Knit a Field of Flowers in Your Knitting Projects

I know it’s said April showers bring May flowers, but we already have plenty of flowers in bloom where I live, and it’s got me in the mood to knit some projects with flowers on them. Or at least talk about knitting projects with flowers on them, LOL. Let’s take a look.

I love the bold, folk art flowers on the Harvest Flowers Sweater from Jessie Mead Designs. This project uses DK weight yarn and comes in nine sizes, with a fit range of 28 to 60 inches, or 71 to 152.5 cm. There’s 6-8 inches (15-20.5 cm) of ease built into the pattern, so the actual smallest finished circumference is 36 inches/91.5 cm. It uses four colors of yarn and has two chart options. The charts indicate where you should catch the long floats, which is super helpful for those with less colorwork knitting experience. Get the pattern on Ravelry.

Another pretty floral sweater is the appropriately named Rosie Sweater from LE KNIT by Lene Holme Samsøe. This one uses a lace and a fingering weight yarn held together to make a DK weight (you could also just use a DK weight if you don’t want to use a mohair carryalong). It has six size options, with an actual chest circumference ranging from 40.5 to 63 inches, or 103 to 160 cm. It’s meant to have 7.75 to 12.25 inches, or 20-32 cm of positive ease. This one is also on Ravelry.

Maybe you don’t feel like knitting a giant sweater right now (I know I don’t!). So how about a pretty floral cowl instead? This one, by Daphne Knits, is called the spring cowl, though you could make the flowers a different color if you want it to look a little less spring. You can make the pattern as a cowl, a double loop, a triple loop or a scarf. Either way it uses three colors of sock yarn and features a pretty lace edging.

I also love this floral patchwork knit blanket from Yarnspirations. The Meadow Mosaic Knit Blanket calls for seven colors of super bulky yarn, but you can use as many or as few as you like. The flowers are actually worked in duplicate stitch so this is an easy knit (but admittedly has a lot of finishing work). If you wanted to make a little less work, make the squares in panels instead of knitting each one individually, and don’t put flowers on all the patches.

This is a project that kind of stopped me in my tracks when I saw it while scrolling Ravelry. It’s such a fun contrast of a semisolid color worked in stockinette stitch and a more tonal yarn worked in a feather and fan variation.

(See more about feather and fan in this post on my blog; I also have a feather and fan scarf if you want to practice.)

The Nitty Wrap from Renate Dziedataja is worked in fingering weight yarn from a Finnish mill, and the name is the Finnish word for meadow. You of course can use whatever yarn you have handy.

It’s even more interesting because the project is worked from one short end across to make a long rectangle, and the two different sections are joined using intarsia. Generally we think of intarsia as being used for colorwork, so this is a fun different use of it. The lace section is charted in the pattern but it’s pretty easy to follow.

And of course it’s totally optional but to add a little more interest and tie the two colors of yarn together the designer also added some embroidery along the short edges on the stockinette side. A drawing of what she did is included but you can also add different designs if you’d rather.

The shawl has I-cord edgings to give it a nice finished look that doesn’t take away from the organic simplicity of the design.

As shown, the shawl measures about 22.5 inches/57 cm wide and 59 inches/150 cm long. You can of course adjust this according to your preference, the amount of yarn you have and the gauge you are getting. Try a thicker yarn to make a wider shawl if you like.

This pattern is available in English and Latvian for free on Ravelry.

Photo: Renate Dziedataja

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