Eclectic Closet Litblog, Book Reviews & Knitting Designs

A litblog dedicated to book reviews/recommendations, as well as literary and publishing news. Now enhanced with knitting designs.

Reflections on the Design Process, part 2

July8

Where did June go? One minute it was early in the month and I had started my Artist in Residence at Shall We Knit? and suddenly it’s July. I never got back here to the blog to post about the stitch patterns used in the design I was working up in Indigodragonfly Linen Silk. I have to state, yet again, how much I love this yarn! It feels lovely to knit with and the drape is fantastic.

In my previous post I spoke a bit about wanting to have attached edgings and graphical designs and this is what I showed you:
New design using Indigodragonfly Linen Silk
The piece shown is unblocked but you can see that the edging features these strong graphical elements – diamonds and zig-zags. The edging is comprised of elements from several different “vintage” stitch patterns, a few of which are found in an 1849 Ladies’ Needlework book epublished by Interweave Press. Vintage instructions, like the ones in this ebook, are provided as written instructions. What you see in the photo above is the 7th version of the edging – the one with which I’m finally happy.

Designing with any stitch patterns often requires a lot of swatching but I find vintage instructions require many more versions to reach a “finished” state. Often the instructions don’t exactly match the illustration (if there is one) and stitch repeats aren’t often indicated and usually I am combining multiple elements. In the case of the edging shown, I combined elements of 3 separate vintage edgings, added a section of a lace “insertion” and then tweaked until I ended up with something that looked “right.”

The diamond shape in the unblocked edging looks misshapen; with blocking it will appear more diamond-like. The zig-zags will be sharper and the outside edge will have points rather than scallops. I’ve put quite a lot of knitting into this over the past month and I’ve finished 6 repeats of the body of the stole. I’m so pleased with how the piece is coming together and in the picture below (taken a few weeks ago) you can see one repeat of the design I’ve selected for the body.

New design from Janelle Martin in Indigodragonfly Linen Silk

Happy Knitting!

posted under Knitting Designs

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