1000 Great Knitting Motifs (Spiral-bound)

by Luise Roberts (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
An essential illustrated library of charted design motifs, both traditional and modern, for all knitters—superbly organized and spiral-bound to lie flat for easy use.

Whether you’re edging the cuffs of a plain sweater, embellishing the pocket of a child’s cardigan with a flower, or incorporating a textured stitch, such as Fair Isle, into the yoke of a knitted jacket, this book will help you find the perfect pattern or motif. Each charted motif is complete with data indicating the number of stitches and rows required to repeat a single pattern; in addition, a number of the charts are shown in different colorways. With a thousand international motifs to choose from, organized into easy-to-access categories, this is your guide to distinctive custom knitting.

A Crafter’s Choice Book Club Selection

About the Author

Luise Roberts is the coauthor of First Knits, Decorative Knitting, and Complete Crochet.

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 288 pages
• Publisher: Trafalgar Square Books (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570762597
• ISBN-13: 978-1570762598
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 7.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #386,016 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Features 1000 charted motifs to chose from , November 11, 2004

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

There plenty of yarns and patterns for knitters, but 1000 Great Knitting Motifs by Luise Roberts is the one pattern guide guaranteed to please all levels and styles of knitter. It features 1000 charted motifs to chose from - and not just Western, either: motifs from the Middle East and other parts of the world deftly separate 1000 Great Knitting Motifs from its largely-Western competitors. Add a number of categories which deftly lend themselves to both browsing and quick reference and you have a comprehensive needlecraft library reference including color charts to encourage knowledgable design variations and you have a real reference winner - complete with lay-flat binding for practical access while knitting.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars fairly useful book, very useless binding, July 23, 2005

By	Med Student (Dayton, OH) - See all my reviews

Overall, I'd say this is a fairly decent pattern book. I bought it to use for designing market bags for the women in my family. I plan on using the argyle pattern (which is excellent), but out of 1,000 motifs, that's the only one I'll be using.

This book essentially works on the principle of quantity over quality. I'd say about half of the patterns are actually not very good at all, and pretty much all of the rest I'm not interested in due to personal preference. But there are just so many offered that you still have a decent chance of finding what you're looking for.

My biggest complaint is that the patterns are not modern enough. I liked the argyle because that is an older pattern that came back into vogue a couple of years ago, making it the most current pattern in the book. Since most of the women that I am knitting for have a very modern put-together look that I didn't find in this book, I will still be making my own stripe and color block patterns for most of the bags. Most of the 'modern' patterns in the book are geared toward children (alphabet, toys, flowers, insects, animals, etc).

The only reason that I consider this book pretty good is that fair isle is one of the most enduring pattern styles that I know of. If you're a fan of traditional fair isle patterns, then this is probably a good book for you. I'm sure that there are lots of fair isle fans that could get great use out of this book. There are also ethnic patterns sorted by area of origin, but the fair isle section is by far the largest.

The binding really is awful. The cover pictured is actually a cardboard binder that the book is not really attached to. It has little holes in the inside that the spiral binding of the book is supposed to slip into, but good luck using the book with it attached to the cover. It wasn't even attached when I received it in the mail and I've since made peace with the cover remaining unattached. That the spiral binding won't even keep the pages together when I flip through the book is a much bigger problem. The publisher might as well have just sent the pages in the mail with no binding at all for as well as the binding they used actually works.

46 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars 1000 graphs and 5 Photos, August 2, 2004

By	sfknitter (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This is a nice size book but disappointingly, comprised almost entirely of graphs. There ought to have been more (than the five photos) included along side some of the graphs to let you know how the motifs may come out. There is some explanations and ideas provided but that is on the light side too. If you still think you might like to get this book, I'd recommend taking a look at it first.