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8/14/2014

Articles and Posts from Shibaguyz Designz

It only takes a quick glance back through our posts here on our blog or on our Facebook or Ravelry pages to know that I swatch… a lot!

The first thing I do when I receive a new skein of yarn is grab my hooks and needles and dive in. I swatch the HECK out of that yarn! In fact, I will use most of a skein of new yarn just swatching seeing what types of stitches and what size of hooks and needles the yarn works well with.

When we start a new design, I pretty much know what kind of fabric I want to create but, again… I swatch… different types of yarn with different sized hooks and needles, different stitches patterns. Swatches for days!

And a book project… that's a Swatch Extravaganza! Imagine how many test swatches we produce for 30 or more projects for a book. Our last book produced an entire plastic storage tub of swatches that we DID NOT use and a of a tub of swatches that we DID use.

That top photo there on the left are the swatches that made the final cut for our book of knitwear patterns: Moonstruck.

The bottom left photo are swatches that made the final cut for our book of crochet patterns: Urban Edge.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Swatching isn't just about testing your gauge (although that is a HUGELY important reason to swatch), it is also about testing the fabric you are about to make. If I haven't worked in THAT stitch pattern using THAT yarn with THAT size hook or needle… there's gonna be a swatch.

I used to just toss my swatches into a box and not really give them much attention until one day I remembered a particular swatch done in a particular stitch in a particular yarn that I had experimented with. I wanted to use that pattern in this new design I had sketched so I dived into my box of swatches and, eventually, found the swatch. WOOHOO!! Chalk one up for being organized and not having to do double work re-swatching!

Unfortunately, my little victory dance (I'm just glad the neighbors couldn't see) was cut short when I realized I had made the swatch MONTHS ago and couldn't remember what hook size I had used. Further, the stitch pattern was a variation I had made I couldn't find any of my notes on what this new variation was. (Insert sad trombone here.)

So… with hooks at the ready, I re-swatched testing out a couple of different hook sizes and reconstructing the stitch pattern. No, it didn't take forever to re-swatch, but I was a busy man and didn't have time to sit around re-doing my work dang it!

Swatching was FAB and all but now I saw that I needed a new way of keeping track of my swatches and the details of how those swatches were made. I thought of making a spreadsheet with photos of the swatches and just decided that was too much work. Although… now that does seem like a good idea if I just… nevermind… Moving On!

I needed an efficient way to deal with my ever-growing stash of swatches and that's when it dawned on us: hang tags! Those little tags with string you see attached to clothes, tchotchkes, and other minutiae at… well… tag sales. We were already using hand tags to mark our samples when sending them to our publishers and editors. They are easy to use and dirt cheap and can even be reused if you are so inclined.

PURR-FEK-SHUN!

Thus was born a new organizational habit that has resulted in us being on the annual thank you card list for one of the companies that manufactures hang tags. Okay… that might not be entirely true… but we do use a LOT of hang tags.

Look closely at the photos and you will see we put a great deal of information on our tags. Our usual cataloguing method is:

1. Yarn Information
I like to put the name of the yarn company, the name of the yarn, and the name and number of the yarn color.

2. Hook or Needle Size
Not only do I put the letter/number/metric designation, in the past year or so, I started putting the brand name of the hook or needle I was using since different ones can produce slightly different results.

3. Stitch Information
This includes the source of the stitch dictionary or book I found the stitch pattern in. All of our books are coded for shorter reference… I know… but we have a LOT of books and not all of them are in English or even use an alphabet that we can read… so… codes. We also have a pretty hefty stitch dictionary of our own that we have created over the years so, if the stitch pattern is from our own dictionary or is one I "made up" on the spot, I will write out as much of the stitch pattern as possible on the back of the tag.

The more information here the better so I'm not spending maddening amounts of time going through files or flipping through books trying to find a particular stitch.

4. Gauge
I always mark the number of stitches and rows I used to create my swatch. Especially if it is a large swatch, or one that is made in an intricate stitch pattern, I don't want to spend time doing unnecessary counting.

We also note the blocked size of the swatch in inches. Two reasons for this:
1) To calculate gauge.

2) To see if the swatch has relaxed significantly over time. If so, then I make note of the blocked and the relaxed gauge and will PROBABLY swatch again and block just to see if I can duplicate the relaxed gauge. The last thing we need is to design a garment that will shrink significantly over time.

Finally, we make note of the blocked gauge in stitches and rows per inch. Again… for ease of pattern writing without doing calculations again.

5. Miscellaneous
I will also put the name of the project like the working name of the book or the name of the magazine with the issue number. Again… we have codes for all of our design pieces that tell us information like the publication date, where it is being published, and the name/style of the design.

The key here is to write down as much information at possible so you can grab and go the next time you want/need a swatch for playing with a new design or for writing a pattern once the final swatch has been settled on.

As you can see, we never throw these away. This is three of the smaller boxes. There is a stack of these as tall as me in the closet in the studio then there are the sliding bins and two or three larger bins. Yeah… I like to swatch…

Yes, in a few more years, we'll probably be buried in a swatch-valanche or we'll sew them all together and make a huge afghan or an art installation… or a car cover… or a house cover. Hhmmmm…

How do you mark your swatches? Because we know y'all swatch… right?

Stitch On!
S&J

We hope you enjoy our articles and posts here on Shibaguyz Designz and hope you will share them with other stitchers. Take a minute to look around and check out our other posts as well as our patterns and books in our online shop. Here are a few we thought you might like. Enjoy!