Patterning

My first fair isle sweater (the one this is sort of supposed to replace) is made of 6 patterns which repeat over and over again. I changed the colour for each repeat of the pattern, so there are no two stripes alike. I liked the way that there was repetition but with variation.

This time around, I didn't have the freedom with colour. My chosen colours were only going to work in particular groups which meant that I would end up having colour stripes repeating themselves.

I decided therefore to play with the patterns. No two stripes have the same patterns. The number of colours in the group determines the size of the stripe, within a few rows. That is enough constraint and freedom to make quite a nice design fall into place.

Because I have more of the pink colours, those are the big stripes and the greens/greys are the short stripes. The short stripes on either side of the pink are usually exactly the same number of rows (grey underneath the pink and green on the top). The end result of this is that if you look at it from the inside (where the patterns are harder to tell) you get a sense of little grey, big pink, little green stripes repeating.

On the outside you do, too, but then you see the variation in the patterns more.