Unpattern Textured Vest by Karen Aflke
Blue
It would make much more sense for
me just to have designed Blue from scratch, but I don’t have
enough experience with top-down knitting yet to feel empowered to do that. This
was just my second top-down project. If only there was a template or pattern
guide that I could use to walk me through the steps of planning out a sweater
for myself.
Enter Karen Alfke, knitting designer of the line, Unpatterns. These patterns are flexible templates that guide you through the process of designing your own sweater. Karen’s top down unpattern for a raglan sweater is the most popular, and she has several new unpatterns coming out early next year:
Top-down Raglan
There are six soon to be reavealed top-down Unpatterns:
• Set-In Sleeve Pullovers
• Set-In Sleeve Cardigans
• Raglan Pullovers
• Raglan Cardigans
• Sleeveless Pullovers
• Cardigan Vests
… and six bottom-up Unpatterns:
• Set-In Sleeve Pullovers
• Set-In Sleeve Cardigans
• Drop-Shoulder Pullovers
• Drop-Shoulder Cardigans
• Sleeveless Pullovers
• Cardigan Vests
Here are a few previews of Karen Aflke's upcoming unpatterns:
Top-down sleeveless shell
Top-down unpattern
with set-in sleeves
These unpatterns
allow you to design a garment suited to your unique measurements, and helps you
with your calculations and decision making as you go along. The patterns “hold
your hand,” so to speak, throughout the design process so that you don’t have
to feel scared and alone. You can find Karen on Ravelry under the name, Akabini.
I met Karen in the wonderful class,
Sweaters that Fit, which she teaches
regularly at Stitches. Sorry, folks,
her class at Stitches West this year is already sold out! Since not everyone
can make it to Stitches, Karen has
been kind enough to share the philosophy behind her line of Unpatterns:
Quote from Karen Alfke:
“Unpatterns
really emerged because a friend asked me for my basic sock ‘recipe.’ My
knitting family in Germany makes a great, all-over-ribbed sock, and at one
point I’d jotted down on a slip of paper how many stitches for which gauge, and
the shaping instructions written in a stitch-neutral language (like “take half
your stitches and do this…” rather than “K12, slip 1…”).
In the fall of 1998, I was
stalled on a book project, and during the creativity workshop I had enrolled in
to help me get unstuck, the idea for Unpatterns came
to me. Literally came to me, as a visual, in the shower (where all such great
universal ‘downloads’ come, right?).
The Sock Unpattern
was the first to be published, and basic garments soon followed. Most of the
garment Unpatterns were worked the way my aunt had
taught me: in the round as much as possible, without seams, and from the bottom
up, on circular needles. Pullovers are worked as tubes, with separate panels
for back and front emerging from the tube to be seamed together at the shoulders.
Sleeves are picked up around the armhole opening and worked with evenly-spaced decrease rows down to the cuff. Eventually, I
was also able to build in what I’d learned reading Barbara Walker’s great book,
Knitting from the Top, into the Top-Down Unpattern,
by far the biggest seller and the one I’ve taught from the most frequently in
workshops and at conferences.
Unpatterns offer the knitter three
things:
1) Freedom: to choose your own
yarn, your own gauge, your own size, your own design
elements
2) Flexibility: to accommodate
your own body’s shape, or to incorporate that cool detail
3) An Education: in the basics
of garment construction, which you can apply to the existing patterns you go on
to knit, so that you can make adjustments to them for fit and sizing with
confidence.
Unpatterns are available in yarn stores across the country. I am also happy to be a part of a web resource called Patternfish."
That was a quote from Karen Alfke. Stay
tuned for a full interview with Karen, which I
will be posting later this week.