16 Things You MUST Know if You Want to Knit or Crochet for the Film Industry (Part 1 of 3)
Mindy Kaling wearing the Heart on Her Sleeve Blouse in an episode of The Mindy Project.
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“How can I get work knitting or crocheting for the movies?” is one of the most common questions I am asked. The answer is not an easy one, but I’m going to do my best to give you some guidelines to consider before seeking out this kind of work. Knitting and crocheting for the film industry has been an extremely rewarding and exciting career path, but it is not without its challenges!
february 9, 2021 (Updated april 20, 2021)
Crocheted shawl I made for TAG the movie.
I totally get it. As a knitter (I also crochet and have done crochet pieces for film before, but I mostly knit, so I’m going to use the “K” word—but all the advice that follows also corresponds to crochet), there are few things more rewarding than seeing your stitches on the big screen. The job does pay well and I really love the challenge that each project brings. I think it’s fair to say that any artist of any medium can’t help but be proud of their work being shown off in a movie or TV show.
But the first thing I tell people is that the job is not as glamorous as it appears. It is high stress and the turn-around times are often nearly impossible. When I’m in the middle of a project, my amazing husband knows he has three jobs: 1) push food in front of my face while reminding me to eat, 2) staying the heck out of my way until the project is sent off, and 3) being my courier to take the package to the post office, UPS, or FedEx once I am done. He has an important job because lack of sleep and lack of food mixed with the pressure of getting it right does not make me the most pleasant person to be around! I won’t mention for how long the pajamas are worn and how short the showers are (this is probably the real reason he stays away from me during big projects!).
In truth, my favorite part about my job is actually the relationship I build with the costume designers that I work with. Yes, it is cool to see my finished pieces on TV or in the movies, but I have been lucky enough to work with some insanely talented people. Watching their process and being a very small part of their job is really what I enjoy the most. If I were 18 again, I would probably have taken a very different path in my schooling and worked towards costume designing. There are so many details that go into the job of a costume designer. The tiny glimpses I get to see are really exciting to witness. It’s almost like watching Beethoven write a new song or Hendrix develop a new riff—what they create is nothing short of magic.
I have put together a total of 16 tips that would benefit anyone who is contemplating knitting for the silver screen. Below are the first 5. They are in no particular order, but every one of them should be considered carefully before taking this path.
1. Be more than an excellent knitter.
A lot of what I do is recreating vintage knits, replicating pieces from the wardrobe department while changing small details and the size, or designing knits from photo mood boards. For example, I might be sent a sweater that has a zipper and they need it made with buttons and with different measurements. Or I’m told they need a sweater that has a neckline like picture A, the sleeves of picture B, the body shape of picture C, and a graphic like picture D.
You can knit or design the most complicated patterns out there and they can be spectacularly made and fit you to perfection. But if you can’t break down a garment literally to the stitch, recreate it without being able to try it on anyone, and design it to match the exact measurements of someone you have never met, then you will really struggle with delivering what the costume designer needs. You have to be able to look at a (usually) machine-knit piece and break down every single stitch. And guess what, you don’t always have that piece in front of you—sometimes I am zooming in on pictures sent over a text message! Have you ever tried to count stitches on a sweater from a cell phone picture?!
You don’t have to reinvent the knitting needle, but you do have to be able to look at a picture, multiple pictures, or a physical piece and replicate it along with their changes and size alterations. Imagine being sent a picture of a fully cabled sweater for a giant Great Dane dog and then told it needs to be made for a Toy Poodle and the neck needs to be different and they want buttons down the back instead of the zipper. Where do you even begin?!
Oh, and by replicate, I don’t just mean the same stitch pattern and fit. You also have to be able to match the fiber, the weight, the color, the texture, the drape, the sheen, and so on. This is a lot harder than you might think, unless you have a warehouse in your backyard that houses every single skein of yarn in every single color that has ever existed. If you have said building, please call me because we need to be best friends.
Costume Designer Sal Perez with Director Trish Sie who is wearing a hat I knit for her on the set of Pitch Perfect 3.
2. Know your fibers.
Have a wide range of knowledge about yarns of all kinds from all manufacturers, dyers, mills, and stores. Work with as many fibers and yarn brands as you can get your hands on. Know how fibers react when worked up in different stitch patterns and definitely know how they drape. Which fibers show cables well and which fibers will stretch out of shape after one wearing? A cabled sweater in 100% alpaca is going to have very different drape and feel if made out of 100% acrylic or even 50% alpaca and 50% cotton. From experience, I know that the bulkier the alpaca yarn, the heavier the finished piece will be and the less pop your cables will have. The drape of a heavily cabled sweater and a plain stockinette stitch sweater are very different even if the exact same yarn is used. That’s just the nature of fiber.
Costumes take a beating throughout the course of filming. They are maintained by an amazing staff of people and cleaned by people that know what they are doing better than your local dry cleaner. But a cotton sweater will turn into a cotton dress after 1 day on set in humid weather. That’s just what happens and you can’t will it back into a sweater no matter how much we would all love to have that superpower.
I often have to blend yarns together to create the fabric that they are wanting, so knowing how yarns will look and hang when held together is important. If you need a lightly marbled look with a touch of halo, you might want to start with merino held together with mohair. And remember that holding one strand of mohair together with two strands of merino gives a very different look and drape than holding a strand of merino together with two strands of mohair. And remember those needle sizes! A sock weight yarn knit on size 2 needles is going to be drastically different than that same yarn knit on size 5 needles.
