March 22, 2016

sparrow 2016 spotlight: zara (and a teaser)

Zara, from the Sparrow 2016 collection, might be one of my favorite designs not just of the Quince design team collections so far, but of all time. It makes such beautiful use of our Sparrow linen. Everything about it is just right: the graphic lines, the perfectly unfinished linen edges, the minimalist, live-in-me shape that belongs on any body and can be styled with all kinds of things.

There isn't a single person I know who wouldn't look amazing in this one.

Dianna Walla wrote the pattern for six sizes, starting at 37" finished bust circumference up through 57½", with lots of room (no pun intended) to decide on various amounts of ease to suit your preferences. On our model, Zara is shown in size 45", with 11" of positive ease.

You can have a lot of fun with color ideas in a top like Zara. Shown in Sparrow colors Moon with Maize striping, it would be equally stunning in a dark tonal pairing, like our new black Eclipse as a backdrop for subtler stripes like Birch, or Fen.

When deciding which colors you want to use for your project, use our Compare Colors tool found below the yarn photo on the left side of any of our yarn pages to play around with combinations and see them side by side. (note: this function is not yet available for the mobile version of our website—we're working on it!)

Try it out on our Sparrow page: Click Compare Colors just beneath the yarn photo to open the pop-up window (shown below); click on a color dot to display that color, click on the dot again to banish it. Clicking and dragging a yarn photo allows you to virtually move the skeins around so you can reorder and see how multiple colors play next to each other.

Compare up to five different shades in any order, just like that. It's the next best thing to holding the yarn in your hands.