Tess Young Designs & Makes

Welcome to Tess Young Designs & Makes

Here at the online home of Tess Young Designs and Makes you can join me on the blog where I talk about knitting, cooking, gardening, textile heritage, natural plant dyeing and my knitting design process.

You can also browse my hand knitting patterns and find all the links to purchase online via your preferred pattern site, including Payhip, LoveCrafts and Ravelry.

Whether you’re here for the blog, where I encourage you to comment and share your experiences too – I love hearing from readers – or to browse my pattern designs, ‘Welcome’ and I hope you find what you’re looking for.

Natural Plant Dyeing: Adding a fabulous new orange to the palette with Bidens

May 31, 2023

Towards the end of last year, as leaves tuned colour, the weather turned colder and frost threatened some tender dye plants, I began to plan some more dyeing experiments; a combination of trying to replicate previous colours and discover new ones. This potential for new colours comes as we explore further what plants will thrive in our clay soil, and in hot dry summers that can transition to cold waterlogged winters overnight, or in the … More Natural Plant Dyeing: Adding a fabulous new orange to the palette with Bidens

Remembering Rana Plaza 10 years on, and asking, ‘What’s changed’?

April 25, 2023

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster. A disaster in which more than 1,134 people died and another 2,500 were injured. The 4th largest industrial disaster globally, the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, mostly affected female garment workers producing garments for fast fashion brands in the west. While Rana Plaza represents an exceptional event, the factors that made it possible are all too common in the garment … More Remembering Rana Plaza 10 years on, and asking, ‘What’s changed’?

A first FO of the year: How to knit a sweater in a couple of weeks

March 17, 2023

After a sluggish start to the new year and a lot of indecision about what to knit next, I took a step back and thought about what I like to wear. What, if anything, could I complete in the next month or so that might slip right into my wardrobe? Then it occurred to me that the sweater I reach for most often, and which could perhaps do with a break, was the everyday sweater … More A first FO of the year: How to knit a sweater in a couple of weeks