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August 5, 2016 Leave a Comment

What To Do With Your Swatches?

What do you do with swatches? First you have to make them, so this might be irrelevant to you if you don’t!

For years I have just thrown swatches into drawers that weren’t being used for other things. I would occasionally sort through them, file them, and save them. Ultimately some always do get thrown away. I think of my swatches as small research tools so I am often reluctant to let them go.

Swatch filing ideasWhat to do With Swatches

Now I don’t have those extra drawers, Riin Gill recently asked what I do with my swatches, so it seemed like a good topic to discuss here.

I have many levels of dealing with swatches. Swatch-hangers

  1. Those that get made and just put aside in a pile or left in my knitting box until I clean up;
  2. Some are the root of an idea, but I don’t have time to consider, or I just want to look at I hang on my wall;
  3. Others that have been neither put aside nor hung often just get piled up;
  4. The ones that I want to retain, but don’t need/want to look at; and
  5. Swatches that get thrown out.

The last level is hard to get to. It is harder if it is a design or class that I might need something for later on. I have an entire file drawer of swatches related to classes or other teaching.Swatches in drawer

But like books, I don’t go back to swatches that often. Those that I do want to go back to need to get filed into a notebook (and I have more than one!) or put into the drawer. I use Circa or Arc notebooks which allow me to build my own, and they have fairly flexible design, so the fact that they have this three-dimensional stuff in them isn’t a problem. It does sometimes make it a challenge to file them nicely.

A swatch hanging out in my knitting box are the ones most likely to get thrown out. For some reason they didn’t thrill me when I made them and didn’t get put into active consideration. But sometimes I make a them and just forget, so I always have to check on them.

Swatches in notebookI have always been mystified by people who want their swatches to be something else. I think they are just research materials, but I really try to think up small projects that I can include in patterns for those who don’t get just making a swatch.

I have unraveled swatches when I needed the yarn to finish a project. I told Riin I would sooner put a stick in my eye than make a “swatch blanket”. I think just take whatever your swatch offers you. Hold on to it as long as you like, and then be done!

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: filing, hanging, notebooks, piles, swatches

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