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GEOMETRIC KNIT BLANKETS
INSPIRED BY patchwork quilts, tiles and other colourful repeating motifs, this book is filled with stunning patterns for knitted blankets. Designer Margaret Holzmann has used a fascinating range of techniques and construction methods to create 30 innovative, large-scale projects.
‘Carnival’, for example, has a pattern of overlapping circles; these are formed from blocks incorporating short-row shapes surrounded by triangles of colour. The ‘Coast’ blanket uses alternating short-row wedges to form undulating lines, and strips are joined as you go.
A modular approach is used for the ‘Diamond Rings’ design, where strips of squares, triangles and hexagons give the appearance of interconnected rings when joined together. Striped stars are worked in modules on ‘Metropolitan’, while mitred squares make up the ‘Granada’ blanket, and diamond wedges in speckled yarns form the no-sew ‘Horizons’.
Some blankets are worked centre-out, such as a design with a clever pinwheel effect, while others are worked outside-in. One such design is ‘Pulsar’, which features rippling stripes of colour. ‘Ric Rac’ mimics traditional fabric quilts, and is formed from individual blocks and half-blocks of colour, united with zigzags of garter stitch. Cog-like six-pointed motifs decorate ‘Connect’, which take shape as you join strips of triangles and rectangles of colour.
There are so many clever uses of colour in this book that it can be hard to pick highlights, but personal favourites include ‘Pueblo’, a mitred design featuring zigzag stripes sprinkled with diamonds of colour, and the complex circular motifs formed from wedges on the ‘Sunburst’ blanket. The book includes suggestions for alternative border methods.
Margaret is a former engineer at a jet propulsion lab, and her methodical, scientific approach really shines through. The format of many of her patterns may look unfamiliar, due to the complex nature of the construction methods, but they are all completely logical if you take them one step at a time. Her book offers the opportunity to create colourwork patterns you never thought possible with the knitted stitch.