Twist Collective Blog

Design Process: Sarabande

Details

Published on Monday, 07 December 2009 15:44

by Kristen TenDyke, orginally posted to her blog

When Sarabande was first born, I had many different visions for how it might look. I knew there would be stockinette stitch for the majority of the body and sleeves, and I wanted a fair isle band around the lower part of the yoke, but I was indecisive about using bobbles or eyelets, garter or seed stitch.

The first swatch I had made was in a skin-tone color and had bobbles. After discussing with my friends what the skin-tone bobbles looked like, I promptly frogged that swatch, and reknit it to show eyelets.

I liked it better than its "indecent" sibling, but the fair isle strands are visible through the eyelet holes which I wasn't entirely fond of. I tried seed stitch to create a subtle band below the fair isle band. I liked how soft and discrete the seed stitch made this band appear, but I was unsure how it would look for the entire yoke.

I swatched the bobbles again — this time in a different color, and I tried a garter stitch band, for a more bold statement. I liked both the garter stitch and the seed stitch, each for their own reasons.

I decided to submit both versions to Twist Collective, and let them decide. Kate Gilbert choose to go bold, with the garter stitch and contrasting blue and green colors. I'm really happy with the way the finished sweater came out.

You can't see them in many of the photos, but there are lovely darts gracing both the front and back of the sweater — used to shape the waist and create subtle, elegant vertical lines. That's one of my favorite features.