A rough schematic of what we are shooting for
Most pictures may be clicked to enlarge.
Since the last tutorial on using Excel for pattern writing, I've refined a lot of how I manage my spreadsheets. I've been playing around with different formulas in Excel to find ways to make pattern writing easier. You know what that means, another tutorial.
Download the spreadsheet and play along at home. I'll be making references to various parts of the spreadsheet so go ahead and get this baby downloaded.
NOTE: The attached spreadsheet is just a sample and contains measurements that may be useful but which may not meet the standards for some publications. You are welcome to use what I have for your own design purposes but it'll be you who has to ultimately support any patterns written from it, so do your research first.
Special notes:
I've used Ysolda's measurementchart as a reference for many of the basic sloper measurements.
I'm using Amy O'Neill Houck's tutorial on estimating yardage for, um, estimating yardage, yah.
So, like last time, I'm just giving you instructions for a basic shell.
A rough schematic of what we are shooting for
In this tutorial, we're going to learn about:
In future tutorials, we'll look at:
Sounds like more fun than a root canal, huh? Well, once you get the basic premise of these options, you'll be able to put them in a template and copy and paste them as needed. All of the formulas I'll discuss are in the spreadsheet, so you can see them in action, which is always more helpful than seeing them out of context.
The spreadsheet has 4 distinct sections.
The whole spreadsheet
Upper left is where you insert your gauge, ease, body shaping and multiples+, if necessary. I've set up the cells with names, as covered in the previous tutorial. This allows you to quickly apply calculations across all sizes |
The pink sections are your body and garment measurements On the right, with the purple headers, are the conversions to stitches |
On the left, with the orange headers, are the raw calculations. On the right, under the green headers, are the rounded calculations. |
The bottom of the document contains areas for calculating the final measurements (in and cm) of the garment based on your actual stitch and row counts. This is a great sanity check for your pattern and can show you where you may have made an error in your pattern calculations. This is also very useful for building your schematic. Below the measurements are calculations for yardage and skeins for each size. |
For the most part, I use rounding to give me whole numbers based on my raw calculations. No one can cast on 34.583 stitches, they need some real numbers to work with. By using MROUND to convert my calculations, instead of simply hand keying the closest whole number in, I can have the numbers automatically update on the fly, if I go back and change something in the Sloper/Garment Measurements section of the document.
MROUND is used as follows:
= MROUND(ValueToRound, MultipleToRoundTo)
So, if we look at row 45 of the spreadsheet
Row 45 indicates to Dec X number of times. I have stacked the two sides vertically so you won't need to scroll right and left to see it.
The values under the orange header are decimals. To get the rounded values under the green header, I use MROUND as follows.
For size XS
=MROUND(C45,1)
| Formula element | Reason |
| = | Indicates a formula |
| MROUND | Round to the nearest multiple |
| ( ) | Value and multiple must be in parenthesis |
| C45, | The cell we are rounding |
| 1 | The multiple to which we want to round. This can be any value. |
Sometimes, you don't want to round to a particular multiple, you want an even or odd number. We'll look at an example of this in an upcoming tutorial. You can see it in action on row 73 of the spreadsheet. Use the command as follows.
=EVEN(value)
=ODD(value)
| Formula element | Reason |
| = | Indicates a formula |
| EVEN (or ODD) | Indicates you want the closest EVEN (or ODD) number |
| ( ) | Value should be in parenthesis |
| value | Any number or formula can be placed here. Formulas must be in their own parenthesis inside the existing parenthesis. |
Alternately, you could simply round, round up or round down. We'll be using these functions when we calculate shaping intervals. You can see ROUNDDOWN on row 47 of the spreadsheet. Round (up/down) is used to round to a particular decimal point. To round to a whole number, use zero as the second number. To use these options, the formula is as follows:
=ROUND(value, decimaltoround)
Rounds to the closest number to the designated decimal place=ROUNDUP(value, decimaltoround)
Rounds up to the to the indicated decimal place=ROUNDDOWN(value, decimaltoround)
Rounds up to the to the indicated decimal place
| Formula element | Reason |
| = | Indicates a formula |
ROUND(UP /DOWN) |
Indicates that you want to round(up/down) to a particular decimal place. |
| ( ) | Values should be in parenthesis |
| value, | Any number or formula can be placed here. Formulas must be in their own parenthesis inside the existing parenthesis. |
| decimaltoround | How many decimal places you wish to round. Zero value will give you a whole number |
For example, on row 47, size XS, we have the following formula
ROUNDDOWN((M46/M45),0) which takes the raw value of 5.463537906 and gives us 5
Going back to MROUND, we can use the pattern multiple we set up at the top of the document
This pattern is done in a multiple of 5 plus 4. Multiple has been named "mult" and the plus has been named "plus".
Looking at our cast on row, 43, we are knitting in the round. Plus stitches are used for flat knitting, so we won't need that. Since we are knitting the front and back, we want to double the multiple.
For the XS size, my raw calculations say to cast on 154.5 stitches (cell C43). For my final calculations I'll use the following formula
=MROUND(C43,(mult*2))
| Formula element | Reason |
| = | Indicates a formula |
| MROUND | Rounding to a multiple |
| ( ) | Value should be in parenthesis |
| C43, | Cell we are rounding |
| (mult*2) | Rounding to the closest number that is a multiple of 5 x 2 |
Our final value (cell M43) is 150 stitches which is a whole number that is divisible by double our multiple.
To round to the closest multiple plus (mult of 5 +4) we need to add a few extra elements. It looks complicated but I'll break it down for you so it makes more sense.
=(MROUND((C43-plus), mult))+plus
| Formula element | Reason |
| = | Indicates a formula |
| MROUND | Rounding to a multiple. We're putting the MROUND formula, itself, in parenthesis because we'll need to add the plus amount at the end. |
| ( ) | Value should be in parenthesis |
| (C43-plus), | In parenthesis, we put the value we are rounding and subtract the plus amount since we know we'll be adding it again later. |
| mult) | The multiple amount |
| +plus | Add the plus amount to the rounded number |
Our final value (cell M44) is 154
This tutorial covered all different sorts of rounding.
When it comes time to write your pattern, you can copy and paste these values directly into MS Word. This is much easier than hand typing all the numbers, especially if you are doing many sizes.
Copy the relevant line in Excel.
Paste Special in MS Word, and choose Unformatted Text, from the dialog box. If you don't choose this option, Word will insert a table into the document instead of regular text.
The text will be pasted with each value separated by a tab.
User Word's Find and Replace option to replace the tabs (^t) with a comma and a space.
Once you've replaced all the tabs, you can keep the text as is or further format it per your pattern style.
