Sweater design

Most of the time when I make knitted garments, I start with a pattern, change the colors a bit, choose the right size and away I get started knitting.  But every now and then I decide to make my own pattern.

In Norway, because of the cold winters, there are still many people who use wool sweaters, often made by a loved one.  My husband made a request for a cardigan, so that he didn’t have to pull it over his head and could just slip his arms into it.

I started by looking through my patterns.  I also borrowed books from the library.  I went to one of the yarn stores and found a nice green on sale and bought all they had of a color that was being discontinued, plus a bright yellow.  I went to another yarn store just a few blocks away and found more of the same green yarn, same color number, but different lot number. I bought what they had plus a different duller yellow.  Now I had some colors to work with.  The two different dye lots of green did not seem to be different at all.

As I worked with the colors and patterns I had, my husband said that it needed another color, perhaps red.  So I went back to the store, and found a purple on sale.  Now I had bought sufficient yarn to make a cardigan, I had four colors, and just needed to decide what I wanted to do with it.  I had mostly green, two different yellows and a dark purple.  The pattern I decided on had to suit the amount of yarn I had in each color.

One of the books from the library showed lots of two color patterns for knitting.  I have always liked the star pattern that is very common here in Norway.  I found a flower pattern that was on 19 stitches, a number that as Bahá’ís we both like.  I started knitting some of the patterns I liked, trying to see what worked, how the colors fit together and how much I might use.  Some patterns I liked, and some just didn’t work at all.

Then I knit a sampler to try out the colors and the patterns.

I decided on the following motifs, each row being separated by a single bright yellow row.

• the main background color was to be green, which was the color I had the most of
• a row of purple hearts around the bottom of the sleeve and the body of the cardigan
• alternating rows of yellow stars and purple flowers
• a single row of bright yellow was used to separate each row of pattern and also used to separate the front band from the rest of the garment

As it was a cardigan that was wanted, I decided to knit back and forth, and included the front bands as I knit up the garment.  The sleeves had a cap and were sewn in afterwards.  I worked out ahead of time how many rows would be worked so that the patterns matched up between the sleeves and the body, and that I ended with a full pattern at the shoulder. The sleeves and the body of the cardigan were made the same length as this made working the pattern much easier.

I was very happy with the finished result and I had fun making the garment.  The cardigan is used a lot so the wearer seems to be happy too.