I am the first to admit that I am not exactly a style maven. I am a stay-at-home mom of young children, I don’t read fashion magazines, and I choose my clothing in large part for its ability to survive frequent washing. However, I do have a long-standing interest in fashion as a cultural phenomenon, and I do my own particular brand of trend-watch each spring and fall. I canvass several of my favorite online stores, and come up with what I see as the trends for the season. This season, I decided to match these up with some free pattern links and post them for the benefit of my readers.
Here is what I am seeing:
- elbow-length and 3/4 sleeves
- empire-waisted and babydoll silhouettes
- sweater coats
- short sleeved pullovers and cardigans
- cardigans cropped to level of natural waist or bottom of ribcage
Cari’s latest design, Trilce, gets special mention, even though it is not yet available for purchase. This is a fun design which is exactly on-trend for this season. How on-trend? Well, look at this one from Nordstrom. I bet you can knit your own wool version for less than it retails for. I’ll update with a link to the finished design once it’s up for sale.
Free Patterns
(and a few special designs available for sale online)
Sunkist Cardi— a great 3/4 sleeve raglan cardi, which you can customize to fit. (Scroll down to find a link to the PDF file in the sidebar).
Summer Sky— a short-sleeved cropped cardi, be sure to get the errata here.
Reversible Lace Rib Shrug— you can use this pattern from Elann.com to make your own out of any yarn between dk and bulky weight.
Lara Pinwheel Sweater with Crocheted Edges–another sweater from Elann. You could easily modify it to be a twin for this one. If you don’t crochet, you can be like Wendy and knit on an edging. See her finished version in this post. Her original edging pattern is available on her free patterns page.
Circular Shrug–an innovatively constructed vest or cap-sleeved cardi similar to this one from Anthropologie.
Anthropologie-inspired Shrug–quick, versatile, customizable, and it’s back for spring.
Cloud Bolero–a lovely cropped cardigan, see a photo of a finished bolero here.
Vino Cardigan–a great sweater coat pattern available for sale from Laura Chau of Cosmic Pluto.
Brennan Cardigan–a great shawl-collared sweater coat design, and the pattern is available for free.
Serrano–a lovely lacy cardigan pattern made with sock yarn, also by Laura Chau.
Stardust–a lacy cropped cardigan with a tie closure.
Something Red–a charming short-sleeved cardigan pattern available for sale from Wendy Bernard of Knit and Tonic.
Starsky–a shawl-collared sweater coat with leaf-themed cable panels.
Brompton–free sweater coat pattern with neat reversible cuffs you can fold down to keep your hands warm or fold up to keep out of the way.
Just as a bonus, here’s a new men’s pullover pattern from Tiennie, the Fog Sweater.
FireFlower Knits 
February 1, 2008 at 9:34 am
Hi! I found you through your link to my pattern above – Thank you so much for the mention and for including me with all these other GREAT patterns, how nice! And thank you so much for linking to the errata as well – very kind of you.
I enjoyed checking out the other patterns on your list and finding some new ones as well as some lovelies that I already admire.