Archives for category: Sweaters

WP5 Spotlight: Hitch

05.20.13 //

Hitch was designed by Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark in Alabama and has a great casual elegance about it. The dolman shape means that the garment is made with two pieces (front and back, with sleeves integrated). If you look closely at the direction of the garter stitch on the cuffs, you’ll see that the sleeves are worked sideways as a result.

While swatching at the beginning of the design process, Mercedes fell hard for this cable – which she said reminded her of thick links of chain (our inspiration for naming the design) – and built the rest of the sweater as a suitable “frame” for it.

I think the proportions are great – the deep garter hem, the front-only panel of chain cables, three-quarter sleeves and a wide boat neck. The fabric is lightweight – worked in Loft at a relaxed gauge – which means it has that “easy to throw on” thing going for it, too.

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Resources: Hitch is available as a PDF download at Brooklyn Tweed or Ravelry. The pattern is knit with Loft yarn, shown here in color Tent.

Categories Cables, Loft, Original Patterns, Sweaters, Wool People

WP5 Spotlight: Reverb

05.13.13 //

This week I’ll be spotlighting some of the patterns from the Wool People 5 release to better acquaint you with some of the details about the patterns that may not always be apparent from photos alone. Today – the Reverb Cardigan by Tanis Lavallée:

Tanis hails from beautiful Montreal, Canada, and has a knack for garments that are stylish, smart, and fun to knit. Canadians really have a way with sweaters.

Reverb is worked seamlessly as a top down raglan – which is a great way to make a sweater, especially for knitters who don’t enjoy finishing. The obvious benefit of knitting garments this way is the ability to try on as you work – a great advantage when customizing the sleeve and body lengths of your individual garment.

Though the cardigan has no waist shaping, the slimmer fit is achieved with a relatively low amount of ease (+1-3″, shown on the model with +1″ of positive ease).

The zigzag cables reflect (“reverberate”) across the cardigan opening; on the back they combine to create a mirrored panel of diamonds. The cables are simple to work, but have a great effect in their overall combination.

This is a great project for both fledgeling and seasoned sweater knitters alike!

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Resources: Reverb is available as a PDF download at Brooklyn Tweed or Ravelry. The pattern is knit with Shelter yarn, shown here in color Hayloft.

Categories SHELTER, Sweaters, Wool People

BT Sweater Cards

12.07.12 //

It’s time to announce another fun project that we’ve been cooking up behind the scenes – this one has been a lot of fun, and I’m so thrilled with the end result!

Today we unveil a set of limited edition Brooklyn Tweed Sweater Cards – the result of a collaboration between the BT Design Team and Vancouver-based watercolor artist Mark Hall-Patch. Each pack contains 15 blank gift cards (with envelopes) and features 5 different commissions artworks featuring garments from our collection archive. Read on for the full story!

One afternoon last winter, when I was surfing the internet on one of my regular inspiration binges, I stumbled across some beautiful, minimalist watercolors by Mark and was struck by their delicate, poetic style. I immediately purchased a small water color for my own studio – a well-loved and slightly tattered Cowichan sweater – and when it arrived in the mail I was delighted to see that the in-person experience of viewing the painting was even more enchanting than my virtual one (as all good art should be!).

For several months I’d been kicking around the idea of finding an artist – be it a painter, illustrator or photographer – to collaborate with on some kind of special project for BT. When Mark’s painting arrived on my doorstep, the idea for these cards hit me like a ton of bricks. I promptly contacted the artist to see if he’d be interested in exploring some ideas.

I was further delighted to learn that Mark – a sensitive & sweet guy, as it turns out – loves collaborating on projects of this nature. Before we even finished our first conversation, we were setting to work on the details. I began by photographing several garments and accessories from the BT Pattern Archive. We then assembled the finished photos and started discussing which designs seemed to group themselves together naturally. Before long, we had landed on five projects, all in varying shades of grey and cream. (Shocking!)

A few months later – after Mark had carefully created each piece – five beautiful watercolors arrived at BT Headquarters, looking even better than I had hoped for.

The paintings are small – worked with tiny brushes and a very delicate hand. My personal challenge was to get as much of the original detail into the reproductions as possible. I also wanted the art to be reproduced in its actual size on the finished cards, so your experience would be as close to holding an original as possible.

So enough story telling – onto the art work! I’ve photographed each of the five paintings below, placing them aside the photos of their inspiration garments (we threw a pair of mittens in for fun, too).

I always find it refreshing to shake things up a bit and play around with new ways of experiencing our yarns and pattern designs. This was such an enjoyable process, we’re already on the hunt for some new creative folks to team up with!

Sweater Cards are available today on our web site here (or click any of the images above); each pack contains 15 cards (3 copies each of 5 paintings) with envelopes. Card dimensions are 4½” wide by 6¼” tall (A6).

If you are interested in seeing more of Mark’s painting and illustration work, you can visit his web site here. If you’re interested in any of the patterns pictured, those can all be found on our web site or Ravelry.

Categories BT Design Team, Gifts, Sweaters

Alpine Tweed

11.13.12 //

In the past few months, I’ve had a couple of designs published in books that I have yet to share here on the blog. The first of which is the Alpine Tweed cardigan, as featured in Ann Budd’s new book The Knitter’s Handy Book of Top Down Sweaters.

This book is a sequel to Ann’s wildly popular Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweaters, which was published in 2002 and acts as a sort of sweater recipe book for various styles and gauges of yarn. With her new book, Ann set out to create a companion handbook for garments that are worked from the top down (from collar to hem). The top-down knitting experience is fun and has some great advantages, like being able to try a garment on as you work in order to execute exact sleeve and body lengths.

