Tips for Interchanging Knits and Woven Patterns

Some patterns are designed specifically for knit fabric, while some patterns are designed specifically for woven fabric. You can't typically interchange the two without taking some things into consideration and making some changes. So the patterns that are designed specifically for knits are different than the woven patterns in a couple of big ways. So most often, patterns designed for knit fabrics don't have nearly as much wearing ease built into them. So wearing ease is the amount of extra fabric that allows your body to move and change within the garment.

So oftentimes your patterns for woven fabric, the measurements of the pattern don't match the measurements of your body exactly because it would be too tight on you. And that woven fabric doesn't allow for any movement of the body. So when you sit down and your body kind of flattens out, that woven fabric won't move with your body, whereas a knit fabric will. So you need extra wearing ease built in to woven patterns, whereas on knit patterns, there's not as much wearing ease that's necessary to build into the pattern. And oftentimes there's even negative ease in a knit pattern where the pattern measurements are smaller than your body measurements.

Tights and leggings are a good example of this. So you can't then take a pattern for a knit fabric or, yeah, a pattern for a knit fabric that is exactly your body measurements, and then stitch it in a woven fabric because it just, it wouldn't translate. You can, vice-versa, you can stitch a pattern that is designed for a woven fabric in a knit fabric a lot of times because you don't have that constraint, because you know that there is already enough ease. There is ease built into that woven pattern. So you can stitch it in a knit fabric even though that knit fabric may not necessarily need all of that ease.

So ease is one thing to consider. The next big thing to consider is a closure. So on knit garments, because it has that stretch built into the fabric already, a lot of times there aren't closures because it just will stretch over your head and shoulders to get it on or over your hips to get those pants or that dress up over the widest part of your body and then mold back to your body and snap back to shape in the smaller parts of you while stretching over the larger parts. So there's oftentimes not a closure, whereas a woven garment, you can't stretch that over your head. So you need to be able to open up the garment to get it on and then close it up somehow, buttons, zippers, a keyhole closure at the back of a neckline, something like that.

So looking at these patterns, you can tell what is designed for a knit fabric and what's designed for a woven fabric without even looking at the fabric recommendations because this top doesn't have any closure at all. There's no zipper in the back or anything. So you can tell that that's meant to stretch over the head and shoulders. And here it does say, "Suggested fabrics tops in stretchable knits." So there are some times when a pattern designed for a knit fabric has enough design ease built into the pattern that it could be stitched in a woven fabric. So design ease is the extra fabric that's built into a pattern, the extra dimensions, the extra room built into a pattern above and beyond wearing ease for style.

So a batwing sleeve or a Kimono type sleeve where there's a lot of extra fabric under the arm is a good example of that. So if the knit fabric is big and boxy and kind of drapey and the neck line is big enough that it doesn't really need to stretch over your head, then you could stitch that and translate that directly and stitch it in a woven fabric. But you have to, well, you would have to measure that on the pattern or if you've already stitched one and you know that it doesn't need to stretch before you go ahead and stitch that in a woven. But measuring it on the pattern is a good way to tell how much ease is already built in, if any, and how large that pattern will be when it is stitched up. So you can take your measuring tape and measure it on the pattern, taking into account those seam allowances at the edge that will be, you know, not included in the final measurement of the garment, taking into account anything like darts that would also not be included in the final measurements.

So measuring that pattern is a good way to tell how it will fit, how much ease there is, and how that's going to get over the largest parts of your body. So you can tell then on this one because it has a zipper in the back that it's not going to stretch over the head. That's that closure. So it opens up enough for you to get it on over the largest parts of your body, and then zipped back up to maintain that shape around the body. And you can see suggested fabric types, soft cottons and blends.

And this one too, this is designed for a knit because it's got no closure type. And it says, "Designed for single knit fabric." And these are all vintage patterns, but modern patterns too have the same thing. If you look on the back of the pattern, it'll tell you suggested fabrics. And this one is knit because since it's designed for a knit fabric, the amount of stretch in that knit fabric is also a consideration. So in order to get this to stretch over the widest part of your body, that knit fabric needs to have at least this much stretch.

