One of my favourite winter yarns is Rowan Brushed Fleece. I’ve knitted up a few garments using this yarn and had in mind that I would love to knit a jumper (that’s a sweater, just in case you didn’t know) with a large motif design on the front. So, here’s how I ended up with a Snowflake Jumper…

It wasn’t hard for me to decide to use Rowan Brushed Fleece for this jumper, as I mentioned before, it is one of my favourite yarns. Why do I like it so much? Well, there are many reasons.

1. It is a bulky yarn so it knits up quick.
2. Although a lovely bulky chunky yarn it knits up into a lightweight, cosy and cuddly fabric.
3. This cosy result is thanks to the blend of alpaca, wool and polyamide. Don’t you just love alpacas!
4. It comes in 16 different colours ranging from darks to lights and pastel to muted shades.
   
   

   Rowan Brushed Fleece Shades

   Although, if you check out the English Yarns website you will find 24 shades available as they still have some of the discontinued shades in limited quantities including the one I used for the main section called Heather.
   

   

   Brushed Fleece in Heather

5. As I mentioned earlier I’ve already knitted several garments in Brushed Fleece so I know how great it is to knit with and how it washes and wears beautifully! Take a look at these lovely Brushed Fleece knits…

Now for the design of the jumper. I wanted to end up with a simple design to showcase the large motif.

1. My finished jumper would not be fitted but not too loose either.
2. Sleeves would be raglan rather than dropped.
3. The length of the jumper.
4. I like the neck on Wintry and Trent so I would finish it up with something along those lines.
5. I would knit it in stocking stitch.

After deciding all this and coming up with a design I knitted a tension square so I could work out the number of stitches and rows I would need for the main body of the jumper. This was important for the size and placement of the motif.

You might be thinking that you would like to add a motif to a jumper but could never design the complete pattern. Well, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to design the jumper yourself you can just choose a simple Brushed Fleece design such as Polar by Quail Studio…

By reading the pattern’s instructions you can work out how many stitches you will have across the front of the jumper in your chosen size and how many rows from the bottom of the jumper to neck. Also, make a note of where the armhole decreases commence and how many working stitches will remain across the front after the armhole decreases.

Alternatively, you could choose a design that knits to the same tension as Brushed Fleece or whatever yarn you have chosen for your motif jumper.

Now for the motif. I had to decide what motif I wanted to use. I did consider a heart…

And also a star? But five points?

or 6 points?

But decided on a snowflake…but what kind of snowflake? If you Google “snowflake designs” you get something like this plus hundreds of other pages…

After much searching I finally decided to go for something like this…

And, as it is a snowflake after all, I would knit it using Brushed Fleece in the shade Cove, the white shade.

So, how did I get from the design above to this below…

I’ll let you know when I continue the story of my Snowflake Jumper in my next blog post…

In the meantime, check out these other Brushed Fleece blog posts:
Cuddly Cardigan in Brushed Fleece to read all about my Esk cardigan.
Soft and Cuddly Brushed Fleece: Give Me More! to read all about jumpers Trent and Wintry.

Esther x