I thought you'd like to see my design process for my latest published design (a few months late, but who's counting). If you didn't know before that I'm still a fledgling designer with a lot to learn, this will definitely help you come to that realization. Still, even though I look back on it with a little embarrassment (I'm way too hard on myself, heh), it was a great learning experience and I came away with tons of things-to-do-differently-next-time.
After my 5:00 Tank was published in the CrochetMe book, I made up quite a few designs and put them together in a sketch book for future submissions. (Actually, I thought maybe I would try writing my own book, but soon realized that I had more to learn before I felt comfortable doing that.) One of the designs in my sketch book was for a zippered sweater.

I am most definitely not a strong draw-er, so I found a
croquis figure from Threads Magazine to use as my model.
Next I actually crocheted the sweater myself, in my size. And it was a little bit dreadful.

The neckline was wonky, and too low, and the zipper just made the entire front not lay well at all. Nevertheless, I was glad to have done it that way if only to learn how to set in a zipper, and now I know firsthand why zippers aren't really a good idea in a sweater. (I knew why, really, but sometimes you have to do it to really KNOW why, yanno?)
Nevertheless, I pressed on, sending the submission to Interweave.

I emailed Kim (the editor at the time) to let her know that I had stitched up a prototype, and uploaded a photo of it to Flickr so that she could see. She chatted with me about the neckline and the closure, saying she thought it would look better if it were buttoned rather than zippered, and with a higher neck. The yarn was a go, though, so Silky Wool was sent to me and I started writing the pattern.
Because I'd already written most of the pattern out while I made the prototype, I was confident that it would be super easy to just size the thing, make the neckline and closure changes, and that would be that. But when I sent the first draft to Julie, the tech editor, things slid downhill pretty quickly. My armholes were too small. My math was incorrect. My layout was confusing. I had done this all before (albeit just once, and the construction was quite different), why didn't this come naturally to me?
(I think that is always my biggest problem when it comes to being hard on myself. I was always good at schoolwork, I was able to learn quickly and almost always got the hang of a new subject right off the bat. Which helped me feel like I could just jump feet-first into a project without thinking sometimes, and also made it hard to bear when I didn't get the hang of it as fast as I thought I should.) Julie and I exchanged several emails, and then the decision was made that I needed to send a new draft to Julie, so that we could start fresh with edits.
After that it was smooth sailing, for the most part. From the tech editing emails that had gone back and forth, I was able to get a better idea of the pattern layout, and I tweaked some of the math and sizing here and there, and sent back a much nicer second draft. A few minor details were cleaned up, and I finished stitching the small size for photos and sent it to Interweave.
And then it was published, last December. And I frogged the entire prototype and remade it in my size, with a few tweaks for my torso length and different proportions for my hips and such. When I was finished and tried it on...
the shoulders were all wrong. They were too wide. And I hadn't tweaked the pattern in the shoulder area; I worked straight from the final draft. Which meant that I'd sized the width of the shoulders along with the width of the bust, which, turns out, is a no-no. (In fact, after that, I read a LiveJournal post from a friend who ranted about that very thing: patterns which don't take into account the fact that shoulders don't widen quite like the rest of one's body from small to XL.) I fixed it for myself, but then noticed that someone on Ravelry had had the same problem happen to them and weren't pleased. So I made sure to comment on the pattern itself to let people know, so that hopefully they can set-in the sleeves in a little different way.
I think the most important thing that I found during this process is that I really needed a
sloper. I set out to construct one a few weeks ago, along with a yardage estimator, so that I could have consistent sizing across all of the patterns I publish. I have played with it since, for a rough draft, and I can see it making life much easier. (No more over-sizing shoulders or under-sizing armholes, for one thing!)
I definitely learned a lot from this sweater. Sometimes I need to remind myself that after only three published patterns (in print, anyway, and only two are garments) I am not a seasoned designer. But there's only one way to get there: submit and publish and then learn from each process. So in the end I'm happy with how things turned out, if only to remind myself that I am fallible and but that I can become less so as I go.