The knitters of Barcelos
Our hand-finished knits pass through a village outside Barcelos, where 9 women sew every seam by hand. We asked them what a machine cannot do.
By Rui Teixeira2 min read
Our sweaters are knitted in panels on machines at a mill in northern Portugal. Then they go somewhere unusual: to a group of 9 women in a village outside Barcelos, who join the panels and finish every edge by hand. Some of them have done this work for 40 years.
Why by hand?
A machine joins knit panels with an overlocked seam. It is fast, but it is stiff, and it makes a ridge you can feel on the inside. Joined by hand, stitch by stitch, the seam is part of the knit. It stretches with the sweater and you cannot find it with your eyes closed.
The machine does not know where the shoulder is. I do.
What takes longest?
The cables. Where 2 cabled panels meet at the side, the twists have to line up, or the pattern looks broken. Each one is matched by eye. A chunky cable-knit takes one woman most of a day to finish.
What would they change?
They asked us to keep the undyed yarns. Wool left its natural color is softer to work, and they like that the sweater they hold is the color of the sheep it came from. We agreed. 5 of our knits now come undyed.
We visit every few months, and we pay by the piece at a rate they set. When we asked if younger people in the village are learning, the answer was 2 of them. One, Inês, is 24, and nobody matches a cable faster.
