Amongst our first designs for Brown Sheep we had used interesting visual effects and we were frequently tempted back to them. On close inspection Basketweave is obviously knitted though it is deceptive from a distance. It looks as if it could be woven from wide strips of fabric.
The challenge here was to find how could we achieve the woven look needed for Basketweave using only one yarn at a time but without making individual diagonal squares and stitching them together.
We had already made Counting Pane in strips but didn’t think of adapting that idea for this design. A series of strips made from squares in the correct sequence would probably have been an easier way to get the same effect but that realisation only came later. Instead we concentrated on identifying a unit which could be repeated all over (except for where some of the edges needed to be filled in at the end). This was another technique that we came back to several times afterwards.
Mathematically, pieces that fit together to form a pattern are called tessellations. There is often more than one way to split a design into identical pieces. From a technical point of view it is sometimes easiest to choose the smallest possible unit. At other times using larger units can mean that there is much less sewing up to be done at the end.
