Have you ever found a stunning stitch pattern, but it was 24 or 36 or 42 stitches wide. You want to use that stitch pattern, but it won’t play nicely with all the sizes? How do you make it work?
Let’s look at a couple of different methods you could use, depending on your design!
The first is to combine sizes. Instead of 9 or more individual sizes, you could combine sizes where appropriate. That could look like XS (S/M, L/XL, 2X/3X, 4X/5X) or 1 (2, 3, 4, 5), etc. This is a great idea for things that are oversized and / or require a lot of stitches. This idea or method would not work as well for smaller items with heavier weight yarn.
Or you can try using a smaller section of your larger pattern, and use this section to fill in gaps. If you have lots of cables, pick out one small cable section to fill in the gaps where needed. This can be at the edges of a sweater-where you can hide these slight differences in stitch patterns. How about filler sections between the larger main stitch pattern repeats? Or you could use the smaller section as a stand alone decorative feature.
The third method is to adjust the stitch pattern to be slightly different for each size. This works very well for thicker weight yarns or projects with small surface areas. I used this method on my Georgia sock pattern. When the stitch pattern couldn’t be adjusted for this sock pattern using either of the first two methods, I simply adjusted each chart for each size to be just slightly different. Overall, the look is the same, just slightly different per each size.
Have you ever found a stich pattern that you fell in love with and ended up using one of these methods? Of did you have a different way of solving your problem? Let me know in the comments below!
