Guidelines For Designers

The following article was written by the Craft Yarn Cat the Yarn Standards website. It should be helpful to all, especially if you want to design garments. If you don't know anything about this website, it's a place where you can find the correct sizing measurements for men, women and children. 

Standards and Guidelines for Crochet and Knitting

The publishers, fiber, needle and hook manufacturers and yarn members of the Craft Yarn Council have worked together to set up a series of guidelines and symbols to bring uniformity to yarn, needle and hook labeling and to patterns, whether they appear in books, magazines, leaflets or on yarn labels. Our goal is to make it easier for industry manufacturers, publishers and designers to prepare consumer-friendly products and for consumers to select the right materials for a project and complete it successfully. Included are:

• a uniform list of crochet and knit abbreviations
• guidelines for ranking the skill level of crochet and knit patterns
• measuring, fit, and sizing guidelines for babies, children, women, and men
• categories of yarn, gauge ranges, and recommended needle and hook sizes
• categories of yarn by weight, gauge ranges and recommended needle and hook sizes
• millimeter and U.S. size ranges for hooks and needles
• graphic symbols for skill levels and yarn weights
• chart symbols for knit and crochet
• understanding yarn label information
• tips on reading knit and crochet patterns
• guidelines for industry designers
• FAQs

We urge manufacturers, publishers and designers, to adopt these guidelines. Downloads of the graphic symbols are available at this web site at no charge. We ask that if you use them in any publication that you advise us in an e-mail of your intention to use them and that the following credit line be given:
Source: Craft Yarn Council's www.YarnStandards.com

We received valuable input from allied associations in the United States, such as The National NeedleArts Association, the Crochet Guild of America, and The Knitting Guild Association, as well as designers and consumers. Ultimately, our objective is to design global standards and guidelines that will be used by companies worldwide. To this end, we have reached out to individuals, manufacturers and trade associations in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, as well as in Australia and New Zealand to ask for their input.