Part 5: Making templates with basic garment shapes

This is the final part of my series on using Excel to chart knit and crochet designs.

Making a template spreadsheet of basic shapes that you will use over and over again will save you a lot of time in the initial set up. My suggestion would be to open a blank spreadsheet, and, one per worksheet, outline (with the line drawing tool) some basic flat shapes - sweater, sock, mitten, etc. Whatever will be of most use to you. Or collect these basic shapes as you develop your own library by copying and pasting into a specially designated "Template" spreadsheet for easy access.

Here is a basic sweater front and back shape.

This example is not done to any realistic scale (six shoulder stitches would be a seriously chunky yarn!), so you may wish to make your initial template a little closer to a realistic gauge. Once you copy your template into a working spreadsheet for an individual design, you can easily add rows and columns and edit the aspect ratio of the cells so that your schematic will be to scale from your swatch.

Look carefully at existing schematic drawings in published patterns for help with representing your design in a flat pattern visual. There are also many books available - one of my favourite resources is Deborah Newton's Designing Knitwear.

I hope this series has been helpful and provided you with some ideas for using Excel in creative ways!