• On Demand

    This course is self-paced and is available immediately after you enroll.

  • All Levels

    Great for beginning spinners and all other levels interested in exploring yarn design.

  • Free Preview Available

    Try before you buy, with a free preview lesson from this course.

Discover the Secret to Recreating Your Favorite Yarns

This is a remastered version of Patsy's beloved video from 2014. The video content remains the same, but the course features new enhancements, including separate chapters and additional resources.

Perhaps you’re in love with a specific millspun yarn, but it’s discontinued or unavailable in the color you want. Or curiosity has gotten the better of you, and you simply want to figure out how a favorite yarn is made!

After carefully analyzing why her handspun yarns didn’t look like the millspun she was trying to replicate, master spinner Patsy Zawistoski came up with an easy, ingenious method for analyzing commercial yarns and reproducing them with handspinning, and she’s here to share it with you today. 

In Make THAT Yarn You'll Learn:

  • Which millspun yarns you can and can't reproduce with handspinning
  • How to make your own simple, take-anywhere tool for analyzing yarns
  • How to deconstruct a yarn to determine its twist and grist
  • How to adjust your spinning wheel and drafting to match your desired yarn, without having to get too technical
  • The secret of why handspun yarn is often heavier than millspun—and a clever trick for fixing this common issue
  • How to reproduce almost any commercial yarn

Whether you’re a new spinner or have been spinning for years, this course will transform the way you approach spinning!

About this Video

Have you ever had the perfect knit or crochet pattern but couldn't find commercial yarn in the color or fiber you wanted? Have you had luscious fiber but didn't know how to spin it into the right yarn for the project you had in mind? 

In this video, master spinner Patsy Zawistoski teaches her brilliant method for analyzing commercial yarns and reproducing them with handspinning.

You’ll love this video if you:

  • Are a knitter, spinner, or weaver who uses handspun yarn
  • Enjoy blending store-bought and handspun yarns in the same project
  • Find spinning yarn fascinating and would like to learn more about how to get more specific results
  • Design handspun yarn for a specific project or need

Supplies and equipment:

  • Spinning wheel
  • 2 sheets of cardstock and a printer for making your templates
  • A small sample of the yarn you wish to reproduce (10 yards is more than enough!)
  • Fiber
  • Paperclips
  • Ruler 
  • Pen and paper or a notetaking app for recording your findings

Prerequisites:

To learn this technique, you need only basic spinning skills and the ability to make a two-ply yarn. 

Reviews

An amazing video!

“This is one of the most concise videos I have seen on the skills of how to reproduce a yarn in length, weight and construction, and why we would want to. With practice it could be a real game changer to make yarns for particular patterns and achieve the same outcomes. ” - Sara Nye

I learned a LOT from the instructor

“One of the reasons I got into spinning was so that I could reproduce yarns that I really liked out of materials already in my stash. Trying it on my own, I was pretty unsuccessful and now I understand why. The “decoder” is a very clever idea, and will help with record keeping if I ever want to make something again and again.” - CHRIS TOWNSEND

Enlightening!

“Detailed but accessible explainer of how to take apart a yarn you bought at your LYS and make a good copy of it on your spinning wheel.” - Celia Llopis-Jepsen

Instructor

Patsy Sue Zawistoski

Master-level (COE) in Handspinning

Patsy Sue Zawistoski is an internationally known teacher and lecturer who loves to help spinners turn all manner of fleece and fiber into yarns, from heirloom to contemporary styles. She holds a Master-level Certificate of Excellence (COE) in Handspinning from the Handweavers Guild of America. Her innovative COE topic was spinning novelty yarns for use as warps in weaving, and she continues to explore the “What if?" questions of technique, fiber, and yarn structure, pushing the boundaries of handspinning for herself and her students.

Course curriculum

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