Last week, with Christmas preparations in full swing, Knipmode January 2018 arrived. I was tempted to postpone this review till after the holidays, but on January 6 the next issue will already be here. Hard to keep up with 25 new patterns each month! So just a quick post now, and later this month I'll write an update on the KnipmodeChallenge2017.
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| Patternoverview Knipmode January 2018 |
The January theme is 'Readers' request'. Not a receipe for a coherent collection, but it is an excellent chance for readers to ask for a type of pattern that is missing in the Knipmode magazines and pdf shop.
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| Dress 23 (Loes), toggle coat 8 (Eline), sailor's pants 3 (Katrien) |
The dress is a copy of a dress as seen in a mail order catalogue, and it's been a while since we've had patterns for a toggle coat or sailor's pants.
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| Dress 15 (Lola) and dress 10 (Jantiene) |
At first glance the dress on the left looks like the type of fit and flare dress we've seen in all recent issues, except this one is for woven fabrics. The dress on the right has a Ralph Lauren style polo neck, as asked for by a reader who loves the versatility of the style for both office wear and weekend outfits.
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| Blouse 13 (Laura), this month's designer dress, skirt 1 (Edith) |
The Italian style silk blouse is looking a bit too messy for my taste. Too much detail, or would this neckline look better in a firmer fabric? A double breasted robe manteau is always a nice classic, but for the sleeves I think I would prefer sharp cuffs over a flounce. It feels like the softness of the sleeves is clashing with the pointy lapels. The skirt on the right is a request by a lady who says the style reminds her of the engagement dress she made in 1963. Wouldn't you love to see that dress? It must have been stunning!
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| Coat 9 (Suzy) and pants 4 (Amber), dress 27 (Joanne) and jumpsuit 5 (Jada) |
The patterns above are from the regular collection so no reader is to blame for the 'eye catcher' dress in the middle. I'm curious to see if anyone will make this no-pattern-dress. It's a rectangle with cut on sleeves, all shaping comes from the ties.
What's new? A few weeks ago the Knipmode editors announced that from now on all patterns will have a female name. This was not received very well, to put it mildly. Not only is it questionable how long this will work with 300 patterns a year, it is also rather strange to ditch a fully functional system that also works fine for social media.
For a large number of years all patterns could be identified by their unique code, consisting of year-month-number. For instance KM 1706-23: Knipmode 2017, June issue, pattern 23.
I'm a long time collector of Knipmode magazines and I keep them by year of publication. Give me the code and I can locate any pattern, even from over a decade ago, within seconds.
Now out of the blue the editors have concluded that this system is too complicated for us readers. I quote: "When someone asks you what pattern you used for your skirt, you need to say it's pattern 2 from Knipmode January 2018 - it's a mouth full - now you can just say you made the Lisanne from Knipmode." Right. Except in a few months time nobody will remember in which issue the Lisanne can be found.
We'll see how long this silliness will last. In the meantime I'll keep using the good old code and I'll add the name of the pattern for completeness' sake. Thus proving that dumbing down only complicates matters.
On a more positive note I'll end with my favourites from this edition.
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| Sweater 25 (Bonne) and skirt 24 (Yara) and top 16 (Tinka) and skirt 12 (Klaske) |
Just the kind of sweater I love to wear while baking Christmas cookies!
