Tradewind Knitwear Designs

Macedonian Sweater

This was a dare! I was commissioned by a friend to: 'knit a sweater to express my ancestry'. I began with reading about traditional Macedonian textiles ( some of which can be seen at The Museum for Textiles) and considering some of the features of the traditional garments such as fringes, tassels, plackets and brocade textures. After deliberation as to how to interpret these features in knitting, I set out to put them all together to form a whole.

For the brocade texture, I chose to interpret using a knit and purl pattern in the background fabric, leaving windows for later embroidery. Many of the patterns were very complex, and wherever possible I added the third or fourth colours to a row of knitting afterwards using Swiss darning / duplicate stitch. The sleeves were worked using intarsia technique for the stripes, adding the details later, and stranded knitting for the upper band. In order to adjust the weights of the different yarns and to achieve the colours and lustre I was after, silk embroidery and/or Rayon threads were used in conjunction with some of the yarns. The back of the neck area offered an opportunity to incorporate a section of Macedonian Stitch, a mosaic stitch pattern, which caused a few tension difficulties when combining it with the diagonal rows - but it worked out in the end!

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