Bunting

Every year Yarndale invites the yarn community to create themed decorative pieces for display at the show. The results are always spectacular, and add lots of colour to the environment of the show. This year the theme is triangular bunting featuring letters that form words related to the show, eg “knit”, “crochet”, “weave”, “friend”. The suggested crochet pattern for this produces a beautiful equilateral triangle worked from the centre outwards. The suggested knitting pattern is for a garter stitch triangle knitted bottom upwards. However, I wanted to produce knitted triangles that are closer in style to the crochet version. After a little trial and error, here is what I came up with, knitted with leftovers from stash.

I couldn’t find a pattern for knitted letters intended for appliqué, so I also devised my own letters to form the word “knit”. As there doesn’t seem to be such a pattern out there Marie has suggested that I now devise instructions for knitting the whole alphabet for appliqué and publish it as a for-sale pattern. Hmmm… 🤔

Anyway, here’s the triangle pattern. It can be worked in any weight of yarn on appropriate size of 20cm DPNs. My samples were knitted with 4ply (fingering) yarn on 2.5mm/US 1½ needles. 

It will be necessary to keep sts bunched on each needle during the last few rounds. Alternatively, once the piece is large enough you may prefer to transfer the sts to a 40cm/16” circular needle, placing stitch markers at the intersection points. 

In the pictured samples I worked the final pattern repeat in a contrast colour yarn. 

Pattern:

Using loop cast-on method and 20 cm DPNs of an appropriate size for your yarn, cast 9 sts onto one needle. 

Divide the 9 sts equally between 3 needles so that each needle holds 3 sts.

Round 1: [kfb, k to last st on needle, kfb] x3.

Round 2: purl.

Round 3: [kfb, k to last st on needle, kfb] x3.

Round 4: [pfb, p to last st on needle, pfb] x3.

Repeat these 4 rounds until the piece measures 6cm/2¼“ from the cast-on along the centre st column of one third of the triangle. Cast/bind off. Pull on the cast-on tail to close the centre hole, then weave in all ends. Press to size (20cm/8” wide at each edge) with a steam iron or wet piece and pin it out to size. 

Abbreviations:

k: knit

kfb: without dropping  the st from the needle, knit into the front of 1 st, then knit into the back of the same st. 

p: purl

pfb: without dropping the st from the needle, purl into the front of 1 st, then purl into the back of the same st. 

st(s): stitch(es)