Designer profile: Victoria Marchant Knits

VICTORIA MARCHANT KNITS

Victoria is a knitwear designer who is based in Surrey in the UK. We started chatting on Twitter, and bonded over a shared love of chemistry and spreadsheets (as well as knitting and yarn, obviously!). This designer profile will give you a feel for her designs, what she is about, and contains some affiliate links to my favourite patterns of hers.

PATTERNS 

Perforate mitts and cowl

Victoria released her first pattern, Perforate, in June 2020. Her Perforate designs are a pair of mitts and a cowl, and as the name suggests, they both have rows of lacework holes that look like perforation running through their fabrics. She continued designing and releasing accessory patterns but has recently been working on bringing her first garment pattern, a top called Roseability, to the knitting community. I am extremely excited about this pattern! Not only is it beautiful, with a delicate stitch pattern on the front and the lace blending smoothly into the ribbing at the waist, but it is touted to be a recipe that can be explored and pieced together to create a pattern perfect for your own body type. The downside? You will have to wait until July before this pattern will be released. It’s currently in the test knit phase at the moment. But all the more time to find the perfect yarn to knit it in …. And I could help you out with that! I’ll be dyeing up some kits ready for its release. 

Midas mitts

Nadir shawl

The patterns Victoria currently has available include shawls, cowls, hats and mitts, and she even has a bauble pattern for a fun Christmas knit. The hats and mitts cater for a range of sizes with each one having at least three sizes to choose from. In particular, I love her Midas mitts (get the pattern here: https://payhip.com/b/Cyu3i/af621d2ca376eb2) as the colourwork is beautiful and they can be made from just two 20g skeins! Even one of her shawl patterns, Nadir, (get the pattern here: https://payhip.com/b/b30Zq/af621d2ca376eb2) is written so that the size can be customised. As can the sizes of three of her cowl patterns, Leopard, Tyger, and my favourite, Forester (get the pattern here: https://payhip.com/b/84Tg2/af621d2ca376eb2). Her desire to have her patterns so that they are size customisable ties in with her ethos about accessibility. More of that in a bit.

Forester cowl

One of Victoria’s signature features that crops up in several of her patterns is holding yarn double, and even triple in the case of Forester. This is a great technique that is such fun to play with! By holding a couple of strands together you can create myriad combinations of colours and textures. This is best shown in her hat Kodachrome (get the pattern here: https://payhip.com/b/zrEWm/af621d2ca376eb2) where she holds fingering weight yarn together with lace weight mohair, creating a band of fluffy texture where the colour blends and yet contrasts with the main hat perfectly. 

Kodachrome hat

INCLUSIVITY AND ACCESSIBILITY 

I love Victoria’s ethos: inclusivity and accessibility are at the centre of everything she does. On her website she writes “I work to be anti-racist, feminist, anti-ableist, and to dismantle anti-fat bias. I am neurodivergent. I do not tolerate bigotry.” As well as designing her patterns so that they are suitable for a large range of body types (size inclusivity at its finest!), she also ensures that her patterns and website are accessible to read. This is especially important to her after the recent failure of Ravelry to ensure accessibility for its users, after causing migraines, seizures and headaches (amongst other symptoms) and doing nothing to address this. 

She is also an advocate for financial accessibility. Victoria has set up an inspiring section of her website where you can buy a pattern but Pay it forward (do so here: https://www.victoriamarchantknits.com/pattern/pay-it-forward/). This is her way of helping those who may otherwise struggle or not be able to afford to buy from an indie designer. Anyone can buy this ‘pattern’ for five shiny pounds (digital of course) and this can then be redeemed by anyone who requests it, no questions asked, as a digital download of any of her paid patterns. I think this is a big step for the indie knitting community. It requires a lot of trust in the people applying for the pattern, that they would only do so if they needed it and that they would otherwise pay for the pattern themselves. But it’s a heartwarming gesture that shows that she wants her patterns to be for everyone, not just the financially able. It has inspired me to figure out a way to set up a Pay it forward scheme for hand dyed yarn too (more about this in a later post). 

FOR SCIENCE

 

So, finally, to the reason we got talking in the first place… Victoria is embarking on a series of experiments; three, in fact. She is going to test out which temperature of water causes the most (and therefore, also the least) bleeding of dye. As an indie dyer, I have my own hypothesis, and I can’t wait to see if her tests match up to this. She is then going to test whether wool washes Soak and Eucalan, washing up liquid or a dose of white vinegar can reduce or even stop the bleeding. Finally she will then test to see whether using a colour catcher in a wash with the most bleeding can stop the dye from staining undyed yarn. This series of blog posts is going to be a must read for anyone who loves and works with indie dyed yarn. I for one cannot wait to see how it all unfolds! You can read more here: (https://www.victoriamarchantknits.com/the-yarn-bleeding-experiment-part-1/)

All images belong to Victoria Marchant Knits. I have reproduced them here with her permission. All words are my own.