Wildwood Cardigan - Knitting Pattern for Women in Tahki Yarns Malibu

Wildwood Cardigan Knitting Pattern – A Detailed Overview

The Wildwood Cardigan is a beautifully crafted women's knitting pattern designed by Irina Poludnenko and published by Tahki Stacy Charles Inc. This intermediate-level pattern produces an elegant, lace-detailed cardigan worked in Tahki Yarns Malibu, a 100% mercerized cotton yarn. The result is a lightweight, breathable garment with refined texture, making it an ideal project for knitters looking to expand their skills with lace patterning and traditional seamed construction.

About the Finished Garment

The Wildwood Cardigan is a women's open-front or button-front style cardigan featuring a graceful lace pattern as its primary surface texture. The design is available in six sizes — Small, Medium, Large, XL, 2X, and 3X — with finished bust measurements ranging from 39 to 57 inches (99 to 146 cm) and lengths ranging from 23 to 28 inches (58.5 to 71 cm). This generous size range makes the pattern accessible to a wide range of body types.

The cardigan features shaped shoulders, with bind-offs worked at the beginning of right-side rows to create a clean, structured shoulder line. A neck edging is worked separately using a circular needle, giving the neckline a polished, finished appearance. The left front and right front are mirror images of each other, with the right front worked by reversing all shaping from the left front instructions.

Construction and Techniques

The Wildwood Cardigan is constructed using a seamed, worked-flat method, meaning each piece — the back, left front, right front, and sleeves — is knitted separately as flat panels and then joined together with seams. This traditional approach gives the finished garment excellent structure and durability, and it allows knitters to work each section independently before assembling the final piece.

• Worked flat: All pieces are knitted back and forth in rows on straight or circular needles, rather than in the round. This is a classic construction method well-suited to structured garments like cardigans.
• Seamed construction: The individual pieces are sewn together after knitting is complete, using a yarn needle. Seaming adds stability to the garment and helps it hold its shape over time.
• Lace patterning: The primary stitch pattern throughout the cardigan is a lace pattern, worked on right-side rows. Lace knitting involves a combination of yarn-overs (which create decorative holes or eyelets) and decrease stitches that offset them, maintaining the overall stitch count while producing an open, airy fabric with visual texture.

Stitches and Special Abbreviations

The pattern makes use of several key knitting stitches and techniques that intermediate knitters will find familiar:

• Lace Pattern: The signature stitch of this cardigan, worked across right-side rows to create the decorative openwork texture that defines the garment's aesthetic.
• K2tog (Knit 2 Together): A right-leaning decrease worked by knitting two stitches together through their front loops. Used in shaping and within the lace pattern itself.
• Ssk / Ssp (Slip, Slip, Knit / Slip, Slip, Purl): A left-leaning decrease used to balance the K2tog in lace patterning and shaping, creating symmetrical decreases on both sides of the work.
• Stitch markers: Used to mark pattern repeats or key shaping points, helping knitters keep track of their place within the lace pattern.

Understanding the interplay between yarn-overs and paired decreases like K2tog and ssk is fundamental to lace knitting. These techniques work together to create the characteristic holes and diagonal lines of lace fabric while keeping the stitch count consistent across rows.

Materials and Yarn

The pattern is specifically designed for Tahki Yarns Malibu, a worsted weight yarn made from 100% mercerized cotton. Each ball weighs 1.75 oz / 50g and contains approximately 169 yards / 155 meters. The colorway used in the sample is #