Having travelled all over the world, I’ve always looked at the textiles and collected lots of the fabrics. As everything inspires designs for my color knitting- textiles are certainly no different! The colors, the textures and the motifs from Andean blankets that I saw in market towns northeast of Quito, Ecuador have given many a motif to use in sweater design.

This particular sweater came about because I was pondering traditional sweaters (cardigans, lopi raglans, twin sets) and how these could combine with South American traditional motifs to jazz up the look of the tried and true sweaters. I settled on a tennis sweater which usually has the three stripes around the cuffs and three around a deep V-neck. What would it look like if these stripes weren’t plain but had Andean blanket motifs worked in them? The answer is the sweater patterned here. Enjoy!