Book Review – Knitting Pattern Essentials by Sally Melville

Knitting Pattern Essentials by Sally Melville RRP$24.99

You can’t pop a square peg into a round hole and you can’t pop everyone into the same knitting pattern. Sally shows you how to adapt and draft knitting patterns to suit your size. She helps you to calculate and fix patterns. She has also included 8 new patterns for you to try.

If you like to knit clothes then this book is a must have for your craft shelf!

Here is a little more information about the book from Random House.

• calculate your personal measurements, ease, and stitch patterns
• create a pattern for an existing garment that you love
• shape a variety of necklines, shoulders, sides, sleeves, and hemlines
• combine garment elements for an endless array of design possibilities
• rescue a project when it doesn’t turn out as expected
• finish your projects with a professional look
• knit 10 original projects that showcase the elements covered in the book

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I have not done a lot of big cross stitch projects, but sometimes even with small projects it can be hard to decide exactly where to begin and how to work through the chart if you’re working with multiple colors. The general categories for the possible methods are known as cross country and parking.

Cross country means that you’re working one color at a time, moving around the chart (or the section of the chart you’re working on) until you’re done with that color. Parking means you’re working in a smaller section and doing all the colors in that area, “parking” the threads by leaving them attached to the canvas but out of the way while you finish each section.

Royal Rows is a specific way of parking named by Alison Royal, which is explored in detail on a post on Stitching Daily.

The idea is that you’re working one “tower” of stitches at a time (she uses a section of 10 stitches across by 20 down, but you can do whatever makes sense to you). You work all the stitches of a color at a time, starting at the top left and working your way down. When you’re done with a color you can park it where needed in the section below your current tower (known as the dungeon) or in the “east tower,” which is the section to the right.

There’s also a specific way of dealing with thread ends when you’re done with a color. This is a super simplified version (head to the blog post at Stitching Daily to get all the details) but the basic idea is that you’re working from left to right and top to bottom across the work, parking the threads in the next section when you’re done with them and systematically choosing which color to work with next.

The whole idea of parking is kind of overwhelming to me though I will admit that it makes a lot of sense. I guess I need to try it on a smallish big project and see how it goes. Do you use the parking method of cross stitch? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Stitching Daily]

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