For the Love of Stripes

Stripes are an unabashed favorite. Reasons why:

1. Stripes are a container for creativity that can shapeshift to suit your mood and materials. They can be fairly mindless relaxing projects that don’t require much attention, or exciting experiments in form, color, pattern, and more that require more planning.

The mathematical part of art—color, rhythm, movement, proximate relation, basically everything—emerges as a site of play and exploration with stripes.

2. Stripes are one of the best forms of colorwork. They have colorwork’s inherent “just one more row” addictiveness, but are relatively simple to manage and memorize. You don’t have to consult a chart as you go.

3. Stripes function as a built-in row counter. Rather than having to stop and measure every so often, once you know your stripe pattern and row gauge, you can do some quick math, figure out the repeats needed for the length you desire, and boom, you’re off.

4. They can be simple or complex, with endless variation. Vertical stripes? Horizontal stripes? How about both? Two colors? Three? Five? Twelve?

Small changes, like the numbers of colors used, the relative width of the stripes, the order, and the repetition can affect the aesthetic, rhythm, color story, and vibe.

Kinsan by Sachiko and Kiyomi Burgin

My short-sleeved version of the Kinsan sweater, from twin designers Sachiko and Kiyomi Burgin, features three colors in an easy-to-remember pattern of 12 rows of black, followed by 6 rows (2 each) of green, silver, and green again. This is one of 11 stripe variations Sachiko and Kiyomi provide in their book Moon and Turtle: Knitting Patterns with Variations. Each strikes a different mood, with millions more possibilities.

The mathematical part of art—color, rhythm, movement, proximate relation, basically everything—really emerges as a site of play and exploration with stripes.

2025 stripes: Kinsan sweater by Sachiko and Kiyomi Burgin, Argil tank by Clare Lakewood, and Clarke sweater by Jane Richmond. Weaving in ends (and a little seaming!) remain on Argil.

5. Stripes are easy to use to modify patterns and change up the feel of a solid design or a design with other colorwork. I added stripes to the originally solid Warm Up sweater by Espace Tricot (pictured below) by knitting three colors in 14-row increments, for a sportier feel.

6. Stripes are relatively easy to pick up and put down. As someone who works on multiple projects at once, and has periods of active knitting and no knitting, I consider this a major plus. None of the striped garments I’ve finished this year were started in 2025 (I cast on Argil and Clarke in 2023 and Kinsan in 2024). Stripes are happy to hibernate.

7. Last but definitely not least, stripes can be a major stash buster. They are equally useful for yarns that you have small leftovers of and don’t know what to do with, and yarns you have too much of and don’t know what to do with.

Stripes helped me utilize a beautiful but lone two skeins of white, farm-fresh, fingering weight cormo I purchased as an overwhelmed fiber fest newbie. Held double, the white cormo balanced out colors for two striped sweaters knit at different gauges: a 7-color Aros sweater (DK), and my tricolor Warm Up sweater (aran).

Stripes also made practical use of a wool-free bulky weight yarn I once bought on sale in too many colors and quantities. Held double and marled, the yarn became a Garter Squish blanket pattern by Stephen West.

In each instance, what at first seemed to be stash fails turned into well-loved and useful items.

Stash-busting with stripes with the Warm Up sweater by Espace Tricot, Aros sweater by PetiteKnit, and Garter Squish Blanket by Stephen West.

Some of my most comfortable—and, not that it matters, but also most complimented—knits have stripes.

Most comfortable (and complimented): Diesis by Alice Caetano, Coven Cardi by Shay Johnson, and Bayadere by Lori Versaci

Stripes afford maximal impact with minimal materials, making the most of your stash and wallet. Through stripes, I’ve learned about gauge, fiber, color, and really getting to know and appreciate the material and utilizing it to its strengths, whether you have a little or a lot. Stripes provide a way to tap into creativity within constraint, which is, I think, central to creating.

Stripes do require some care and finishing. Jogless stripes, or making stripes to avoid the uneven “jog” that happens at the start of a new row, add that special touch of finesse. Patty Lyons has suggestions. One that’s worked well for me is knitting the first stitch of the second row with the stitch in the row below.

And weaving in ends, a much-lamented task among knitters, generally comes with stripe territory, unless you’re carrying the yarn as you go (which I do where possible).

However, ends aren’t always avoidable—and that’s OK. I find weaving in ends to be meditative. It allows me to shift gears, slow down, and wind down the knit—and the self I was with it, actively creating, experimenting, or resting. (That said, sometimes it works to leave a few ends out, too!)

Snake Draft Blocker by Tanis Gray, using wool and waste yarn from other stripes for stuffing

My stripe project of the moment is a humorous, fun, and practical pattern: the Snake Draft Blocker by Tanis Gray from her Nightmare Before Christmas book.

It’s a low-stakes, low-stress project; a tongue-in-cheek design that references two of my favorite movies and makes me smile whenever I see it—the snake in The Nightmare Before Christmas is an Easter egg of the sandworms from Tim Burton’s earlier film Beetlejuice. It is seasonally appropriate as we approach Halloween and it promises to carry into winter some of that mischievous spirit that can be easy to lose sight of once we’re past October.

And it is a yarn and natural wool fiber-fill stash buster that’s also using ends of waste yarn from previous striped projects for stuffing. Stripes for the win.