Custom Space-Dyed Stripe Cardigan

A space-dyed cardigan is the one knitwear category where the fabric is decided before the machine starts. The yarn is printed with colour in 4–6 cm blocks along its length, then knitted, so the colour change lands mid-course rather than on a stitch line and every band boundary comes out feathered instead of sharp. That is the look buyers are chasing — but it is also why the category has a bad reputation, because the placement is random by nature and most factories cannot tell you what the second bulk will look like. We handle it with a band map: four repeats are mapped, numbered and locked against the sample you approve, panels are knitted in sequence with the repeat start marked on each one, and bulk is held to within one band. Left and right fronts are cut and positioned so the bands still meet level at the button placket, which is the detail that separates a cardigan that reads expensive from one that looks mismatched. The yarn is a 6-ply brushed build on 12GG — 35% recycled wool, 40% nylon, 25% baby alpaca in the signature version, with an acrylic-wool entry build and a 100% GRS recycled polyester build on the same band map if the price needs to move. Brushing happens after the first soft-wash, not before, because brushing a greige panel loses the halo in the wash and the garment arrives looking flat. With five or six colours in one repeat, we test colourfastness to grade 4–5 on a multi-fibre strip at 40 °C before bulk. Yarn, colour, gauge, band width, main label, care label and hang tag are all yours to set: send Pantone TCX references and vector label artwork and a yarn pom set comes back with the sample. MOQ is 100 pieces per colourway, sampling is 7 days, bulk is 20–25 days, DDP to US, EU, UK, AU and JP.