From knit@geom.umn.edu Tue Aug 9 12:48:52 1994 Return-Path: Received: from noether.geom.umn.edu by mail3.netcom.com (8.6.9/Netcom) id MAA24852; Tue, 9 Aug 1994 12:48:34 -0700 Date: Tue, 9 Aug 94 14:45:38 -0500 Received: from localhost by noether.geom.umn.edu; Tue, 9 Aug 94 14:45:38 -0500 Message-Id: <9408091944.AA06964@otto.ycc.yale.edu> Errors-To: jill@geom.umn.edu Reply-To: knit@geom.umn.edu Originator: knit@geom.umn.edu Sender: knit@geom.umn.edu Precedence: bulk From: mahe-marie-christine@yale.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Lily Chin report - long X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Comment: Knitters' Mailing List Run, do not walk, to take the next Lily Chin class near you! This woman is not just a genius in her field, but she's a wonderful teacher too, and you cannot fail to be changed for the better from any exposure to her. I took her 'Elements of Design' class this weekend, at the TKGA conference in New Haven, and I feel totally transformed. My motivation for taking the class was last year's sweater failure, which was predictable enough: I had concentrated completely on micro-design, picking a nice stitch pattern and finding fun yarns to put together, and hadn't at all considered designing the thing as a -garment-. Lily's class was the perfect cure for that problem :-). I found it interesting that she hates to sew and hardly knows how to do it. In fact, her mother was a seamstress, and many other relatives are also in the typical NY design scene, so that while Lily doesn't sew she's absorbed and integrated many of the best garment construction tricks from that world. Many people in the class were clearly getting their first exposure to principles of garment design, standards of fit, tricks of illusion a la Jan Larkey, the concept of drawing against a sloper that represents you pretty accurately. I didn't at all mind this review, since I felt it integrated my more extensive sewing background and applied it more specifically to sweaters. After general design principles such as recognizing line and proportions, and a small historical survey to illustrate, we covered a progression of fit techniques starting with your basic box sweater and progressing to a completely fitted one. Each incremental advance was demonstrated with a different sweater or a paper mockup, and it was very clear why one would want to go to that extra step. We learned to graph a shape as well as a surface design, and many tricks to simplify the process. And most of all we learned how to evaluate the -fabric- of a sweater and how to adjust the design accordingly. Lily tried on a whole series of sweaters that had the same exact measurement so that we could see and feel how a progressively stiffer fabric affected the fit, and that part alone was worth the price of the class for me. We went over very carefully what are the factors that affect the drape of the fabric, from yarn weight to needle size and to stitch design. I, being a rather large woman, was already aware that most patterns lie in terms of allowing the same amount of ease for all sizes. Most patterns, for knitting as well as sewing, are designed with a size 10 in mind, and for a larger size to have the same effect we need to increase the ease -proportionally-. For instance, if you have a pattern with 6" ease over a 36" bust, if you want to adjust it for a 48" bust you need not 6" but 1/6 of 48", or 8". Small detail, it seems, but the further you are from that 'ideal' (although hardly average in the US) size 10, the more you need to take that into consideration if you don't want to look chronically constricted. What Lily tried to drill into us was that you -also- need to adjust the amount of ease for the drape of the fabric. All the amounts usually given are for a light fabric of fingering-weight yarn in a smooth stitch. If you're going up to sports weight yarn, you need to add an inch or two. And another if you're using dk yarn, and even more if you're using chunky, then bulky etc. Same principle if you're using all-over cables or some stitch that'll make your fabric thicker, or if you're using small needles to make a denser fabric. You may end up with something that seems ridiculous to you, 12" of ease for a thick Aran sweater intended for a normal-sized person, but you'll get much better results if you follow these guidelines. The only published thing that approaches these principles is an ease chart by Deborah Newton in her Taunton Press book (Designing Knitwear?) that goes both by fabric weight and bust size, although of course you'd have to experiment some to recognize which fabric weight you have. Incidentally, she pointed out that a yarn chart published by Patternworks that many of you may have is completely inaccurate because of this. The chart assumes that you make the same size sweater no matter what weight of yarn, and decreases the yardage necessary as the yarn weight goes up. This is grossly inaccurate, if you want good results and add ease to the sweater as yarn weight goes up you will really end up using -more- yarn. The only vaguely useful part of the chart is for the finest yarn... Lily also showed us some of her mistakes, in terms of making the right pattern with the