Knit The City Building Blocks – Jake Henzler

I began designing and knitting colourwork blocks in 2018 while I was living in Denmark. The project began as a handmade souvenir for my year in Copenhagen, and I had imagined each block would be based on a significant building from my time there. I started with highly detailed designs that included intricate masonry and displays in the windows of shops, but it quickly became clear that this would be too complicated for the effect I wanted to achieve.

The challenge and pleasure of the designs came in learning how to limit the details of each building without losing its essential characteristics. This process of refinement led me to construct the designs with interchangeable elements. Some experience with patchwork quilting taught me that, while each block needs to stand on its own, it must also share elements of colour, layout and shape with other blocks. A balance of repetition and variation gives a large design some aesthetic stability and allows you to introduce more irregular features.

The consistency of the charcoal windowpanes works as a visual anchor to keep all of the other colours floating comfortably beneath its surface. Building façades make interesting subjects for fabric designs. For one, they traditionally rely on regular arrangements of features like windows, doors, columns, ledges and rooflines. Because they’re often built in long rows of similar and alternating styles, buildings also exist in an established visual system. Alone or in groups, they already resemble the kinds of lines and shapes used in woven plaids and yardage prints.

Buildings also create personal connections for people. Like my memento of Copenhagen, images of the right kind of building can remind us how our lives looked in another time and place. Each city design I’ve made since Copenhagen has offered a new design opportunity. The Amsterdam blocks require a skyline, where the shapely gables cut into a field of blue. Sydney’s filigree ironwork draws the eye in to focus on fine details, and it allows another frequency of colour to transmit across the surface of the grid.

The height of the Paris buildings offers expanded repetition within each block, and the rows of balconies create texture in the neutral colours. This book draws together samples of designs from each of these patterns, and introduces three new cities to play with – London, Prague and New York.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: f1eed1d2a72dedee
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 163,494,169 bytes (155.92 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781446316627, 9781446316634
• Pages: 159
• Language: English (en)

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• Total Words: 6,891
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