Meet the Artist: Kira K Designs

Kira Dulaney first learned the basics of crochet around age three and knitting around five. Her attention soon moved to cross stitch, sewing, and other crafty pursuits, then she re-taught herself to knit while in college. She studied theatrical costume design and worked as a costume designer in and around San Francisco for several years. The research she has done in historical clothing is a strong influence on her design sense, and many Kira K Designs patterns reference styles from the 1920s through the 1960s. Her designs tend toward garments with clean lines and intriguing details that are interesting to knit and easy to wear. Kira is also a great teacher! So lets learn a little bit more about Kira in this fun interview:

How long have you been running your fiberarts business and what inspired you to do this for a living?
I started self-publishing patterns in early 2007, so it’s been almost three years now. I’d been designing patterns for most of my own knitting and crochet projects for a couple years and people were always asking me for the patterns, but of course I changed things as I went and didn’t take any notes. Eventually I decided to write my patterns down and try selling them. I started very small and slow and learned about the business side of things as I went. I’ve been teaching classes on knitting and crochet for about 5 years now, and starting teaching sewing classes one year ago.

What part of your work do you enjoy the most?
I love when all the elements of a design come together. I’m always making notes about different shapes, stitches, and yarns that I’d like to try, and eventually a silhouette, stitch pattern, and yarn all click together into a cohesive design.

What part of your work do you enjoy the least?
I have really high standards for myself, and I’m devastated whenever errata is found in one of my patterns. I know that it’s natural to have a small mistake here or there, but I still feel terrible about it.

What styles, artists, designers do you find more inspiring and why?
I used to work in theater designing and building costumes, and styles from the 1920s through the 1960s have a big influence on me. I don’t do straight reproduction work, but many of the silhouettes and details from that time find their way into my designs. I really don’t follow fashion that much, but I always keep an eye out for interesting styles that I see on the street.

Being self-employed can be hard to maintain motivation. What do you do to keep the creativity flowing in your everyday work?
Time is more of a problem for me than motivation. There is always so much to do and even though knitting is a necessary part of my work, it sometimes feels lazy to sit and knit for hours.

What blogs/magazines/books do you like to read?
I really only follow the blogs of friends, because it can take too much time keeping up with lots of different blogs. I read Spin-Off magazine and also Bitch and Bust. I like Neil Gaiman’s novels, and lately I’ve been reading non-fiction by Sarah Vowell and Mary Roach.

Do you have any hobbies other then fiberarts?
I love to cook and bake, especially when I can share the results with a table full of friends.

Anything new on the horizon for your business?
I have patterns in the spring 2010 issues of Tension Magazine and Interweave Crochet. I’ve recently starting working with a distributor, so my self-published patterns should be showing up in many more yarn shops across the country soon.