Ann asked 4 designers to each create a garment for the various yoke styles outlined in the book: Raglan, Saddle-Shoulder, Set-In Sleeve and Round Yoke. Alongside my garment are designs from fellow BT Design Team Member Véronik Avery, Wool People 1 contributor Ann Hanson, and my dear friend Pam Allen. Ann has also designed several sweaters in each style. What good company!

My assignment was the set-in sleeve – an architecture that begins with the fronts and back of the garment yoke being worked separately down from the (shaped) shoulder seam to the underarm, where they are joined into one piece and the rest of the shaped body is worked seamlessly to the hem. The top-down sleeves – which are picked-up and worked directly from the armholes – begin with short rows to complete the set-in cap shaping. After completion of the cap, the sleeves are worked in a traditional circular fashion, shaped with decreases to the cuff.

The design features a fitted, hourglass waist, stranded colorwork yoke and body trim, three-quarter sleeves and a contiguous ribbed trim that tackles the body hem and button band in one fell swoop. The trim also features increased miter lines at the corner turns as well as a Tubular Bind Off, worked in a contrasting color. The ribbed collar is a subtle ribbed crescent – also shaped with short rows – higher at the back neck than at the front.

The design is knit with Shelter in colors Soot (sweater color), Sweatshirt and Homemade Jam (colorwork/trim colors).

I wanted to create a garment with a classic silhouette and plenty of subtle details. It was a fun experiment for me since I haven’t done too much designing with a top-down set-in sleeve construction. It’s always good to change things up and try something new!

Categories Original Patterns, SHELTER, Sweaters

Wool People

07.25.11 //

You may have noticed a cloak of silence shrouding BT in the last month. Summer is funny like that. For knitters it’s a hard time that we ride out with hope for chillier temperatures, but behind the scenes it always becomes the most chaotic time of the year as we busy ourselves with big Fall surprises. This year we’ve got a lot of things up our sleeve; a few large-scale projects that have swirled us into their summer vortex.Thankfully, today we are finally ready to release the first of our Fall concepts.

It’s been almost a year since the launch of SHELTER. I remember well all the planning, waiting, nerves, & excitement that accompanied the months leading up to that release – but probably most of all, how I couldn’t wait to get to designing with a yarn that really spoke to me. And as I began (and continue) my own creative work with the yarn, I found myself beginning to wonder what this wool might inspire in the hands of other Creatives whose work I have admired from afar.

This simple curiousity became the basis for WOOL PEOPLE: a semi-annual design series curated by Brooklyn Tweed, the first installment of which we are happy to release just in time for high knitting season.

For this first collection of patterns, I sought out designers both near and far whose work – which comprises its own wonderful variety – I have long watched and admired. My plan: arm them with a healthy dose of wool and see what happens.

The process was so rewarding. We were able to work directly with each designer, discussing their ideas and sketches to construct a collection that we think will appeal to the sensibilities of our readers, and will welcome Fall in the best way knitters know how. The creative dialogue that is at the heart of this series has been invigorating – a welcome contrast to the virtual solitude I was in just a year ago!

Our first group of Wool People has been a joy to work with. Some of their names you may recognize, others you may not, but in all cases I hope there will be something for everyone to enjoy.

We’ve put together a beautiful Look Book for this collection, highlighting all the designs with full color photographs, as well as providing readers with information about our Guest Designer Team. To get the best feel of the whole collection, we encourage you to take a look!

Each design in the collection is available now as a PDF download at Brooklyn Tweed or on Ravelry.

As the publishing world continues to change rapidly, designers are working differently. Having designed independently for some time now, I see the problems that designers face in this industry every day. We’ve worked hard to put together a model that compensates designers fairly (and gratefully!) for their work. Starting today, a portion of all proceeds from digital pattern sales will always go directly to the individual designer for the life of the pattern. In the spirit of collaboration, each designer also retains the rights to their own work. We plan to continue developing this model in future WP collections to best serve those people who have made this project possible.

It’s been a hot summer and we here at Brooklyn Tweed HQ are certainly daydreaming of Fall’s arrival. I hope some of the designs and photographs featured today inspire you to do the same (if you weren’t already!).

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Resources // The Wool People Volume 1 Look Book is viewable here. Pattern collection is available on BT here and also available on Ravelry here. All designs in this collection are knit with Brooklyn Tweed SHELTER, available here.

Categories Original Patterns, Photography, SHELTER, Sweaters, Wool People

Brownstone

03.30.11 //

I’m thrilled to introduce a new mens sweater pattern today. The Brownstone Pullover has been a long time coming – I finished it in late Fall but have only recently been able to clear my head enough to put it through the pattern-creation gauntlet. The benefit of its long shelf-life, I guess, is that the garment has gotten a lot of field-testing. I could barely stop wearing it this winter. It works wonderfully with a collared shirt and wool jacket or overcoat.

The sweater is a classic style with a ribbed shawl collar worked from a deep rectangular neck opening. Raglan shaping makes for a nice fit in the shoulders while still remaining comfortable and casual. It’s a great garment for layering into various wardrobe combinations and more importantly, it’s fun to knit.

The sweater is worked seamlessly, in the round, from the bottom up. The collar is picked up directly from the completed body and shaped using short-rows, making the entire garment a one-piece construction.

The wooden toggles and twisted cord button loop details add a special touch and look wonderful with Shelter. The sample shown here was knit in our Woodsmoke heather.

The pattern is written for sizes S-XXL and recommends 3-5 inches of positive ease. I almost always have a stockinette-based garment project somewhere in my knitting baskets, for those days when autopilot knitting is required. I think this is a great project for that spot, while maintaining just enough detailing to keep it from monotony.

I hope you enjoy it!

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Resources: Pattern is available through Brooklyn Tweed and Ravelry. Shelter yarn is available here.