Assorted skeins of yarn in shades of purple and blue resting on light fabric.

Knitting as Coming Home

About the Practice of Fibre

A woman with black hair and glasses sits at a table with colorful yarns, holding and examining a piece of purple yarn. There are yarn balls and a yarn swift on the table, with a plant and a bookshelf with thread spools in the background.
Person with long dark hair and glasses knitting at a white table, with colorful yarn balls and a potted plant nearby, in a bright room with shelves and wall hangings.

Minimalist knitwear rooted in Toi Māori design. On slow making, cultural memory, and why knitting is how I think.

The Practice of Fibre is a knitwear design studio rooted in Toi Māori aesthetics and slow making. I design minimalist patterns that are genuinely satisfying to knit. The kind where the process is the point.

Toi Māori visual language runs through everything I make. Paired with contemporary minimalism, the designs end up clear enough to follow without much effort. That's what lets your mind go somewhere useful while your hands are busy.

In the spirit of reciprocity and abundance, I release patterns under Creative Commons licenses. You can share them, adapt them, use them in free community workshops. Commercial licenses are also available.

What I make, and why

I came to knitwear design through two parallel journeys that turned out to be the same one: learning to knit and learning about my Māori heritage. Both happened in Japan between 2013 and 2020. Both took longer than expected.

The designs draw from Toi Māori visual traditions: geometric forms, structured repetition, texture that builds on itself. The patterns are written so you can follow them without fighting the instructions.

In the spirit of the gift economy, free patterns on my blog are covered by Creative Commons licenses, allowing makers to publish remixes publicly, such as rewriting instructions for new constructions, or to distribute the original pattern instructions for use in free workshops and community classes (commercial licenses are also available).

If you knit to think, or to make something with your hands that actually means something: you're in the right place.

Young woman with dark hair and tattoos, sitting on a chair, wearing a purple knit cardigan over a white dress, accessorized with a large statement necklace, posing with her chin resting on her hand against a pink background.

The Story behind the Stitches

*

The Story behind the Stitches *

I'm Françoise, the founder of The Practice of Fibre. By day, I work as Head of Operations and Chief of Staff for an e-commerce start-up. By night, I design knitwear.

My story starts in Sydney, Australia. I was the oldest of my siblings (one younger sister and one younger brother), born to a French dad and a Māori mum.

At 6, we migrated to the United States for my dad's work. He was a computer engineer who gave me a love for coding and tech; unfortunately, though, I did not inherit his mind for math.

We were a strange mix: Mormon*, French, Australian, with a couple of years in France during high school thrown in. Growing up, I didn't know much about my Māori heritage.

*no longer practicing, currently practice Buddhism

A woman with long dark hair, glasses, and a tattoo on her arm wears a pink dress and a striped shawl in an indoor setting near a window.

My knitting journey and my cultural connection journey happened at the same time when I lived in Japan (2013–2020). The karanga called me to learn about my Māori heritage, and I used knitting and written reflections as the medium to record that journey — formerly under my previous brand name, Aroha Knits.

During the pandemic, my ex-husband and I returned to the States. The years that followed were hard. I had to learn how to build resilience and deconstruct capitalist and colonial views in order to survive.

Making things helped. So did community, and access to real support. I'm building now, where before I was just getting through the day.

Transform your yarn,

Françoise (Aroha)

A woman with long dark hair, glasses, and a tattoo on her left arm, wearing a light pink dress, standing indoors near a window, holding a striped knit shawl with red, black, white, and beige colors.
Woman with black hair, glasses, and a tattoo on her left arm, wearing a pink dress and a red, black, and white striped shawl, standing indoors near a window.

I've been designing and writing about knitting since 2013.
Here's where the work has shown up.

Knit Stars

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amirisu

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Making Stories

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Vogue Knitting Live

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Knit Picks

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tinyStudio

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awa wahine

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Knit Stars • amirisu • Making Stories • Vogue Knitting Live • Knit Picks • tinyStudio • awa wahine •

Knit Stars Masterclass:

Season 5 Introduction Video, 2020

Book Features:

Book cover titled 'Unraveling' by Peggy Orenstein, featuring a sheep at the bottom, with subtitle about life lessons from shearing sheep, dyeing wool, and making sweaters.

Interviewed as a guest and design expert in Peggy Orenstein’s book, Unraveling.

Book cover titled "The Knitting Pattern Writing Handbook" with a knitting needle and yarn at the bottom and a knitting pattern chart at the top.

Wrote the introduction for The Knitting Pattern Writing Handbook by Kristina McGrath and former student Sarah Walworth.