I’ve been saving this sweater knitting pattern to share with you for a long time but I thought it would be appropriate to do around Banned Books Week, which is in October, and it’s good timing on my part because the theme for 2025 is “Censorship is so 1984.”
Catherine Waterfield designed this sweater to look like a Penguin Classics book, and the title she chose was Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
As an aside, I don’t think they make orange covered classics anymore in the United States, though there was a special set of 12 done recently that are fancier than the original orange books. (They do still print them in Australia and maybe other countries as well.)
This sweater is worked in pieces from the bottom up and seamed together. The colorwork includes stripes and intarsia (the lettering can be done with stranded knitting) and it has a folded hem.
It calls for “lofty DK” or worsted weight yarn and is available in four sizes. The bust measurements range from 36 to 46 inches, or 91 to 117 cm, and it’s meant to be worn with 2-4 inches/5-10 cm of positive ease.
You could of course use these charts on any sweater pattern that fits to make a banned book sweater of your own.
The colorwork is charted and the pattern includes a full alphabet for both the title and author name so you don’t have to make yours the same book if you don’t want to. You can make it your favorite book that is a Penguin classic, or even if it’s not I won’t tell.
The pattern is a free download on Ravelry. You can look through the finished projects other people have done for inspiration on different titles to use. Some of the projects didn’t use orange yarn, some don’t use the penguin logo, there’s even one that turned it into a tote bag. What book would you put on your sweater?
[Photo: Catherine Waterfield]
