Fishscale sequin sweater patterns
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Can anyone refer me to a source for fishscale sequin knitted patterns. The tailoring shop I worked in in the 60’s used to line these for a dress shop. Some “Little Lady” custom knitted these for the dress shop. I would love to find the patterns for these. Thanks, Bill
Replies
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Hi Bill,
Do you mean a sleeveless sheath style dress? Or just knitting patterns in general with sequins? I can
dig out my Vogue Knitting magazines tonight for a sleeveless dress and a cardigan with sequins.
If you mean any pattern with sequins that's easy. Just start with a simple (i.e. not too much shaping, simple stockinette stitch) knitting pattern and a pile of sequins with a hole diameter that can fit on the yarn without fraying the yarn. Thread the sequins onto the yarn. Knit catching the sequins to the front of the knitting at regular intervals. The threading is tedious if you have a lot of sequins.
You can do this on a knitting machine using an intarsia carriage. For each row you'll have to position each sequin behind the gate pegs; a strip of scotch tape helps to keep the sequins put. To lessen the awkwardness of getting behind the knitting consider using reverse stockinette stitch which will put the sequins on the front of the knitting.
--lin
*Lin, I guess I didn't think it could be that simple. My only question would be on a simple pattern, knit one row, purl one row, do you flip the sequin to the front only on the knit row and not the purl, or on each row? The sweaters were simple bolero style with long sleeves and knitted probably on a fairy fine (?) needle with fine yarn. Bill
*Hi Bill, Yes, flip the sequins to the front of the knitting whether you're knitting from the front (knit) or back (purl). As you know the finer the yarn the longer it takes to knit the durn thing ;). Not knowing how difficult it is to find sequins with different sized holes, I'd consider just adapting a sport weight yarn pattern and look for sequins with a larger hole to accomodate the yarn. You can figure the number of sequins to string by knitting a swatch with a premeasured hank of yarn. If you're doing a lot of these with the same pattern shape over and over, like for a small clothing line, I'd seriously consider renting or buying a knitting machine. Positioning the sequins is certainly tedious but it's still a *lot* faster than knitting by hand. The standard gauge knitting machines (4.5mm) knit a fingering weight yarn quite nicely. A lower end (read stockinette stitch only) Brother knitting machine will cost you about $500. I think a cheap Bond will be about $300.Unless you're going out of the country it will be difficult to find hand knitters to justify the price of the garment. If you do decide to get a knitting machine or need help figuring out shaping I can certainly help you with that. I do lots of hand and machine knitting and regularly design my own patterns.--lin
*Lin, do you know of any forum for machine knitters, or are we a dying breed?
*Hi Jean, hmmm, dying breed? I think knitting, sewing, and all "women's" crafts are a dying breed. There will always be a core of crazy folks like you and me and the folks at this forum that cling to making things by hand but in general the information isn't being passed on to the next generation. On that positive note... I don't know of any forum as extensive or as sophisticated as Threads. There's a knitting forum at Knitter's Magazine that sometimes has machine knitting stuff:http://www.knittinguniverse.comanother discussion...http://home.eznet.net/~mkkitty/and some interesting machine knitters' web pages:http://members.aol.com/jinnyd/index.htmlhttp://www.magiccables.com/http://www.marciahauser.nu/http://www.jigsawknit.freeserve.co.uk/http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vicky_gallagher/--lin
*Thanks, Lin, will check them out.
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