February 2022 - Holly Woodward

Our Designer of the Month for February is Holly Woodward! Holly is a crochet and knitwear designer from the UK who designs bright and colourful clothing without sacrificing comfort.

All of Holly's designs are items that she wants to make and wear and she encourages people to enjoy the journey of the make and treasure the finished piece in their handmade wardrobe. As someone who experiences mental health struggles Holly uses work to ground her and that means designing projects that are fun and relatively easy to make.  Holly's philosophy is all about wearing clothes that make you happy, as a fat person she knows how frustrating it is to find a beautiful pattern only to find it doesn't go up to your size so all of her designs are size inclusive.

Holly is a self taught knitter and learnt from very early Youtube tutorials then when she was a teenager she learnt to crochet at her local yarn store in Doncaster but wasn't super inspired by patterns that were available at the time so she started playing around with baby blanket patterns until she started designing garments.

Holly's biggest inspiration is vintage Granny Squares and they are one of her favourite things to make which you can see reflected in her designs. She started designing seriously in 2020 after she was made redundant due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It began by purchasing a larger, squishy order of yarn and designing the Lilith cardigan and it only grew from there, Holly was jumping out of bed to make granny squares and spent all day making mismatched squares which became her bestselling Gigi Jumper. 

We love her fun and expressive designs that don't shy away from colour, you can pop into store to see samples of the Beatrice V Neck, Jilly Cardigan, Brie Jumper, Mabel Jumper and Rita Tee or you can find Holly's designs on her website and Ravelry store.