Holly Chayes

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.

This online space has been around in one form or another since 2010, it focuses on making, creativity and living a curious life, plus a lot of clothing.

Some of the projects I've worked on in the past 10+ years include...

Talking About Clothes with Holly Chayes

An interview podcast that's all about clothing (and also, not *really* about clothing at all). Find all the details and listen to conversations about comfort, style, change and shopping here. Or search for Talking About Clothes with Holly Chayes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Who Wears Who?

The Self-Made Wardrobe Project

Predecessor to Who Wears Who, a year-long challenge in 2014/2015 where I only wore clothes I made. That year would have been a lot easier if the clothes had magically made themselves. Learn more about The Self-Made Wardrobe Project and explore the archives here.

The Shawl Geometry Book Series

Enough shawl shapes to keep you knitting for a lifetime. A multi-year exploration of math, shape and space in knitting, where I documented traditional shawl shaping, and iterated on those traditions to create new recipes of shawl shaping. Ultimately this lead to 75+ shapes, and 400+ pages of common and uncommon shawl shaping instructions. This project was inspired by a dozen individual shawl designs, each encapsulating a love of geometric lace design. You can find The Shawl Geometry Series here.

Thank you for being here with me. –Holly

arrrggghhh! – the I’m a pirate skirt

11 Nov 2014

FOs, The Self-Made Wardrobe Garments

I absolutely adore this skirt! The fabric is some sort of striped rayon (I think) that I inherited from my aunt, and the “pattern” is a pleated rectangle with an elastic waistband at the top. I started making something else out of this fabric, and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, but it obviously didn’t work out. I took that project apart, and pieced the pieces back into a rectangle of sorts. Then I pleated the top edge into wide overlapping pleats, that I then stitched into place. I originally installed a zipper and had a proper waistband, but that made for a skirt that slipped & slid all over the place. So I removed the waistband & zipper, closed up the size seam, and added a thin elastic waistband above the pleating. The elastic and the pleating kind of fight each other when it’s...

How to Knit a Winter Coat

10 Nov 2014

Projects

I’m almost done with the knitting for my winter coat. I have a ball and a half left of yarn, which will add about 4.5 inches to the body. And I figure my deadline is the super cold weather we’re supposed to be getting later this week. I’m not sure if anyone else is crazy enough to try knitting a proper winter coat, but if you are, here’s how I did it. Step 1: decide to do it. Ignore exactly how much knitting it’ll be, and don’t think too hard about how cold winter gets. I’m in New York City, so it gets cold, but not quite cold enough for me to decide not to do this. Step 2: find your yarn. You want something warm (no shit…), so an animal fiber of some sort. You could also use a wool, or llama, or other animal fiber, but you want to...

The Self-Made Wardrobe Week 14 – a new sweater!

07 Nov 2014

The Self-Made Wardrobe

The Self-Made Wardrobe is a project where I only wear garments I’ve made. It’s sort of a year long experiment in getting dressed without clothing labels. DAY 92 – OCTOBER 31th Boring Black Sweater Khaki Scarf Black Tank Top Black Maxi Skirt with a Slit Black Flats Long Necklace with Spinning Pendant Various Rings Halloween! I’m not a huge dressing up for Halloween person, I figure I made things for every other day of the year, and so I just can’t get myself excited about October 31st. But I did go with all black, and those shiny things on my shoes are skull beads… so we can pretend that was intentional, and not just coincidence. DAY 93 – NOVEMBER 1st Deconstructed Black Sweater Black Tank Top Graphic Silk Circle Skirt Black Tights Black Shoes Various Rings This sweater is new, but not quite finished. I wore it all week because...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.