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Review: Knitting Pleats

March 24, 2015 by Sarah White

knitting pleats bookThere are all sorts of fun ways to add texture to your knitting, and one really cool way to do it that a lot of knitters don’t play with much is knitting pleats.

Pleats are usually worked by knitting some length of knitting, picking up stitches somewhere down from the knitting needle and working the picked up stitches along with the live stitches to make a permanent fold in the knitting.

It’s a fun technique to play with, and Olga Pobedinskaya shares a lot of different ways to use it in her book Knitting Pleats: Stunning Garments and Accessories.

The book begins with general instructions on how to knit pleats and the different kinds of pleats that are possible. It covers some other special techniques before delving into the 17 projects (4 rated easy, 11 intermediate and 2 advanced).

There’s some really interesting stuff in here. Some of the projects that caught my eye include the Puffy Pleats Scarf, which uses mohair yarn and extra large pleats for fluffy texture; the fun shaped Concertina Bag, which folds like an accordion and offers lots of room for all your necessities; the Sectional Pleats T-Shirt, which actually comes off looking pretty simple with its pleats that work almost like darts; the Pleated-Trim Jacket, which uses pleats at the edges and down the center back for an architectural statement; and the Elongated-Back Pullover, a bulky high-low project that’s great for layering.

If you like knitting projects that are just a little different and that make a big fashion statement without too much work, this is a book well worth checking out.

Have you knit from it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

 

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Comments

  1. Cindy Holman says

    March 21, 2017 at 10:12 am

    Love quite a few if the designs esp. the pleated jacket and the multicolored pullover will the hem variation. Thanks for the chance to win! Cindy

Have you read?

Knit a Log Cabin Blanket with All Your Scraps

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn. 

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small. 

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches. 

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come. 

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you. 

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?). 

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry. 

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns. 

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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