I’ve been continuing my journey with leftover yarn – something close to many knitters’ hearts. If you saw my recent newsletter, you’ll know I shared my free Striata Cowl pattern (you can still find it here), designed to use up those odd little scraps we all keep tucked away. Leftover yarn projects aren’t just practical – they’re creative, sustainable, and often spark ideas we’d never have thought of with full skeins.

• A garment we already loved and wore often.

• Some yarn from our stash to play with.

The day began with swatching – not just for tension (I measured half a tension square 5cm x 5cm and then doubled) but also to explore whether we liked the fabric our oddments produced. Lisa encouraged us to try different techniques such as stripes, Fair Isle, intarsia, and slip stitch. My first experiment was striped slip stitch knitting, which I turned vertically to imagine slimming stripes on my A-line top. Clever in theory, but when I tried to add shaping with German short rows, the abrupt stops in the striping didn’t sit right with me. Time to rethink!

Luckily, Lisa had brought along some sample garments, and I fell in love with one: a very simple design , The Fowberry, with no complicated shaping (just at the shoulders), no extra bottom or front bands, and the option to add sleeves later if I wished. It was a revelation – something achievable without too much maths (a relief in a busy workshop environment!).
As an added bonus, I picked up plenty of insights listening to Lisa guide other designers – and was reassured that the way I calculate my own designs is indeed on the right track.

Behind the scenes: my schematic + sums

Here’s a little glimpse of the sort of rough notes I made during the day. It doesn’t look fancy – just sketches with measurements, and stitch counts. But this is the backbone of turning an idea into something wearable.

• Garment shape: straight body with slight shoulder shaping.

• Gauge from swatch: [24 sts x 32 rows = 10 cm].

• Back length: [38cm] ÷ gauge = number of stitches to cast on.

• Body width: [59cm] ÷ row gauge = rows needed across the back

• Shoulder shaping - calculation concludes need to increase every 3 or 4 rows to middle then decrease down in the same way.

It’s all very rough at this stage, but enough to get the knitting underway!

I’m now nearly halfway across the back piece, and have already encountered a small issue that I’ll need to solve once I reach the end. I’ll share more about that (and whether I succeed!) in my next newsletter, so you can follow along with the whole process.