Review: Customize Your Knitting

Most knitting patterns for garments assume that most knitters are the same shape, and that shape is relatively rectangular.

The fact that knitting has standards for sizing makes it easier to write knitting patterns, but it doesn’t make it easy to knit a garment that really fits you if you don’t happen to fall within those standard sizes.

The good news is more designers are making patterns with more diverse shapes and empowering knitters to go beyond the pattern by educating them in how to measure their bodies and their knitting and alter garments to better suit their shape.

One of those designers is Margaret Hubert, whose book Customize Your Knitting is all about how to take a basic (or not-so-basic) pattern and adjust it to fit you better.

She looks at the basic body types — rectangle, triangle, inverted triangle and hourglass — and explores how you might need to change a knitting pattern to make it work better for you if you happen to be a different shape.

She shows knitters what they need to measure on their bodies and how to do it, and how these measurements can inform your choices when altering a pattern.

The book includes four sweater patterns of increasing difficulty, designed in the classic way for a straight body, but that also walk readers through possible alterations they could do to get a better fit for their body type.

For instance the Traveling Vines Pullover is shown in a simple straight shape for rectangular bodies and describes how to turn it into an open cardigan for a triangular body type, a closed cardigan with a ruffled collar for inverted triangle types and with shaping and embellished cuffs and edging for the hourglass shape.

She covers how to work with extra stitches within a stitch pattern and design options that might be better or worse for different body types. Actual patterns for the alternations with numbers are not given, so readers need to have the confidence to take her advice and descriptions and use them in patterns.

A section at the back offers advice on making your work more professional, from using swatches to joining new yarn, weaving in ends and sewing seams. She talks about how to add borders in knitting and crochet and add a zipper to the front of a cardigan. There are options for buttonholes and pockets and ideas for what to do if your project still doesn’t come out quite perfect.

Another section on embellishments shows different borders, edgings and additions to make your sweater unique.

This book is full of tips that will help you alter the designs within as well as other patterns to suit your style and your shape.

About the book: 112 pages, paperback with interior flaps, four patterns with four sizes each (as well as instructions for alterations). Published June 2016 by Creative Publishing International. Suggested retail $22.99.

Looking for knitting patterns for knitted Cardigans? Check out these Knitting patterns we found on Etsy.

Looking for pullover and sweater patterns? Check these books out.