About
By AGdesign – my designs, my workshop, knitted a few at a time
I started this in 2015. It is a small business and it is mine. I design every piece myself, and when you write to the shop, you are writing to me – not to an office.
Every design begins as a piece I knit myself, by hand on needles. Getting that first sample right takes longer than any other part of the work – nobody ever sees it, but that is where the piece is actually made. Only when the sample is right does it go into production – and production here means a small workshop, a few pieces at a time, never a production line. It is knitted in Lithuania.
The yarn
Italian yarns only. I take my time choosing them, and each one is tested in advance for how it behaves – how it shrinks, how it holds its shape – so the piece you get behaves the way it was meant to.
How a piece is made
Every panel is knitted to shape on its own – this is called fully-fashioned. It is never cut out of a length of knitted fabric. Cutting the panels out of ready-made fabric is far quicker and cheaper. But it is not better, and it is not what I choose for my pieces.
The panels are linked, not sewn. A person feeds the open stitches onto the needles of the linking machine one loop at a time – it is slow, and that is exactly the point: the seam stretches together with the knit.
Everything that happens after the knitting is done by hand. Buttons, on the pieces that have them, are sewn on by hand. Each piece is steamed by hand over a shaped pad. And before it leaves the workshop every piece is washed – the wax comes out of the yarn and the knit settles at its true size. With most knitwear, the shape changes right after the first wash at home. Mine have already been washed, so as long as you wash them correctly, the size will not change.
Before it is packed
Every piece passes through my hands before it is packed – I check each one myself before I send it out.
It arrives in a plain brown cardboard box with the care card inside and nothing else: no filler paper, no leaflets. That is a deliberate choice, not a saving – I would rather use less than print something that is made to be thrown away.
A piece takes a long time to make, so it would be a shame not to pack it properly. It also means you can give it exactly as it arrives.
Yours,
Agne