Valley Yarns Fiona Cardigan Knitting Pattern

Valley Yarns Fiona Cardigan

What Is Being Made

The Fiona Cardigan is a women's top-down cardigan designed by Kirsten Hipsky. This garment features raglan sleeves and decorative cable accents on the front panels. The cardigan is available in six sizes with finished chest measurements ranging from 36 inches to 60 inches, making it suitable for a wide range of body types. The design is shown in a size 36" version and is intended to complement the Frida Baby Cardigan.

Techniques Used

This cardigan employs several key knitting techniques that contribute to its construction and design:

• Top-Down Construction: The garment is worked from the neckline downward, allowing for easy fitting adjustments and the ability to try on the piece as you work.
• Seamless Construction: The cardigan is knitted as one continuous piece without seams, creating a smooth, finished appearance.
• Raglan Shaping: Raglan sleeves are created through strategic increases worked on right-side rows, with increases placed before and after stitch markers to shape the yoke evenly across the back, sleeves, and front sections.
• Cable Accents: Decorative cables are featured on both the left and right front panels, adding visual interest and texture to the garment.
• Worked Flat: Despite being seamless, the body is worked flat on circular needles rather than in the round, with cable patterns integrated into the front sections.

Stitches Used

The Fiona Cardigan utilizes fundamental knitting stitches combined with cable work:

• Stockinette Stitch (St st): The primary stitch used throughout the body of the cardigan, creating a smooth, classic fabric.
• Ribbing: The collar is worked in a 1x1 ribbed pattern (alternating knit and purl stitches) on both right-side and wrong-side rows, providing elasticity and a finished neckline.
• Cable Stitches: Cables are worked on the front panels using a cable needle to create twisted, textured patterns. The pattern includes specific right-front and left-front cable sequences worked on both right-side and wrong-side rows.
• Increases: The pattern employs make-one-right (m1R) and make-one-left (m1L) increases to shape the raglan sleeves and yoke sections without creating visible holes.

Materials and Gauge

The Fiona Cardigan is designed to be worked in Valley Yarns Superwash, a yarn composed of 100% Extrafine Merino Superwash fiber. Yardage requirements vary by size: the smallest size (36" chest) requires 11 skeins, while the largest size (60" chest) requires 22 skeins. Each skein contains 50 grams and 97 yards of yarn.

The pattern calls for US size 7 (4.50mm) circular needles measuring 32 inches in length, along with double-pointed needles of the same size for working the sleeves. The specific needle length is noted as not crucial to the project's success. The recommended gauge is 4.5 stitches and 7 rows per 1 inch when working in stockinette stitch, which helps ensure proper sizing.

Additional materials needed include a cable needle for manipulating cable stitches, scrap yarn or spare needles to serve as stitch holders for sections of the garment, 4 stitch markers to denote pattern sections and increases, and 8 buttons for the cardigan front closure.

Pattern Overview and Difficulty

Rated as an intermediate-level project, the Fiona Cardigan requires knitters to be comfortable with cable techniques, raglan shaping, and reading pattern instructions. The yoke is constructed through repeated two-row sequences: wrong-side rows that maintain the cable patterns and stockinette sections, and right-side rows that incorporate both cable work and strategic increases. The increases are distributed across four sections (back, two sleeves, and two fronts), with the pattern repeated a total of 25 to 37 times depending on size to achieve the desired finished measurements. Once the yoke reaches its full width, the lower body transitions to working even in stockinette stitch, simplifying the final portion of the garment.