The Summer Safari Collection
To say I’m thrilled to launch my latest spring/summer collection with Lion Brand Yarn would be a massive understatement! I know I say it every time, but I really think this is my favorite collection yet. Filled with eight knitting and crochet designs for garments and accessories, these pieces are all meant to be comfortable, casual, and functional. They are all staple wardrobe items fit to take you on your next adventure in style and ease. Without further ado, I present to you the Summer Safari Collection.
Each item in this collection was thoughtfully designed to be simple but elegant - the kind of piece you can take from day to night, that translates from a "jeans and t-shirt" look to a sophisticated evening ensemble, that you need in every color. Most of the designs are worked up in drapey bamboo fibers that are cool to the touch and slinky on the body, making them both effortless and elevated. In the collection you will find five garments and three accessories. The patterns range from beginner to intermediate, with the majority at an easy level. I always strive to design big impact pieces with simple stitches, and this collection is no exception.
Let's have a look at each design! As always you can find the patterns here on my site (I've linked to each one below) and you can find the full yarn kit over on the Lion Brand site here.
With every collection I release I am reminded of how much work it takes to get each piece out into the world. From the initial concept, the fiddling and swatching with various yarns and needles or hooks, several attempts at a finished piece, major math and grading to edit the pattern, photography, choosing and editing photos, uploading everything and formatting it all into a pretty PDF, creating listings across several platforms, making a marketing and social media plan …. it’s the most intense but rewarding experience to finally put these babies out into the world after months of work. The multiple all-nighters alone with yarn and my computer, cross country trips for photos, and overwhelming amount of copying and pasting is worth it when I can be so proud of the end result. With this launch, instead of just showcasing the pretty final pictures, I thought it would be fun to walk you through the design process and all that it entails to release a collection like this.
Every design starts with an idea. This whole collection has been on my mind for years, but it took a lot of refining of my own skills as a designer to finally produce it, and it was in November when I first started to flesh out the concept. The initial inspiration came from my favorite Ralph Lauren campaign in 2009 that had the most beautiful golden safari theme. I used several images from that collection in my mood board to set the feeling for what I wanted to design. A "feeling" is usually where I start when it comes to a design. Visuals help, but what I really want each piece to evoke is the feeling you get when you're wearing it. This RL campaign felt rugged but glamorous at the same time, and I used those elements to guide me while I worked on my collection. I do not condone simply copying any designer's work, whether it is a fellow indie knitwear designer or a major fashion house, but pulling elements of inspiration from past collections is something that occurs often in the design world. After I decided on a theme and a feeling, it was time to source yarns.
Photo by Ralph Lauren
Photo by Ralph Lauren
Photo by Ralph Lauren
When I'm choosing a yarn, I'm looking at multiple things - fiber content, weight, color, etc. Fiber content and weight not only inform the season and wearability of a finished piece, they also affect things like the drape and drag of the fabric, how it moved on the body, and the overall silhouette. I knew I wanted a lot of these pieces to feel cooling and slinky so as not to overwhelm or overheat the wearer on their next adventure. I wanted them to feel like store-bought, super wearable staples that would fit easily into a spring/summer wardrobe, so they needed to have elements that would keep you coming back to them over and over.
Bamboo and cotton are both excellent choices for summer garments and accessories because of their cool-to-the-touch hand and incredible drape. I am so happy that Lion Brand now has such a great lineup of bamboo fiber yarns, and I used them extensively in the collection. Merino wool, known for its sweat-wicking and temperature controlling ability, is also surprisingly a great choice for warm weather knits, and ended up being the perfect choice for my Tiger Ringer Tee.
