THE KNIT FACTOR

When Ashley Lillis was teaching herself how to knit in college, she never imagined that one day she would be sharing patterns she designed with her creative followers from all around the globe.

“Of all the things my roommate and I could have been doing when we were in college, we were making trips to Michaels to buy yarn,” Lillis says. “That’s pretty funny to think about.”

It wasn’t until many years later when the world was wrestling with COVID-19 that Lillis decided to take her knitting seriously.

“Everyone was on YouTube—there was nothing else to do,” she says. “I know that lots of people are visual learners, so I thought to myself, what if I design knitting patterns, but also do accompanying videos? At the time, there were very few places where you could find a pattern and also watch how to make it from start to finish.”

Lillis got to work, not only mastering the skills it took to design workable knitting patterns, but also learning to film herself, edit her tutorials, and sharing her videos to a growing audience across a variety of social media platforms.

“I’ve always been super creative, but I wasn’t sure how I could turn that into a business,” she explains. Lillis’ years working in digital marketing gave her the skillset and confidence she needed to monetize her designs as she amassed a huge following on both You- Tube and Instagram.

Lillis’ favorite part of becoming a “knitting influencer,” a label she’s not entirely comfortable with, is pattern design— a surprising revelation when she shares it’s the hardest part of her business.

“It’s a long and laborious process to publish a pattern,” she says. “I tend to knit a sweater in one size. Good designers publish size-inclusive patterns, ranging from extra-small to 5X. To create a design that accounts for all of those different sizes takes a lot of math.”

Lillis has built spreadsheet upon spreadsheet to calculate the intricate dimensions needed for her designs. From there, she knits a sample and writes out the pattern. She shares that document with her knitting technical editor. After she receives her editor’s comments, she then sends her pattern to at least three testers per size—that’s more than 25 people testing her pattern. Once she receives input from them and incorporates their feedback, she publishes her pattern on Etsy and Ravelry. She strives to create designs that appeal to everyone from a first-time knitter to those who are more advanced.

“I absolutely love the design part,” she says. “I can see a sweater from labels like Jenny Kane or Sézane and know exactly how it was made. That’s not to say though that after weeks of work and calculations on a design, it still might not come out right. The design process can be so love-hate, but mostly satisfying when I see the final product.”

One of Lillis’ challenges has been to charge for her patterns, something she didn’t do when she first started releasing her designs in 2020.

“At the beginning, it didn’t feel right to charge people because I loved thinking that knitting was bringing joy to people during a difficult time,” she says. “But, there is so much hard work that goes into the finished product of these patterns, I can’t really afford to give them away any more.” To date, the most expensive of Lillis’ patterns retails for $10.

As Lillis’ popularity grew on social media, so did the demand for her to release more designs. After a case of the shingles put Lillis into the hospital for a week last spring, she realized she would like to scale her business without it being all-consuming.

“I’ve stepped back and taken the pressure off of myself to grow my brand,” Lillis says. “Being sick really forced me to slow down and get back to what I really love. I needed to tune out all of the noise about starting a podcast, growing brand partnerships, or doing more on social media. I love designing so that is where my focus is now.”

That’s not to say that Lillis, who is also a busy mom to three young children, doesn’t have a few ideas for her growth up her well-knit sleeve.

“I’d love to write a book,” she says. “It’s a little intimidating to think about how I could come up with enough content for one, but that’s definitely on my mind. I’d also like to design the perfect blazer. A blazer is tough to knit because it’s hard for it to keep its structure. But I’m bound and determined to figure that out.”

To learn more about Ashley Lillis, follow her on Instagram at @ashley_lillis.