“What do you do when you have more swatches than you can handle? Make a swatchigan – a cardigan made of swatches!”
Year after year, our Design Team will knit and crochet swatches upon swatches for our new design collections. We dream up the designs and write patterns using those swatches but with over 50 pieces a season, they do add up!
You may wonder what we do with all of them? In the past, we’ve kept them for reference in pattern writing or we archive them for a future idea. It wasn’t until this year we decided to do something more.
It all started in our Team chat.
We began to talk about various sweaters we’ve seen in the wild made from different kind of swatches. Soon, we were sending each other images of various ideas and couldn’t help but fall in love with making a cardigan.
AND when asked in the group chat, “Who would take up the charge to do this”, Åsa replied, “Sure, I mean how long would it take?” (Famous Last Words)
Åsa began by laying out the swatches in various rectangle shapes. Moving them like puzzle pieces she thoughtfully placed them into a jacket shape. The key is not perfection, it’s to play with what could work where!
As you can see above, she left room for a head, used some smaller swatches on the shoulders and laid out the two fronts, back and sleeves. Again, don’t strive for perfection – wonky is just right!
If you’re thinking of making your own swatch cardigan with various-sized swatches in your house, Åsa suggests taking some tracing paper and drawing out a basic silhouette to place your pieces on top of.
To give you an idea, our sweater measures about 22″ inches a cross and 14″ down from the armholes.
Once Åsa finished sewing the pieces together (and she even wove in the ends!!), I picked up around-the-neck and front button bands with some Lanas Quick to bring it all together. Again, no crazy math here, I simply picked up about 2 sts per 3 rows and even then had to rip back to ensure it was even.
And Whola! A beautiful and functional cardigan that goes with a lot of outfits.
Now that it’s done we are looking forward to next seasons’ cardigan!
OH maybe something like this sampler cardigan?
Åsa…
Åsa, where’d you go?
Cute! Love the idea. Makes me wish I knit swatches more often. Did you ever find Asa?
I think she’s still hiding from me! LOL – Margaux
I personally love the idea of utilising all swatch pieces like this! I think it’s brilliant 👏 Looks chic and goes with my principle of no waste!!!
Thank you for this entertaining newsletter! How do you pronounce! Åsa’s name?
it’s pronounced “Ah-sa”, thank you for asking!
Love the Cream Cardigan. Are those swatches or are you making a pattern..
The cream cardigan is just an inspirational image we found – but we love it too and want to make it…. one day!
love it!! I’m going to seek out a pattern that will give me this look..
where can I by the pattern !
there’s no pattern, this was one of a kind 🙂
I love the idea! I used to keep all my swatches from many many years of knitting, and never had an idea of what to do with them like you guys did!! I thinkm its an absolutely wonderful idea.
I think it’s a very cute idea as well. And brilliant as Thelma said in another post.
I think it’s a good idea but l wouldn’t make it. I had enough trouble making a Lego blanket.