Making a sample swatch is necessary when your final piece needs to have certain dimensions. It is rare for the first sample to be perfect right away. It will take a few times and some adjusting before your sample is at its best.
Always knit the sample in the yarn that you want to use, with the structure or pattern that you want to use. The stitches on the edges can be slightly different in size and harder to measure in general. For this reason, the sample should be a bit bigger than 10 by 10 centimetres. A good size for a sample is 60 wales by 70 rows + 10 rows of waste yarn. If you're knitting a fabric that is known to pull in, like rib stitch or cables for example, you may want to increase the number of wales and rows a bit.
When you have knitted your sample, steam it as you would with your final piece. This relaxes the yarn and can change the dimensions quite a bit. Lay the steamed sample flat on a table and measure exactly how many stitches fit in 10 centimetres, as in the illustration below, without any pulling or bulking up the fabric. Measure as accurate as possible to make sure your final piece will have the right dimensions. We recommend measuring to one decimal place, for example, 44.3 stitches per 10 cm, or 5.0 stitches per 10 cm as in the illustration below.
Then measure the rows that fit in 10 centimetres, like in the illustration below. Again, don't pull or bulk up the fabric and measure to one decimal place. It can be slightly harder to measure rows instead of stitches. Below you can see 5.0 rows in 10 centimetres.
Now that you measured both the stitches and rows per 10 centimetres you can enter these values into our app and start working toward you final piece!
Step by step guide to program a tension swatch:
In this case we will knit a sample with different stitch sizes so we can compare the different densities and decide which one fits our project best. A larger stitch size and a loser, more open fabric will result in fewer stitches per inch. A smaller stitch size or tighter tension will produce more stitches per inch and a denser fabric.
- Open a new design in the app (click on the rectangle).
- Edit the canvas: Click on the Layers button and then on Params to edit the Canvas command. The canvas shows a width of 64 wales by 153 rows. To edit these dimensions enter the desired number of wales (width) and rows (height), in this case 80 and 80 respectively. Leave the default for Code (Front knit) and set the yarn number you would like to use.
- Change the color of the top row: Click on Layers and then on the + sign to open the command list. Pick Free edit. Zoom in to make the Options column visible and click on the yarn number of the top row. Type in the number of the yarn you have set as waste (in this case 6). This will visually mark the separation between the different stitch sizes.
- Create repeats: Click on Layers and then on the + sign. Pick the Tiling command from the list. Click on Selection > Pick selection. Select the area you would like to define as a tile (in this case the whole canvas) and click on Selection > Use. Once the selection is set, type in the number of repeats you want in the vertical axis (TileY), in this case you need 3 (including the original one). The repeats will automatically show on the canvas. We now have 3 sections separated by green rows.
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Set the stitch size for each section: the operation will be the same for each one of the sections. Select the Edit options column command from the list and click on Selection > Pick selection: mark the whole area from the bottom to the first green row (included). Click on Selection again to use the selection. Click on Params and in the Knit option box type in “stitch 7”. The value is automatically set in the options column.
Repeat this operation with the other two sections of the canvas, adding the command again every time, selecting the new area and introducing a different stitch size (stitch 8, stitch 9). In the end we will have 3 layers with the same name, which may be confusing. We can rename them by right-clicking on each one of the commands and giving them a name we can identify more easily.
- Add the waste and cast on sections:
Open the command list and pick the Waste + Cast on command. Select the first row of your canvas (the one at the bottom). Make sure that all the stitches of the row are selected. Click on Selection > Use current. The app automatically creates a waste yarn section and the cast on rows. Let’s look into its settings:
- Draw yarn: click on the dropdown and select which yarn carrier you want to use for your draw thread
- Waste yarn: click on the dropdown and select which yarn carrier you want to use for your waste yarn
- As per the Knit options we’ll mostly use the default values except for the ones marked in red in the picture, because we know this parameters work well with our yarn. You may have to enter different value
- Interlock rows: refers to the number of interlock rows that are knitted in the waste yarn section. It’s set to 80 rows by default and this number can be increased or reduced, but be aware that making it shorter can cause problems due to the fabric not reaching the rollers before the main knit starts and not having enough pull down tension.
- Body Yarns: enter the numbers of the yarn feeders in use in your main knit so they are introduced in the waste section, only separated with a space. The first one will knit the cast on rows.
7. Add a few rows of waste yarn at the top: Select one square from the top row and right-click to open the context menu. Pick Insert Rows above. This will create a new layer in the command stack, open Params to edit: Number of rows > 15, Code > Front knit, Yarn > 6
8. Get the knit off the needles: use the command Free edit to draw a line of Drop stitches at the very top.
Select the command and open the stitch palette. Select the “Drop Front” stitch and then use the “Line” tool to draw on the canvas.
We can use the same command to perform other editing operations. In this case we have set the stitch size of the top waste section from 6 (default) to 8, to make to more similar to the previous section.
9. Check for errors: Our swatch design is now ready, but we need to check if there are any errors. Click on the Checks button and then on “Check”. We get two error messages: “
1. Needle action in unsafe bed range”- we’ll solve this issue in the following point.
2. Pick-up stitch is not stable- appears every time due to the configuration of the waste section, but it’s safe to knit and can be ignored.
10. Center the knit on the needle bed: The “Unsafe needle action range” error can be sorted out by centering the design on the needle bed (Center on bed command). Make sure the “Global” box is ticked so that it applies to all the layers in the stack.
11. Knit!