Our Made to Order journey with Mr Andre Rieu

 In January of this year, I received an email from a lovely lady, asking if we did a bespoke service for matching an exisiting well loved garment, and of course I said yes!  It's a service we have offered for many years, and at the time of our first email chat, I had no idea whom the garment was for.

Once we had established we could help she explained that her boss had asked her to knit a cardigan to match an old one of his, having known she was a keen knitter.  On seeing the cardigan she realised it was far too complex for hand knitting, so Mr Rieu asked if she would be able to find a company to do this for him.  Many negative emails to big named brands later, she found us!

A few days later the garment arrived, looking much worn and loved by Mr Rieu:

The colour was a warm, buttery yellow and the knit was a different variety to our standard jersey stitch.  The linking was more complex and the pocket placement quite unusual.  All areas Mr Rieu wanted a perfect match, so the challenge began!

The first job for me was to brief my knitter, Nitesh, as to all the different elements of the garment and have the colour swatches organised to match his original garment:

Mr Rieu chose the AT58 Pina Colada colour, which was a close match, taking into account how faded the original garment had become over the years.

The next step was to ensure EVERY single measurement was accurate, and every finish was perfected.  Nitesh made prototypes of areas of difficulty to get it 100% correct for me, like this cuff detail:

Once we had agreed everything, he got the knitting process started and sent me some wonderful images that I forwarded to Mr Rieu, and he responded with joy!

First stages are knitting the panels, linking the panels together, and steam pressing after washing.

The second and final stages, finishing, labeling and checking before shipping.  See part 2 for the next stage of our epic adventure!