my existing yarn scrap pile. Everything went through my disassembly → unraveling → winding process to prepare for use.

Left: product samples that were slashed up and pinned back together before they were recycled to Fabscrap. Right: a big 'ole pile of fast fashion from Goodwill, you know there's (literally) tons more where that came from!

Something new I tried with this collection - mock ‘plying’ yarn together, to create this blended blue and white effect:

From Wikipedia, “in the textile arts, plying is a process of twisting one or more strings (called strands or plies) of yarn together to create a stronger yarn.”

I use the word mock here because I didn’t truly twist the yarn together (that would require special tools & skills that I don’t have) but instead just took a strand of blue yarn and a strand of white yarn, and wound them together into a ball. Minimal extra effort and I like how it turned out!

Manufacturing

The biggest challenge I faced while manufacturing this collection? Ribbing & trim. These ‘finishing’ elements are absolutely crucial for getting a polished final garment. Six months into machine knitting, I’ve got flat & shaped panels down pretty pat, but ribbing and trim still require some trial and error. I spent a lot of time on this, even re-doing it where need-be, to get it right.

A new technique I learned for this collection: I-cord, which is exactly what it sounds like - knitted cord! I primarily used it to create the straps and trim for my strappy tanks.

Left: did anyone else have one of these knitting mushroom things as a kid?! Same idea as I-cord. Major mems... Right: what it looks like to knit I-cord on a flatbed machine.

Here’s a whole gallery of my ‘oops’ moments, side-by-side with pics of the final pieces to compare:

Left: my attempt at attaching a small roll-neck collar did not go well. Right: decided to change the design and apply trim directly to the neckline instead of trying to attach a separate collar piece.

Left: attached the rib incorrectly - suuuuper messy and ugly. Right: looks so much better!

Left: first attempt at I-cord straps was pretty flimsy. Right: used a thicker combination of yarns and applied I-cord trim around the whole top edge, to balance out the chunky rib hem.

Commerce

I didn’t know what exactly to call this section! This is a quick roundup of all the other things I’ve been doing in preparation for tomorrow’s popup. I don’t know if it’s because I come from the e-commerce / digital world, but I feel like we as consumers have a better knowledge & understanding of these topics (especially marketing and social media) vs product development & manufacturing - so I won’t spend much that much time on them. Let me know if you disagree? And / or if you’re interested in reading more about them - I follow some great Substacks on these topics and would be happy to share, they have a lot more experience than I do!

It felt incomplete to ignore these completely:

• Sales channels

  • From early on, I knew I wanted to explore in-person sales channels. Maybe it’s a reaction to (err rejection of?) e-commerce, because I’ve seen how the sausage is made. Planning on writing more about this next week!

• Photography / merchandising

  • I styled a little photoshoot of myself wearing the collection - I know how helpful it is for people to see how a garment looks on a real human. And styling / merchandising is key to selling the ‘look’!

• Social media

  • Not my personal favorite activity, but made more palatable by thinking of it as an avenue for sharing ‘announcements’ (e.g. this popup) and ‘brand vibes’. Sticking with Instagram for now, haven’t delved too far into the world of TikTok. I *should* probably make more videos though…

• Promotional materials (e.g. business cards)

  • I had a little fun with this one. Well, at the time of writing this at 11:53pm on Thursday it may be too soon to say ‘fun’ because I’m still working on it. Basically- I’m screen printing my own business cards onto reclaimed paper, and I’ll have to get back to you next week to share how (if) it turned out…

• Pricing

  • Could do a deeper dive on this in the future if of interest, TL;DR my prices are informed by a combination of A) value-based pricing / benchmarking, meaning I analyzed the market and determined where I wanted my brand to ‘fit in’ and B) cost-plus pricing, aka calculating the ‘cost’ of labor and materials and applying a markup to ensure costs are covered and profit margin is healthy.

Major props if you actually read this email in full - I’m calling it here. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any feedback or questions on the above. And, if you’re in Brooklyn / NYC I’d love to see you tomorrow!

Best,
Anne