So you hold your knit up to this bar and it needs to at least be able to stretch easily to there. And if it stretches past, that's great, but if it doesn't stretch at least to that point, it won't have enough stretch to stretch over the widest part of your body in this design. So a lot of modern patterns have that as well. And the amount of stretch that is in your knit fabric, it matters for that, as well as there are some knits that you can kind of treat like a woven. So this pattern you can tell it's got a closure.

Here's that pattern. It's got a zipper in the center front and it has darts for shaping. So you can see that design style. And it tells you, "Designed for firm knit or woven fabric." So a firm knit such as a double knit as it says on the back of a pattern. A double knit fabric is a very firm stable knit.

It doesn't have a lot of stretch so they sometimes can be treated as a woven. So you can use that in this woven pattern. Using a knit fabric for a woven pattern is a lot easier to interchange as I mentioned, both because of ease and because of, because of ease mostly. The reason that it's not always easy to stitch a woven pattern with a knit fabric is because of the closures, because stitching buttonholes in a knit fabric, stitching a zipper and having the weight and the stress point of that zipper opening and closing on a knit fabric is not always the best idea because a knit fabric is so fluid. Especially if it has spandex built into the fiber content, it stretches so much and it can be very wobbly and tough to stitch in those button holes in a knit fabric.

If it's a double knit, you might be fine, although double knits can sometimes get quite bulky and stitching button placket and button holes in something like that may not be a great idea. So we're gonna a match not only the weight of the fabric, but the way the fabric kind of behaves. So if you're translating a fabric or a pattern for a woven fabric to a knit, you could, in theory, just remove those closures altogether. Just remove that zipper. Remove that button placket and those button holes, making sure you take into consideration how that changes the dimensions of the pattern because a button placket, you have a lot of fabric added to the center front.

So that gets folded over several times to provide stability and stiffness for those button holes. So you may have to measure and find the exact center front so you can cut that away from the pattern. But stitching a lot of those closures into knit fabrics, not only not necessary, but sometimes pretty difficult if your knit fabric, as I say, is very fluid. So there are some cases where you can translate one-to-one that pattern into a different fabric, but oftentimes, you need to take some things into consideration. So if you were to wanna take this pattern, so this pattern is for these pants, and you can tell that these two pants are very similar in style, high-waisted, fairly fitted around the hips.

But this one is designed for knit fabric and this one is designed for a woven fabric. So if you wanted to take this pattern for a knit and stitch it in a woven, you'd have to do some measuring and do a little bit of changing to the pattern lines. So the shape is kind of similar from the woven pattern to the knit. The knit looks a little slimmer, which makes sense because it can stretch around your body. So on this knit pattern, you would just need to make sure that you're able to get that up over the widest part of your body, because that, if we're stitching it in a woven fabric, it's not going to stretch up around your body.

And we wanna make sure that there is enough ease that we can move and wear these pants if we're stitching it in a woven. So that's where you need to measure on the pattern. And on this upper part of the pattern, up until we get to the widest part of the body, which is often the hips, so the hip line is gonna be down here just below the crotch point, so all of this up here is going to need to be wide enough to get to over the widest part of your body. And then you need to decide how then you want that extra fabric to get tapered back in to line nicely along your waist. So is it going to be an elastic waistband casing like this one is?

Or are you going to try to stitch in some darts and stitch in a zipper or something like that? That would require a lot more changes to the pattern. But you can definitely do a double fold casing up at the upper edge with a woven fabric. You're just going to have a lot more gathered back in than you would if it was a knit. So I would measure the pattern lines and find the pattern lines that would allow you to get that up over the widest part of you.

So measure the widest part of you and compare that against this measurement up here and go with the size line that is big enough for that. And go with that size line down to your hip line or wherever on the pattern that widest part of your body is. And then below that, below that line, you can taper those pattern lines back down into something a little bit more tapered because everything below that isn't going to need to stretch up over the widest part of you. So you can taper that back down into your normal size line or you can bring it, you know, back in just a little bit depending on how you want that to fit. If you want a wider look to the leg, you can stitch that in a larger size obviously, but you can also then taper that back down to your normal size line.

So you can do some measuring and do some changes to this pattern, this knit pattern, to stitch it in a woven fabric. And you would do something similar to other patterns, shirts and dresses. Just take those couple of key things into consideration. So now using those tips, you can take a pattern that is designed for any type of fabric and translated into another type of fabric.