I love snatching up patterns, but I also love learning about the story of design. How about you? Finding out the story behind an idea always makes me feel closer to it. To that end, I’ve included the design process for my latest top-down sweater design, The Park Lane Sweater, below. You can grab the pattern HERE.

I love Art Deco, and like, proper Art Deco as well as Art Nouveau. Tthe two often get confused as both are famous art movements around the 1920s. Art Deco is geometric and gilded (think opening credits to The Great Gatsby, or the Chrysler Building in NYC ). Art Nouveau is more fragile, detailed, and flourishing (think vintage cocktail posters)

You can sort of see the difference… right?

So anyway, this Park Lane Sweater collaboration came about sort of randomly. I was chatting with my girl Alexi from @twoofwands about my next “challenge”. I do these sort of projects once or twice a year, where I push myself to design incorporating a new skill. I knew I wanted to design a top down seamless sweater, with an art deco motif. She said to me “ Oh… have you seen the casting call for Style Moderne?”

Enter The Yarn Collective, and their newest collection Style Moderne. The prompt: opulent, detailed, simple silhouettes.

I took my inspiration from architecture of the time. “Inspired by the later Art Deco period when the cubist influence was more apparent. It is a top-down, tri-color, crew neck, yoke sweater. Uses classic Art Deco motifs around the yoke,” One particular building stood out for me…

The image to the left is the main door to the Park Lane apartments, in Montreal, Canada. I loved it. Using this image as my main source of inspiration, along with common corner and crown moulding motifs I created my first sketch, in the middle, to the final design, on the right.

This sweater is very special to me, not only because it’s my first top down design, but also because I made it while Peter and I were exploring Yellowstone this past year. So I like to think that it has extra bits of magic in it.

If you love it as much as I do, you can grab the pattern through The Yarn Collective and LoveCrafts Here

I can’t wait to see what colorways you make yours in! I had the original sweater scoped out for two potential colorways - you can see them below, but it’s definitely not the only way!

Happy making my friends!

This post contains affiliate links

Park Lane Sweater for The Yarn Collective: Style Moderne