#WIP Fair Isle Brooch Designs

Just a quick post today to share some Fair Isle #WIP. It's been a really busy week, but I'm pleased that I've finished some new Fair Isle brooch designs that are now on their way to a new stockist (more on this soon). I really enjoy seeing the process through from colouring the initial Fair Isle design on knitter's graph paper, to hand knitting the pieces in lovely two ply British wool. You can find similar pieces in my Etsy shop, with more new designs coming soon too!

Have a lovely Sunday!

Small Project Challenge- Fair Isle Knitted Baby Hat

For my latest Small Project Challenge I have made a Fair Isle Knitted baby hat! A friend has recently had a baby boy so I thought that this would be the ideal chance to put my Fair Isle skills into practice on a larger scale.

To make the slouchy beanie I used three shades of beautiful Drops Merino Extra Fine DK, which was so lovely to knit with and has knitted up into such a soft fabric. The pattern is from King Cole Baby Book 7, which is full of such sweet knitting patterns for boys and girls from birth to seven years- check it out if you're looking for a project!

I started off using a denim blue, mid blue and a steel grey, but I found the steel grey a bit lilac in tone so a lovely friend came to the rescue with a spare ball of cream (thank you) !

I've just got to hope it fits him now, but if it's a little big at least he can grow into it!

I really enjoyed Fair Isle knitting on a larger scale, although I had an awful lot of ends to sew in at the end! The next step in challenging my Fair Isle skills will be to knit a Fair Isle jumper or cardigan, but perhaps I'll make a baby version to practice before I make one for myself.

What have you been making lately? I'd love to see your craft projects, share in the comments below!

New Work- Hand Knitted Fair Isle Necklaces

I've been busy working on some new pieces for my Fair Isle jewellery range and I'm excited to share the first of my new Fair Isle necklaces! I hand knitted the necklace to my own Fair Isle design in beautiful British wool and the knit encapsulates light wooden beads that tie with ribbon. This is my first prototype of Fair Isle necklace in this style and I am going to experiment with other colours and designs to add to my Etsy and Folksy shops soon. I'll keep you posted! 

I find the Fair Isle process very therapeutic and very rewarding. One of the reasons I love knitting so much is because you are creating your own fabric. Maybe one day I'll go one step further and try spinning my own yarn!

This is a real statement piece that can be dressed up or down and is a great way to wear wool every day! 

I've been following the Fair Isle tradition by using a maximum of 5 colours per design

The nature of the design means the necklace is reversible, so you have two looks in one!

You can check out my other Fair Isle necklaces and brooches here. Watch this space for more new designs!

WIP- New Fair Isle Jewellery #2

The Fair Isle practice continues here at Louise Dawson Design! As you may know, I have previously hand knitted a fair isle jewellery collection in Shetland wool. I loved using the Jaimesons 4ply to make these, but I'd like to make more complex designs and I've now chosen to make a new range using Susan Crawford Fenella 2ply.  In this post I shared with you the start of some Fair Isle brooch designs in this beautiful 2ply British wool

I used one of the knitted samples to make a round brooch using a cover button but I thought that this hid the fair isle design too much, so I've knitted the same design and made it up as a small square brooch. I'm much happier with this, I think there is more scope for trying out different designs within this shape.

I'm so enjoying making up my own fair isle designs using knitter's graph paper and coloured pencils!

I'm trying out lots of colour ways to find out what works too. I've just ordered a few more colours in the Fenella to add in too- it's such a beautiful yarn, I find it hard to resist!

I'll continue to share my fair isle progress- I'm aiming to create a whole new fair isle collection

WIP- New Fair Isle Jewellery

I thought I'd show you a little look behind the scenes at what I'm working on at the moment! I'm already thinking of Winter designs and adding to my Fair Isle Jewellery range that you can find in my Etsy Shop. I made these pieces using 4ply Shetland wool, which is beautiful and is traditionally used for Fair Isle Designs. However, due to the small scale of the jewellery pieces I felt I couldn't knit as detailed pieces as I would have liked, so for the new designs I'm using a 2ply yarn!

Working out some new designs on knitters graph paper

A friend told me about Susan Crawford Vintage yarns and the Fenella two ply. The colours are inspired by a vintage colour pallette and it's a British grown, spun and dyed yarn too- soo lovely! I've just got a small selection of colours to use at the moment but I'm sure I'll be investing in more of the range!

At the moment I'm just experimenting to see what works. It's more tricky than I thought to select colours that work together in the pattern and It's quite a challenge to fit lots of Fair Isle detail into such a tiny piece. As you can see, once I've used the knitted rectangle to cover the button some of the Fair Isle detail is lost, so I will be working on this!

It's fascinating to see the stitches on the page come to life in knitted form and I'm really enjoying the experimentation. I'll share more as this project progresses!

Hand Knitted Shetland Wool Brooches

On Wednesday I shared some new materials and today I've been knitting with the beautiful Shetland wool, making these Fair Isle brooches! If you've been reading along lately you'll have seen my many and varied experiments in learning Fair Isle knitting, not all of them successful, so I'm really pleased to be able to share some finished pieces with you. Here are a few Instagram snaps from today...

I love to use Bamboo needles but I don't have any that are fine enough to use with 4ply. My tension is very loose so I've had to go down to 2.25mm metal needles to achieve the correct tension- it's a little like knitting with cocktail sticks (!) but I'm finding the finer yarn looks a lot less bulky for this project than the DK wool I had been using

These are the pieces I've finished today, but I've knitted pieces in other colour combinations and I'll be making them into brooches later this week. I'll keep you posted!

Getting there...

The Fair Isle jewellery collection is gradually beginning to take shape. I've been busily hand knitting Fair Isle pieces and felting them in the washing machine, cutting them into the brooch shapes and embellishing with a little scattering of sparkly Swarovski Crystals that highlight the colours of the beautiful British wool. I'm planning to make some non felted Fair Isle brooches too, I'll share those as soon as they're done.

However, although I love the Wendy Ramsdale DK yarn I've been using, it's beautiful to knit with and it felts beautifully (as well as being 100% British made) I'm feeling like the colour palette may be a little limited. I've been looking at some ranges in Shetland wool that come in a huge range of colours, so I'm going to order some of those to try.

This is one of the larger pieces I knitted and then felted

I'd recommend The Very Easy Guide To Fair Isle Knitting if you'd like to learn too. It's the best book for beginners that I've seen as it takes you through the stages of learning to Fair Isle in manageable lessons, from the very basics of regular knitting, to holding and stranding the yarns in Fair Isle patterns and then on to lots of stitch patterns and projects to apply them to. I didn't find it very easy at first, but I think it's a case of perseverance!

Do you have any Fair Isle tips you'd like to share?

Learning Fair Isle with a beautiful British wool!

Earlier in the year I began experimenting with learning Fair Isle Knitting and this weekend, with my mind on a Winter jewellery collection, I have taken up my needles again to make some more Fair Isle samples! I'm not sure where this collection is going to take me yet, so I'm just trying to master the basics and then I hope to mix it up a little!

I have discovered a beautiful new yarn by Wendy that I have used to create these pieces.  Ramsdale is a pure wool, Double Knit yarn, born, bred and made in Yorkshire and it's lovely to work with - I'm very excited to be using a British product and I'm looking forward to experimenting with it more later in the week. I'm gradually buying all of the colours in the range so it's going to get colourful! I also think it'll make great felt so I'm planning on felting some pieces later in the week and also incorporating some cables into the Fair Isle. I'll post some updates later in the week!

I think I'm getting the hang of stranding the yarn on the back between colours-  it's getting neater!