wrong yarn. Fortunately, she could blame a lot of them on Vogue Knitting substituting yarns on her at the last minute :-). But I found it fascinating to see how adding a small amount of rayon to a yarn, or substituting pima or egyptian cotton for ordinary cotton, or even something as subtle as using a cabled yarn instead of a similar single ply, would add enough drape that a sweater intended to be boxy ended up drooping pathetically. She taught us a very useful principle: the model's pose often is calculated to conceal defects. We all know how some things are photographed with clothespins up the back, but next time you see someone with both arms up ankwardly, or leaning oddly against something, consider if the sweater would really look as advertised without props. Also, the only way to really evaluate how much drape a given fabric will have is to make a -large- swatch. Not the puny 3x3 that I considered sufficient, but something like 8x8 that you can slap over your bust and really observe. Lily usually allocates practically an entire skein to swatch making, and incidentally also usually makes a mock neckline, and I will too in the future. Another very useful tidbit was having us all measure our arms. The tallest, more long-limbed person in class was a whopping 28", while most of us fell in the 24-26" range. Well, we were all stunned to find out that the industry standard for sleeve length is *31"*! No wonder we all have trouble getting it right. Lily pointed out something equally mind-boggling: as your size increases, and therefore the width of the body, since usually your arms remain the same length :-), you ought to shorten the sleeves proportionally. It's not at all strange to have a plump person need barely more than a foot of sleeve length. Yet pattern instructions (Vogue Knitting included) systematically lengthen the sleeve length with size. So if your arms were already a normal 4-5" shorter than the standard, if you're unfortunate enough to be a larger size you could end up with a whole foot of extra sleeve dangling off your hands! The trick is to measure the distance from center neck to wrist, and to make the sweater to fit that, not matter what else is going on. In short, I learned a lot, I'm exceedingly happy I took the class, I'd take another from Lily any day. She's that wonderful combination of a person who really knows her stuff, and of someone who's worked hard at her teaching skills, supplementing her naturally outgoing personality with a solid understanding of how to impart useful information. She brought a huge box of sweaters with her, and used them wisely to demonstrate the principles she was talking about in a very graphic way. She brought good magazine articles for us to refer to, and concentrated on having us understand principles rather than giving out cookbook formulas, no dumb follower could leave her class without new self-confidence. Our class ranged from semi-professionals to the distinctly amateur (although not beginners, nobody asked how to cast on :-)), and we all got a lot from it. Marie-Christine mahe-marie-christine@yale.edu From knit@geom.umn.edu Thu Aug 11 09:12:41 1994 Return-Path: Received: from noether.geom.umn.edu by mail3.netcom.com (8.6.9/Netcom) id JAA29601; Thu, 11 Aug 1994 09:11:55 -0700 Date: Thu, 11 Aug 94 11:09:06 -0500 Received: from localhost by noether.geom.umn.edu; Thu, 11 Aug 94 11:09:06 -0500 Message-Id: <9408111606.AA07107@otto.ycc.yale.edu> Errors-To: jill@geom.umn.edu Reply-To: knit@geom.umn.edu Originator: knit@geom.umn.edu Sender: knit@geom.umn.edu Precedence: bulk From: mahe-marie-christine@yale.edu To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Lily Chin report - sleeves X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Comment: Knitters' Mailing List Yes, that's exactly what Lily was pointing out - directions for drop-shouldered sweaters usually add to the sleeve length as they go up in size (check your nearest Vogue Knitting). This is nonsense because the width of the body has a direct impact on the total sleeve length (center back to wrist, or wrist to wrist if you prefer to think of it that way). Hopefully manufacturers do this a bit better, but since I have short arms anyway it's hard for me to tell :-)... As Sheryl points out, when you get larger your arm length does not get longer. If you get really significantly plumper you -might- gain something like an inch altogether from having to go over a rounder shoulder, but we're talking about real extremes here. What you need to increase as you get larger is the arm width, whether for a drop-shoulder or set-in sleeve. And while we're on the topic, let me point out that one does not add width to a set-in sleeve by simply prolonging the underarm curve, that'd affect the way the sleeve fits into the armhole. You need to -spread the sleeve from side to side (on a paper pattern, this is done by slashing down the middle and spreading the sides), which usually makes the sleeve cap a bit shallower. It's OK to change the shape of the sleeve cap, as long as you don't change it's length, although if you're extreme about it you should know that higher sleeve caps usually have more ease than shallow ones. Marie-Christine mahe-marie-christine@yale.edu