This pattern was inspired by my memory of the sunflowers my sister and I planted one year in an abandoned lot next to a house where we lived in Baltimore City. We planted great tall yellow ones, smaller golden ones, ones with brilliant ocher petals and rusty centers, ones with striated petals and red centers. By mid- to late-summer the lot was a cacophony of gold finches; the flowers themselves seemed to be alive.

These knitted versions were also inspired by a photograph my grandmother had (and I now have on my desk in my studio) of her father’s sunflowers. In the picture you can see Old Man (what everyone called him… his wife, my grandmother’s mother was called simply Lady) and he is positively small next to the towering plants. He was almost six feet tall, so the sunflower stalks must be at least 15 feet. Sun-Towers my friend Sue called them. They are magnificent (Old Man could make anything grow bigger then you thought possible… maybe it was the cotton seed husks he used as mulch. You should have seen his green beans!) and I have never seen their like in person.

In order to create these knitted versions, I treated myself to a bouquet of sunflowers in the middle of a cold snap and studied their structure to bring you a flower that is as beautiful on the back as the front, as botanically correct as I could make it. And maybe, just maybe, they would even fool the gold finches. I’m going to see… I’ll let you know.

Pattern Difficulty
Intermediate. Requires knowledge of knitting, purling, increasing and decreasing, working on circular and double-pointed needles, and some simple seaming and hand-sewing.

Materials
US 11/8 mm, 7/4.5 mm, or 5/4 mm dpn (smaller needles & a single strand of yarn = smaller flowers) NOTE: Our skein/ball ~210 yds; 2 skeins/balls each color using a double-strand of worsted weight feltable yarn on US11/8 mm needles makes 1 large and 1 small flower
2 skeins/balls col 1 Stem, green
2 skeins/balls col 2 Sunflower center, chocolate brown
2 skeins/balls col 3 Petals, bright yellow, yellow-orange, or orange
1 ball col 4 Crystal Palace Fizz in mink (7342) or black (7321)
Scrap yarn or 3 16”/40 cm circular needles smaller than US 11/8 mm
Split ring or clip stitch markers in two colors to use as holders
Tapestry needle, sewing needle, and sewing or beading thread.

Fiber Options
Pictured Sunflowers were made with the following. Stems: Plymouth Galway Heather in 754 Turtle and 748 Pistachio and Louet Riverstone in 55 Willow. Petals: Louet Riverstone in 33 Kumquat and 61 Gold Leaf. Flower centers: Chocolate Fizz held with Plymouth Galway 757 Bark or Punta Yarns’ Merisoft Solid 317.