In the end the six yarns I chose to work with are Coboo, Truboo, Cotton Bamboo, Superwash Merino, Rewind, and 24/7 Cotton. Because I wanted all of the pieces within the collection to look cohesive, I also paid a lot of attention to the colors I chose. I pulled all of the earthy hues from each of those yarns, mixed and matched, and assigned each to a different design. Superwash Merino was actually the only yarn in the bunch that had two different brown hues to create the colorwork I wanted to do, so that made that choice very easy! This was my initial color palette I put together in the proposal I presented to Lion Brand in before I started the collection:
The proposal was sent in January - that's two months of planning and narrowing down ideas to get to the final eight pieces that would make it into the collection! After the proposal was approved and yarn had been ordered, I set to sketching my designs and figuring out the silhouettes and basic blueprints of what I envisioned for each piece so I would be ready to start swatching as soon as it arrived. I had an EXTREMELY limited amount of time to actually work on each item due to the photography constraints. New York in February is not exactly ideal for a summer safari shoot, so I decided to fly to LA to get the images. It might sound like a far trip for some photos, but photography is probably the single most important aspect of marketing and selling my designs, so it had to be done. I wanted the pictures to be perfect, especially after putting so much effort and time into making the things. The worst feeling is to have poured so much of yourself into something and have it not translate to your audience and to fail because of the photography.
My dear friend and model Paige, who you've likely seen in most of my photos, got a new job last year on tour with Grace Potter, who is based in LA when she's not on the road. Their schedule is crazy, and there was only a three-day window in late February where they were scheduled to be in town. So I planned a 10-day trip to Cali, put my head down, and got to work to complete all eight pieces in five weeks. Except that didn't happen. I was only able to finish five pieces in that time, so when I left for LA I still had three designs left to complete.
I stayed up all night before we left to pack for the trip. I knew I'd only end up using a few items in the shoot, but I packed tons of stuff so we would have options. I like to over prepare just in case I have a brilliant idea on set and need access to something.
Multiple all-nighters and lots of stress ensued when I got to LA, and in the end I couldn't even shoot everything on Paige because it just wasn't ready yet on the day she was available. I stayed up all night yet again the night before our final day in LA to finish the last piece, and then had to turn myself into model mode for one last round of photos. That last click of the camera felt like a HUGE relief to have finished everything in the nick of time. Special shout out to my bf for manning the camera and dealing with my stress and breakdowns and yelling :)
When I got back to New York, things started to look a lot different due to the seemingly sudden shift in panic over the impending pandemic. I am so thankful to have done the shoot when we did, even though it was such a rush to get it all done, because if we would have planned it for later in March it wouldn't have happened. Now we just had to sift through over 5000 photos and narrow down what we needed for each piece. During this time I sent off all of my patterns to my tech editor to help with grading into eight sizes and looking for inevitable typos and math errors. Each pattern takes about three back and forth rounds between us over a couple weeks before it gets finalized. Then I dig my head into the computer and format everything into my pattern template and organize individual folders for each design with pattern files, photos, pins, charts, etc. This process takes more than a full day for each design just to get it organized.
After all of my assets are neatly arranged, everything then has to get uploaded on the five different platforms where I sell my patterns - here on my site, Ravelry, Etsy, Lion Brand, and LoveCrafts. Each user interface is completely different and requires different formatting and a seemingly endless amount of copying and pasting. This process took me anywhere from one to three full days per platform to get everything uploaded.
The last step, which always seems rushed and should absolutely not be, is the marketing. I plan out my social media posts, my newsletters, this blog post, pinterest, and other strategies and make spreadsheets of links and titles and quick info I need to grab for each thing so I don't have to keep opening all of the files and webpages over and over again. Unless I can properly translate all of this work into digestible, attractive content that people want to click on, months of work is nearly useless. When you think about all of this work - months of 12-15 hour work days, 7 days a week - and you put a $4.50 price tag on your pattern, it is terrifying. Being in this industry is so fun, and I'm so thankful that I get to do something that I love, but it can be super risky and scary when the value of your hard work is so low and it takes a lot of volume of sales to get you a return. I've always loved this article by Wolly Wormhead on the true cost of a pattern - there's so much that goes into it! I have so much respect for my fellow designers who have children or second jobs. I really don't know how they do it all!
But now I've reached the moment where everything is ready to go, just a click away from being published, and the excitement is totally outweighing the fear. I'm so proud of this collection, and I CANNOT WAIT to see all of the finished pieces that will be created from these designs. The absolute best part of my job is seeing your work and being able to offer you fun projects that you will cherish for years to come. Thank you for continuing to support my business and sharing your projects! I hope you all love this collection as much as I do :)
