Work for Idle Hands

Pattern Notes for the Coatigan

The original pattern is for a "thickish" double knitting yarn - possibly an American worsted weight - knitted as stripes all in garter stitch. It's a tweedy marl yarn and produces a good effect just as written. The sizing is for men, but goes down to a 38 inch chest - so for a big cosy blanket effect should be ok for many women.

I wanted to copy the kind of coatigan I have seen commercially available at the moment - both in colour and texture, which would be black/grey tweeds. In fact, were I a weaver I might have been tempted to try and weave the garment, as it is mainly made up of rectangular segments. However I am not - so back to reality.
I wanted to use yarn I already had, and it needed to be something I had a lot of. Thus back to my old favourite: Sirdar Peru, which is a discontinued yarn. I have a lot of the colour "Tailor" - a grey/black - but decided it was not tweedy enough, so I worked a tweedy stitch, combining it with the cream colour Llama. (Note here that if you decide to knit - your sister for example - a chunky sweater for Christmas in lovely creamy Sirdar Peru in Llama - it is a "graduated" yarn and in Llama this means it looks like it is a cream sweater where someone has accidentally spilled tea on it during the knitting process. It is not quite so noticeable or unappealing in the other colour options....).

The stitch I used was "almost" garter stitch. Every row is purl, and you slip some stitches on some of the rows, which creates the pattern. Do not be tempted to decide after you have knitted several inches that: "I've had enough of this purl stuff and why aren't I just doing it knitwise in any case as it's just the same?" - because, while it is just the same, the tension is massively different, and you will knit 20 inches of the back only to discover that your knitting made a step change and lost 2 whole inches in width. (Ask me how I know). If you set out from the start by knitting all knitwise you will need to compensate by checking your tension against the size you intend to knit.
So - enough preamble - here are the pattern rows - worked over an odd number of stitches.

1st row (right side facing): Purl in main colour. Leave main colour hanging.
2nd row: Join in contrast colour, purl 1, with wool at front, * slip 1, purl 1; repeat from * to end.
3rd row: Continuing with contrast colour only, purl 1, put wool to back of work, * slip 1, bring wool forward, purl 1; repeat from * to end, and leave contrast colour hanging.
4th row: Pick up main colour again and purl across all stitches
5th row: Purl across all stitches in main colour.
6th row: Pick up contrast colour again, purl 2, with wool at front, * slip 1, purl 1 ; repeat from * to last stitch, purl 1.
7th row: Continuing with contrast colour as before, purl 2, put wool to back of work, * slip 1, bring wool forward, purl 1; repeat from * to last stitch, purl 1.
8th row: Purl in main colour.
These 8 rows form pattern. You can choose the light colour for the main and dark as contrast or vice versa. My version has the dark colour as the main colour. You can also produce a nice effect by reversing the colours after every 8 row repeat, or by knitting several sets of the 4 rows and then reversing. I experimented by starting with the main colour dark, and knitting one set of 8 rows and then the first row again in dark, I then knitted 2 rows purl in light, and the next 8 rows (2- 8 then the 1st again) reversing the colours with my main colour being light... and so on .. bounding each set in 2 extra rows of purl garter stitch. You could change every set of 4 pattern rows by inserting 2 extra rows between rows 5 and 6 for narrower stripes.
This really is a very adaptable stitch - and very easy to execute.

Having got back on track and choosing to stick with the purl version as written, the fabric it produced is lovely. A sort of cosy double thickness where I actually love the wrong side of the knitting easily as much as the right side. It's firm while also squashy, so it keeps its boxy shape - but not too much. Sirdar Peru is not pure wool (60% wool/alpaca) but it is lovely and soft and... blankety.

Which brings me to probably the most important point about the sizing. Sirdar Peru is not a double knit or a worsted weight yarn, but a chunky. It is a thinnish chunky, even though the standard tension of 14 stitches to 10cm or 4 inches puts it firmly in the chunky range if you use the right needles. I used 5mm needles and made a swatch using my pattern stitch, and came up with just about the actual tension stated in the Blanket Coat pattern - 18 stitches by 32 rows to 4 inches. In fact the number of rows was not quite right but easily fixed by knitting it to whatever length you want for the coat - which in my case I wanted to be a bit smaller than the man's length given in the pattern in any case. So I ploughed right ahead and made my pieces using the smallest 38 inch size (I am generally a size 12 with a 36-38 inch chest) an adding 4 extra stitches to the 2 front pieces.
Having tried it on, it certainly fitted well - but more like a conventional cardigan than a capacious coatigan, so I moved to plan B. I inserted vertical stripes of the pattern at the sides and the front borders increasing the size to about 40 inches - I had always thought this might be a nice decorative feature and it became a useful strategy. The sleeves were easy to fit either straight as intended or with a tiny part of the side seam to attach to the underarm insert.

Voilà.

The original pattern has patch pockets - I chose to add conventional "insert" pockets sewn down on the inside.

A short note on picking up stitches for the front band and the sleeves:

Using this pattern stitch, I picked up 2 stitches for every 4 rows to make the side panels and the front bands. [By comparison with stocking stitch where you might pick up 2 stitches for every 3 rows].
I also did this when knitting the sleeves - I picked up about 92 stitches equally spaced around the shoulder seam, and knitted the sleeves downwards so I could choose how long to make them. I did adapt the pattern here slightly to reduced the sheer volume of the sleeves, which was a bit overwhelming in chunky weight with this stitch.
I began by knitting 8 pattern rows then I decreased one stitch at each every 16th row (2 patterns) 10 times, leaving 72 stitches. I knitted to the length I wanted the sleeve, then I reversed the knitting (by knitting extra plain purl rows in the main colour) before setting off with the pattern again - this allows the cuff to turn back without the wrong side of the knitting being on show.