Pattern: How to mock jacquard in your knitwear with Sabrina Walker
A summary on how we spent Earth Month, including Sabrina Walker leading YKWU and joining a panel on being a craftivist.
Producing a patterned cardigan or sweater by hand can be quite complicated, requiring additional colours and more yarn. In April, we collaborated with Sabrina Walker for our YKWU Sunday session, who provided a cheat sheet to applying mock jacquard embroidery to our knits.
Sabrina is a London-based knitwear designer who specialises in both hand and machine knitting. Since graduating from CSM, she has worked freelance to hand knitted several show pieces for JW Anderson and now works in the knitwear design team at Stella McCartney.
When we think about patterned knitwear, our minds most likely envision the well-known intarsia or fair isle designs. We noticed that mainstream knitwear is pretty plain, often using a single colour and basic stitching; in comparison to some of the funkier jumpers our parents and beyond wore, which we’d find at our go to thrift location - and that’s because it can be quite expensive to add colour to knitted items. The slower method and/or acquiring costs do not necessarily work with the fast moving industry. Jacquard is a popular technique used in woven fabrics identified by raised colour or pattern, and Sabrina talked us through how to create a jacquard effect with our knits.
YKWU 2024 has been more technique oriented than the previous years. Throughout the month of April, known as Earth month to us; our mother company Coléchi, were invited to host a YKWU event and join a panel as part of Fashion Revolution’s first Mend in Public series to celebrate their 10 year anniversary; and we took part in a panel, the following Monday at University East London (UEL). The long weekend was a celebration of Fashion in action through craftivism and mending. Joined by legends in the space, including Bel Jacobs, Suzi Warren and Sarah Corbett.
It only made sense to continue the theme during April’s YKWU session, Sabrina’s suggestion to hone in on the culture of upcycling, a topic we both share interest in, was perfect. The method Sabrina shared during her session is commonly seen to mend or appliqué - traditionally knitwear tends to embed the pattern through the production process. In contrast to methods such as print or embroidery whereby the textile is produced and the pattern is then placed on top.
During the session, we produced a swatch before following the knot structure with embroidery - walking around the Lab E20, we witnessed themes ranging from creatures and star signs. Not only is this a quick way to decorate a handmade item, but this is perfect for repairing existing knitwear, hiding holes, and taking a decorative approach to visible mending.
To achieve this pattern, we used:
A combo of chunky and thin yarn
6.5 mm needles
Colouring pencils to draw the shape we wanted
Darning needles to complete the swatch
You can download a step by step close up of the mock jacquard knit embroidery technique below.
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