Innovative, original artisanal designs. Specializing in exceptional styling solutions for hand knitted and crocheted garments and accessories.
Jul Designs was founded by Laura Bellows in 2007. JUL represents a trans-national collaboration between Laura, who is based in the United States and trained as a cultural anthropologist, and Agus Astradhi, who lives in Bali, Indonesia and was trained as a jewelry designer. Laura and Agus work together on innovative styling tools designed specifically for hand knits and crochet.
If you have ever made a hand knit or crocheted garment or accessory, you have likely experienced knit-/crochet-wear misbehavior. Your shawl or scarf will not stay on your shoulders. The sides of your cardigan keep pulling to the back so you find yourself holding it closed in front. Your neckwarmer is not warm because it gapes precisely where you want it to be snug.
What you really want is to set it and forget it. Instead you end up attending to style failures all day long. None of us has the mental bandwidth to devote to keeping our handmade pieces in place! JUL Designs' diverse range of styling solutions take into account the ways stylings typically fail and how to address those failures with different approaches to three types of solutions – knitwear jewelry that relies on sticking through your knitwear, no-sew stud buttons and screw-in closures that work by using mechanisms that go in between your stitches and snap or screw in place, and cuffs that capture volume without penetrating your fabric in any way.
In addition to being the best closures for knits and crochet in the history of the world (really!), our styling solutions are truly gorgeous. Agus' training as a jewelry-designer and the exquisite artistry of our artisans, who make jewelry when they aren't making styling solutions for JUL are evident in the excellent craftsmanship of the components we produce.
Everything in our shop is hand-made, by our artisans in Bali and the U.S. as well as us right here at our shop.