Swatching as a Creative Practice
Change how you feel about knitting a gauge swatch
2/9/20263 min read
We all know that we should knit a gauge swatch for every new project, but many knitters skip this step. Some will make a small swatch, but don’t bother to wash and block it. It may seem tedious, but there is a lot more to swatching than just measuring gauge.
The Truth Behind Swatching
Yes, one big reason to make a swatch is to figure out your gauge. This is important when working from a pattern, especially for a garment that needs to fit properly. If you’re not using a pattern or creating your own pattern, finding your gauge is also important to do the correct math to determine the stitch counts needed for your size. Every knitter has a different natural tension, and there are several factors that affect the tension of the same person. Obviously, needle size makes a difference, but the yarn weight, fiber content, and even the needle material can affect someone’s gauge.
Measuring gauge isn’t the only reason for knitting a swatch, though. It also shows you how the knitted fabric behaves. You get to decide if the density with the needle size you used creates a drape that you like for the item you’ll be making. On top of that, washing and blocking your swatch gives you vital information, like how the finished garment will behave when washed. Some fibers and some stitch patterns will grow and stretch when soaked, some stay as they are, and some tend to shrink. This step also lets you know if the dye in your yarn bleeds at all when washed, so you can take necessary precautions to avoid color bleeding on your finished item. Taking all this into consideration, I like to think of swatching as auditioning yarns for a particular project.
Creative Exploration
When swatching, you can play around with all sorts of new techniques. You can use swatching as an opportunity to try unfamiliar stitch patterns, creating new and interesting textures. You can combine different stitch patterns to see if they go well together. Swatching allows you to see how the same stitch pattern can look in different fibers or colors. It gives you the freedom to explore combining yarns for colorwork or marling, or to experiment with color pooling of variegated yarns. Switch up your fibers, needle sizes, and materials to see what differences they make in a swatch. I like to do a purl row in between sections where I make changes. Just make sure to write down what you’re doing!
Making "Bad" Swatches
Remember that your swatches don’t need to look pretty, they are all about learning as you go. They don’t need to become anything else, and you can always frog it and (hopefully) use the yarn again for your actual project. Uneven tension, loose edges, and other anomalies are all fine in a swatch, the point is that you learn from it and try again if you need to. Frogging a swatch is not a failure, it’s data, and it’s building up your knitting skills and knowledge.
Make Swatching a Habit
With all of this in mind, I hope you look at swatching in a different light. Make it a habit to start any project with a swatch to find the right yarn for whatever you’re looking to make. You never know, you may be inspired by one of your swatches to use the yarn for a different project. Whether or not you keep the swatches, I find it helpful to write down everything I learned from a particular swatch. I even have some printable knitting journal pages and swatch tags available here. You may want to keep them for future reference, like your own personal stitch dictionary. I’ve seen some people make art out of their swatches. If you want to reuse the yarn for your project, that is totally fine too! Using the form below, let me know what you do with your swatches. Happy stitching!
