Amina by Sylvia Watts-Cherry

This is the ninth in a series of blogposts to introduce the designs coming soon in Aimee's very first book,  Worsted, published on November 19th by Laine Publishing. Pre-order your copy from La Bien Aimée and you will receive a signed copy from Aimée! 

 

 

Amina is a sweater designed by Sylvia Watts-Cherry using Corrie Worsted and featured in the book, Worsted, A Knitwear Collection Curated by Aimée Gille of La Bien Aimée. This gorgeous sweater is knit in pieces with beautifully textured intarsia diamonds on the front panel. The rest of the sweater is kept very simple, with a drop shoulder shape and either cropped or regular length. 

Sylvia chose a really fresh palette using light grey Smoke as the main color and Hegelia, Kokko and Belle Rose as the contrasts. For her own version, Aimee chose a warm neutral palette featuring Moria as the main color, and Sandstone, Avoine and Stone as the contrasts. With her leftovers, Sylvia created a beautiful cowl that uses a mix of really fun techniques, such as stripes, double moss stitch, a cabled diamond pattern and intarsia in the round. 

The motif on the front of the Amina sweater is inspired by Sylvia's research on different African textiles. As in her beautiful Nubian Queen sweater, she uses knitwear design to honor her rich heritage. 

 

 

Here is what Sylvia wrote as her inspiration for this design:

“The inspiration for my Amina sweater design started (as most of my colourwork designs do) from research on patterns from indigenous tribal African textiles. I am intrigued by the use of the diamond shapes in indigenous patterns and love how the geometric diamond elements are arranged in beautiful combinations of both shapes and colours in examples from Kirdi female beaded aprons (cache-sexe). The Kirdi people were small groups who farmed in the northern highlands of Cameroon, in eastern Nigeria and in the southwest of Chad.

I wanted to add texture and colour in my diamonds and the Corrie Worsted yarn was great for stitch definition. Choosing colours was hard as I loved all the colours! But I especially fell in love with the Kokko colourway and knew that whatever colour combination I used, had to have this colour. I really enjoyed working on this design and liked the way the design looked different each time, depending on the colours I swatched with.”

 

 

Thank you so much, Sylvia, for agreeint to be a part of this book! 

Worsted, A Knitwear Collection Curated by Aimée Gille of La Bien Aimée will be published on November 19th by Laine Publishing. It is now available for pre-order on our website and through stockists worldwide!