About

Welcome to Natalie Smart Designs. I'm a Brighton, UK based hand knitwear designer.

I learnt to knit when I was 7 years old and absolutely loved it. Once I had learnt the basics as a child, I was soon designing and knitting my own toys.

Little did I realise at the time that many years later I would be designing hand knitted ladies garments and accessories!

My reason for designing again came about in my early 20s when I was very fond of the 1960s fashion but it wasn't always easy to find original garments from the decade that fitted me. I then found some 1960s hand knitted patterns for ladies garments in a charity shop and as I could knit, decided to make myself some clothes from these patterns. Several garments later I realised that the fit was never perfect and the dresses always ended up very a-line which I never liked on me. After spending hours knitting and sewing up each garment it was very frustrating to not end up wearing the finished product.

However, I wasn't about to give up and decided that I needed to learn how to design hand knitted garments that would fit in the way I wanted.Therefore I attended a City & Guilds Hand Knitting Course which I completed in 2011 and I've been designing knitwear ever since.

Initially I started selling my own patterns and now I also do freelance work for various Knitting magazines.

I'm fortunate enough to have my own knitwear studio in Brighton where I work on all my designs.

I'm also on Twitter and Facebook (the links to each of these are on this website) where you can follow me for updates on my latest designs and freelance work.