Knit The City Building Blocks: Mix and match knitting charts for iconic city buildings - Softcover

Henzler, Jake

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1446316629 ISBN 13: 9781446316627

Publisher: David & Charles, 2026

Synopsis

A fun collection of stranded colorwork and intarsia knitting charts to make buildings inspired by iconic cities including London, Paris, Copenhagen, Sydney, Amsterdam, Prague and New York.

Australian designer, Jake Henzler who is known as Boy Knits World, has created knitted building blocks for classic buildings from well-known cities around the world. The designs are modular so they can be mix and matched to make your own unique buildings, for example, you can switch up the different styles of gables and windows and adjust the style of the buildings to create endless alternatives.

The buildings are knitted as separate blocks but they can be joined together to make blankets, throws and cushion covers as well as other accessories and homewares. There are guidelines for yarn amounts and the number of blocks needed to make three different sized projects for each city: a large blanket; and baby blanket and a cushion cover but you can use your knitted building blocks however you like - the world is your oyster!

So grab your needles and yarn and start your city break now with Knit The City!

About this title

About the Author

Jake Henzler is an Australian knitting designer known for his innovative and playful approach to architectural knitting. He is the creative mind behind the popular 'Boy Knits World' brand, which has built a devoted following for its imaginative building block designs inspired by cityscapes around the world. With a background in both textiles and education, Jake brings a clear, accessible style to his patterns, empowering knitters of all levels to experiment, personalise, and create with confidence.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I began designing and knitting colourwork blocks in 2018 while I was living in Denmark. The project began as a handmade souvenir for my year in Copenhagen, and I had imagined each block would be based on a significant building from my time there. I started with highly detailed designs that included intricate masonry and displays in the windows of shops, but it quickly became clear that this would be too complicated for the effect I wanted to achieve. The challenge and pleasure of the designs came in learning how to limit the details of each building without losing its essential characteristics.

This process of refinement led me to construct the designs with interchangeable elements. Some experience with patchwork quilting taught me that, while each block needs to stand on its own, it must also share elements of colour, layout and shape with other blocks. A balance of repetition and variation gives a large design some aesthetic stability and allows you to introduce more irregular features. The consistency of the charcoal windowpanes works as a visual anchor to keep all of the other colours floating comfortably beneath its surface.

Building façades make interesting subjects for fabric designs. For one, they traditionally rely on regular arrangements of features like windows, doors, columns, ledges and rooflines. Because they’re often built in long rows of similar and alternating styles, buildings also exist in an established visual system.

Alone or in groups, they already resemble the kinds of lines and shapes used in woven plaids and yardage prints. Buildings also create personal connections for people. Like my memento of Copenhagen, images of the right kind of building can remind us how our lives looked in another time and place.

Each city design I’ve made since Copenhagen has offered a new design opportunity. The Amsterdam blocks require a skyline, where the shapely gables cut into a field of blue. Sydney’s filigree ironwork draws the eye in to focus on fine details, and it allows another frequency of colour to transmit across the surface of the grid. The height of the Paris buildings offers expanded repetition within each block, and the rows of balconies create texture in the neutral colours.

This book draws together samples of designs from each of these patterns, and introduces three new cities to play with – London, Prague and New York. Rather than providing a prescriptive list of projects using a predefined set of blocks, I want this book to be a guide to designing a knitted city project that is uniquely your own. Like the books and designs that have inspired my work, I hope this collection also inspires new creative projects, and new ways of looking at knitted colourwork as a medium.

Edition details

• Publisher: David & Charles
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1446316629
• ISBN 13: 9781446316627
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128