Mila Cardigan in Rowan Cotton Cashmere & Kidsilk Haze - Downloadable PDF

Mila Cardigan in Rowan Cotton Cashmere & Kidsilk Haze – Pattern Summary

The Mila Cardigan is a beautifully crafted knitted cardigan designed by Quail Studio for Rowan. This pattern is available as a downloadable PDF and is rated as an intermediate skill level project, making it an excellent choice for knitters who are comfortable with shaping techniques and working with multiple yarns held together. The design combines two distinctive Rowan yarns to create a fabric with subtle texture, warmth, and a refined drape.

What Is Being Made

The Mila Cardigan is a classic, shaped cardigan suitable for a wide range of bust sizes. The pattern covers nine sizes, with bust measurements designed to fit:

• To fit bust: 71–76 cm / 28–30 in through to 152–157 cm / 60–62 in
• Actual garment bust measurement: 120 cm / 47 in through to 200 cm / 78¾ in

This generous size range makes the Mila Cardigan an inclusive pattern suitable for a broad spectrum of knitters. The garment features traditional cardigan construction with shoulder shaping, back neck shaping, and stitch holder techniques used throughout to manage live stitches during construction.

Yarns and Materials

The Mila Cardigan is worked using two Rowan yarns, which are used together to create the finished fabric:

• Rowan Cotton Cashmere – a DK weight yarn, sold in 50g balls. The colourway specified in the pattern is Dark Olive 218, referred to in the pattern as Yarn A (CC).
• Rowan Kidsilk Haze – a lace weight yarn, sold in 25g balls. This yarn is a famously delicate and lustrous blend of kid mohair and silk, which adds a soft halo and subtle sheen to the finished fabric when held alongside the Cotton Cashmere.

The combination of a DK cotton-cashmere blend with a lace weight mohair-silk yarn is a popular Rowan technique. Holding the two yarns together produces a fabric that is lightweight yet warm, with a gentle halo effect from the Kidsilk Haze enhancing the depth of colour in the Cotton Cashmere. The number of balls required varies by size, with the pattern specifying quantities for each of the nine sizes.

Techniques Used

The Mila Cardigan employs a range of standard and intermediate knitting techniques, including:

• Shoulder shaping via cast-off rows – stitches are cast off across multiple alternate rows to create a neat, angled shoulder seam
• Back neck shaping – centre back neck stitches are placed on a stitch holder while each side of the neck is worked separately, with decreases worked at the neck edge to create a smooth neckline curve
• Stitch holders – used throughout to hold live stitches for the back neck and other sections while other parts of the garment are completed
• Decreasing – the pattern uses K2tog (knit two together) as a right-leaning decrease, particularly during neck and shoulder shaping
• Working each side of the neck separately – after dividing for the back neck, the knitter rejoins yarn and works each shoulder independently, a standard technique for achieving symmetrical shaping
• Holding two yarns together – knitting with both Rowan Cotton Cashmere and Rowan Kidsilk Haze held as one strand throughout the project

Stitches Used

While the full stitch pattern detail is contained within the complete PDF, the pattern references the following stitches and methods:

• Knit stitch (K) – the primary stitch used throughout the body construction
• K2tog (Knit Two Together) – a standard right-leaning decrease used during neck shaping
• Cast off – used for shoulder shaping across multiple rows

The construction is characteristic of a top-down or flat-knit cardigan