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

all alpaca, all the time

29 Oct 2014

what's in the works

I post little snippets about what’s happening, and what I’m working on, each Wednesday. I’ve been working on two projects, knitting my alpaca coat, and spinning some alpaca yarn. On my alpaca coat, I’m about 3/4 of the way done with the second front, and kind-of-sort-of hoping against hope that I’ll be able to start the first sleeve this weekend. Awhile back a friend gave me, what I thought was 8 ounces of alpaca fiber, but that turned out to be 12. I started spinning it back in July, and that ball there is the first three ounces of fiber – spun on my drop spindle. After getting through 3 ounces I realized that spinning the rest of this on a drop spindle with actually take forever, so a friend (the same one who gave me the fiber) is letting me spin the rest on her miniSpinner. It’s like magic,...

The Perfect Transitional Sweater

28 Oct 2014

FOs, The Self-Made Wardrobe Garments

This is not my typical type of sweater. I’m not usually into short-sleeved sporty-looking hand-knit wool sweaters. But that’s what this sweater wanted to be, so that’s what this sweater is. I tried to take down the sporty feel – that just looked half-assed. I tried adding sleeves – they threw off the proportions – plus I ran out of yarn. I tried doing turned hems – they were bulky. I thought about doing buttons instead of a zipper – that felt wrong on every level – plus I love zippers on knits. Once the body was done, instead of working a hem, I went back and added ribbing. I unpicked the bind off, dropped each stitch that I wanted to change from a knit to a purl, and picked them back up with a crochet hook. This was definitely the right idea – even though it took forever and...

Graphic Silk Circle Skirt – when what I love to sew meets what I love to wear

27 Oct 2014

FOs, The Self-Made Wardrobe Garments

This is one of my absolute favorite pieces in my self-made wardrobe. It’s a very versatile piece, without being a true “basic.” I made it one morning way back in June (during the first try at this project) when I was absolutely sick of everything in my closet. It’s a two layer, square shaped circle skirt, with an elastic waist, and handkerchief hem, made out of a 100% silk printed fabric. Meaning: It has two layers of fabric, one on top of the other. (That I then rotated so they’re offset from one another – more of an explanation.) A circle skirt is made by laying your fabric flat and cutting two circle, one within the other, the outer circle becomes to the hem of your skirt, while the inner circle becomes your waist. For this skirt, instead of shaping the hem as a circle, I shaped it as a...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.