Mindy Kaling rocking a vest and skirt knit duo for The Mindy Project.
3. Be prepared to buy every shade of blue until you find the right one.
I can’t tell you how important it is to be able to match colors to what the costume designer needs. This is a LOT harder than it sounds and is vitally important.
A lot goes into what costume designers do with their color theme. Colors for film are not chosen at random. You might walk into a yarn shop and see a green that you absolutely love and makes your eyes pop and so you scoop up the whole shelf and walk merrily out the door to start your new sweater. But color in the film world is probably discussed more than the shape of the garment itself. I suspect this to be the case, but in truth, I have never sat in on any of those meetings between a director and costume designer!
The color we see on our screen is not always the color I see when I send it off. Sometimes filters are added or lighting changes how something looks. How many times have you looked at a skein of yarn under fluorescent lights and then gotten home and looked at it in the natural light coming in from your kitchen window and thought, “This isn’t the color I bought!”
Color also invokes mood and emotion, which is part of the story that costume designers tell. Sometimes it is a mood pushed right in your face such as a picture of a child wearing bright yellow rain boots in the middle of grey and stormy weather. But in film, it is mostly subliminal. Certain characters wear colors that tell you about their character. Disney does this with all of its cartoon villains. What color comes to mind when you think of a Disney villain or villainess? (Did you say purple?!) This crazy magic that costume designers create doesn’t happen on accident! It is their job to keep in theme and mood with every single character and scene throughout the movie. I’m blown away by their ability to do this!
So let me get back to your job in all this. You have to match the colors they need, not what you can easily provide them. I have been sent fabric swatches to match yarn to and I’m not a dyer, so I have to then take that swatch to not one, not two, but usually as many yarn stores as I can possibly get to in order to find something that will work. It is not unusual for me to order a dozen skeins of brown yarn online (with expedited overnight shipping, of course) just so I can have as many options in front of me as possible. And I’ll give you a little tip – a swatch of fabric does not look the same as a swatch of knitted fabric. You can dye a piece of cotton fabric in the same pot as a ball of cotton yarn and they are not going to look the same.
Trying to match colors, which is definitely not easy!
4. Know the language.
Most of the time, the people I talk with (costume designers, assistants, wardrobe supervisors, etc.) do not knit. Being able to explain why something is not possible comes down to the language used. I have seen machine knit pieces that are stunning, but I know it is not possible to always exactly replicate them by hand.
Machine knitting and hand knitting are absolutely not the same beasts. Yes, a lot can be done to look like the other, but there is also a wide range of stitches that can’t be translated from one to the other. I like to give the example of chocolate chip cookies. Think about those cookies your grandma made when you were a child, and then think about a box of Chips Ahoy. They are both chocolate chip cookies, right? But every single thing about them is different. They look different, they smell different, they break apart differently, their texture is different, and they definitely taste different. Humans are not machines so don’t expect to make a hand knit sweater look like the identical twin to a machine knit sweater. But you better be darn sure they are easily mistaken for identical twins in a nightclub!
Being able to specifically tell the costume designer why a hand-knit piece cannot be exactly like the machine-knit piece requires vocabulary and terms that they understand. Communication is your key to success. I rarely get to meet with costume designers face to face (but boy do I sure love it when I can!) and so communicating via phone calls, text messages, texted pictures, and email is a daily, hourly, and minute by minute part of the job. Knitters have our own language, but not everybody speaks it, so learn the terms that get your point across accurately and when in doubt, Google search the crap out of knitter lingo.
For example; the term “stockinette stitch” or “garter stitch” have very specific meanings to a knitter and 99% of knitters are going to know exactly what those look like in our mind’s eye. But tell your non-knitting brother-in-law to describe those two terms and see what face he gives you.
Knitters know these terms, but not everybody speaks our lingo!
5. Know what options you can offer.
So maybe something can’t be done by hand to look exactly like the machine made piece—that is okay! But it doesn’t work to just say, “nope, can’t be done,” and end the conversation there. Remember, hand knits and machine knits are still sisters. They do have a lot in common, it’s your job to pull out what you can to replicate and swatch the heck out of it. Give the costume designers something they can work with!
Have several stitch dictionaries nearby so you can flip through and see what stitches are similar to the stitch you are being asked to recreate. I don’t know all of the stitches that exist in the knitting world and so having resources that I can refer to quickly helps me find what could possibly work for the piece in discussion.
Being able to tell them what can be done and then having those swatches worked up to show examples is key because if the costume designer is told it can’t be done, they will change their direction and you can say buh-bye to that job.
Working on an argyle vest for The Mindy Project. When the costume designer wants argyle with crystals, you make it happen!
I hope these tips were helpful and start to give you an idea about what all is needed to work in the film industry as a knitter or crocheter. Everyone’s path in this industry is different and I can only share from my own personal experiences. I know it’s a lot to digest, but I’m just being real with what to expect based on my years in the industry. I have many more tips to share over the next two weeks, so stay tuned. This is only the beginning!
If you found this article helpful, please feel free to pass it along. And don’t forget to follow me on Instagram and leave a comment below with any questions you might have. You can purchase the Mindy Kaling Heart on Her Sleeve Blouse pattern in my shop or by clicking here.
Read Part Two of this Story
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This quick and easy unisex knitted hat pattern is perfect for anyone that wants a quick knit that can thrown in your bag or glovebox and available whenever you might need it!