Plaiting with Accent yarns for AW

At Monteluce, we develop fancy yarns with consideration to weight, comfort, pricing and of course appearance. For our recent AW collection, we showcased some new swatches using our accent yarns.

Quite often, the Japanese refer to such accent yarns to 「お化粧素材」which translates to make-up yarn. I find this expression unique, as it enhances the original material without overwhelming it.

What is Plaiting?

Plaiting is a knitting technique where two threads from different feeders are knitted by the same hook. Due to the placement of the yarns, one yarn would show up on the front side, and the other yarn on the opposite side.

Even with a simple plain stitch (jersey), you can achieve a two-sided fabric by using different colors, yarn weights, or compositions.

Today I will show you a series of fabrics with plaited with our accent yarns.

MUSCHIO x BALLOON COTTON5

This is a swatch done on the domestic machine to test color. MUSCHIO has a yarn weight of 1/13 (suitable for 10G) wherelse BALLOON COTTON5 has a yarn weight of 1/4 (suitable for 5G). Due to their contrasting thickness, the BALLOON COTTON5 can be seen even when MUSCHIO is on the front side.

EIFFEL x RAPTOR

Here we are combining a cotton RAPTOR(white), and EIFFEL(grey). You can decide which rows you would like to remove the pleating. Here the white section is when EIFFEL is not in action.

Have a closer look at the garment by clicking on the photo above.

JUPITER　x SPUGNA

JUPITER (green&black), a shocking pompom yarn with our french wool SPUGNA (black). If you take a close look, you can see it is a cable-pattern, where the cable section is plaited with SPUGNA on the front. By deciding which sections to plait, you can get large motifs in your knitwear.

MIERU x FORMA

One of our very popular yarns, MIERU does a fine job with plaiting. However, this isn’t a plaiting technique. Instead, it’s a customized Milano Rib where alternate courses are knitted with MIERU. The image above shows the front side of the garment, while below is the inner side.

MIERU is perfect for creating transparent sections in knitwear and adds structure to softer yarns. While this isn’t a traditional plaiting example, we’re pushing the boundaries with innovative techniques

Our new decorative yarns for this season:

RADIAN-Sequins wool yarn

CAPELLA-Beaded wool yarn

Unlike regular sequin or beaded yarns by other makers, our selection only offer simple colors. For smoother knitting and comfort, we have minimized the hole size of the sequins.

CAPELLA x SABRICH

Here we are using a combination of CAPELLA (beaded yarn) and SABRICH (Cashmere Sable blend). Here we are doing a row of plaited combination and a row of CAPELLA only. As a result we can achieve a lightweight fabric, while utilizing the smoky effect from SABRICH.

Plaiting is a very easy knitting method. It can be done in industrial, domestic and hand knitting techniques!

Enjoy!