I have spent the last couple of days working on submissions to various publications.  It’s a difficult process to provide all the relevant details of a proposed project along with swatches and a reasonable drawing or diagram of the garment.  I do quite enjoy doing these and so far I have had a couple of successful bids, so will continue to try to get some more. 

The diagrams or schematics are a tricky part. My drawing skills are just not in the field of fashion drawing so I tend to go with technology. I know I’m probably in a minority with this, but I use PowerPoint to create my illustrations. It’s pretty basic but it does help to focus your mind in reducing any garment to its component shapes. Once you have done that – you can then add curves or change the shape as needed. You then just save the particular slide as a jpeg file.

I also use it to create composite images like the one above and those that I use for the newsletter and some of the patterns. It has a ‘design ideas’ option and they do have some good ones.

I also use it to create diagrams to show the construction of a project. You can see above some of the ways that I’ve indicated the format of variuous projects. Not all of the unsuccessful proposals have been abandoned – some have made it onto the needles, though they have yet to make their debut in public.