My eldest son asked me to knit him a Star Wars sweater so I started with the idea of using R2-D2 and this sweater was born. Many of you on Instagram have asked me to write up this pattern but since Star Wars is someone else’s intellectual property I’m going to show you what I did and make the charts I used freely available to anyone.
I started with the free pattern, Nordic Yoke Set Pullover from Patons, and changed the charts for the yoke
and bottom of the body. I also decided to skip the colored ribbing on the cuffs and body for the purely selfish reason of saving the gray to knit another sweater for my younger son next fall (he wants a BB8 sweater!).
YOKE
The yoke has an X-wing (as viewed from above), R2-D2 and a light saber.
I used the exact dimensions of the Nordic Yoke Pullover Sweater chart, so you can simply use this chart in it’s place and it will work just fine. Some lines have more than 2 colors – in many cases I chose to come back later and use duplicate stitch so as to avoid carrying 3 or 4 colors in one row of stranded colorwork. If you’re adept at carrying 3 or 4 colors in 1 row of colorwork, good for you! I also used a backstitch-like technique from my cross stitching days called straight stitch to delineate R2D2’s legs. This is represented by an orange line in the colorwork chart. you can ignore this if you wish. I did the outlining in the same tan color I used for the yoke background.
Click the small picture of the chart above to see the full size chart.
BOTTOM OF SWEATER
I did have to change this chart. The sweater uses an 8-st repeat but I just couldn’t get a tie-fighter to look good in 8 sts. I used 9. If you use this bottom chart, YOU MAY HAVE TO ADJUST the number of body stitches before starting the colorwork as follows:
- Sizes 4 and 10 – no changes needed
- Sizes 6 and 12 – decrease 3 sts the row BEFORE you start the colorwork
- Size 8 – increase 3 sts the row BEFORE you start the colorwork
Click on the small picture of the chartbelow to see the full size chart.
The only changes I made to the pattern itself were to make the arms and torso longer than called for so that it will still fit my son in the fall (I hope!)