Mosaic Knitting

At one time there was a style of sweater called the "T" sweater. I was very interested in the design because it was based on old peasant styles of using straight pieces of different sizes put together to make a garment. When I was at Berkeley way way back in the day, I used to go to the library back in the stacks (I had a stack pass, much envied at the time). I loved to look at a very old volume on dressmaking that was published in the early 1800's. It was a large volume with little diagrams on every page showing the retangles to cut out of the narrow lengths of cloth available at the time to make all kinds of garments. I later used the diagrams to make my husband a shirt which he wore to craft fairs to sell his photographs around the time of the Bicentennial, and I made myself a sunbonnet based on an 1830 or so model. I liked the idea of making garments from simple rectangular and square shapes. I didn't think of applying this to knitwear until later, when the style of "T" sweaters started to show up in magazines. Then I realized that I could whip them right out on the knitting machine. They are easy to sew together because there are no curved areas at the armholes.

Keep in mind that this was the hippie era, and clothes had a definite peasant look to them. I decided to make some "T" sweaters with bands of mosaic knitting. Barbara Walker's books were new at the time, and I bought every one of them as soon as I could find them. Of course, they didn't cost much then. I loved the idea of mosaic knitting because you got the same effect as fairisle without having to carry more than one yarn across the back of the work. You knit two rows of each color and use slipped stitches to bring the previous color up into the row you are working on. There are a lot of mosaic designs in the book, some lovely and some kind of creepy like the Imp one shown here. Mosaic knitting is very easy to do on the knitting machine. The yarn I used for these sweaters was a sport yarn available at a VIP yarn outlet in Fairfax Virginia. Oh yarn outlet, how I missed you when you closed. The yarn washes beautifully and came in many colors.

The first sweater I tried was knit in 4 pieces. There is a rectangle for the bottom front, one for the bottom back, and the sleeves and upper bodice are knit in two pieces from cuff to neck, then kirchnered up the middle back. The closeup of the strawberry pattern shows how nice this kind of color work looks when done on the machine.

Here is the mosaic pattern as it appears in the book:

The second sweater is knit more like a regular set-in-sleeve sweater with a front, back, and two sleeves. The armholes are square and indented about 3". The sleeves are picked up from the armhole and knit straight, but there is no reason why you couldn't taper the sleeves or shape them however you wanted. These sweaters are certainly easy to sew together.

I have been thinking of trying mosaic knitting again. I think that a plain cardigan would look nice with mosaic bands, and mosaic also looks good in garter stitch. Maybe I will try this idea out on a vest first.

Another sunny day today, and I have to remember to go vote in the primary.