Blue Bulky Cardigan Project

I had some heavier yarn and wanted to make up a blue cardigan for my great granddaughter.  She wanted long sleeves, three buttons at the top and it had to be blue to match her jeans!  I did make it for her and sent it off in the mail as she loves to get parcels.  At five years of age this is pretty much a big deal to get a parcel just for you!

I had a lot of the yarn left over so I make another regular cardigan in a larger size with six button closure.  Our little GGD Evalynne will be able to grow into this one. 

This is the first time I have make the button and buttonhole bands separately and sewn them on after the fact.  I know a lot of machine knitters use this technique and I figured it was about time I gave it a try.  Do like the appearance and it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be at all.

I used Knitware for the pattern using a child's 28" chest sizing for this one.  Did my swatch and then using my Studio 155 with ribber I knit it up very quickly.  Did the neckband in 1 x 1 rib and the shaped top of the sleeves I put together on the machine rather than hand sewing doing half at a time.  All the other seams were done by hand.

I have now an order from my 14 year old granddaughter Maddie for a red pullover with some interesting textures in the centre front panel.  A bit of a challenge but I'm going to give it a try.  I have the yarn in a beautiful cherry red.  Next I will have to decide what machine to use.  It is a much finer yarn so I may be able to work this one up on my Singer 360 with ribber or possibly my LK 150 and do a lot of hand manipulating. 

Here is a photo of the finished larger cardigan (sorry forgot to take a photo of the smaller one).

Click on photo to enlarge

Interesting Vest Project

I came across this hand knit pattern online, purchased it and decided to do it on my bulky (Studio 155 and ribber) instead of the standard bed.  I chose Paton's Décor yarn for this little project.  I then worked with the hand knitting schematics that were given with the pattern to establish a pattern that should fit me!  My thoughts were this vest would be great for après ski or just something to wear over a turtle neck sweater or long sleeve blouse during these cold winter days.

I did my swatch.  The pattern called for a lovely centre panel on the front with cables - I wasn't in the mood for cables.  I wanted some texture but also flatter than cables so I went with a simple eyelet pattern that turned out very nice. 

Next I decided to have a 1 x 1 ribbing then a 6 x 6 rib for the body of the vest.   On the each edge I had 4 stitches (3 for half of the 6x6 rib and one for seaming).  This worked out beautifully as the 6 x 6 rib just flows all the way around the vest.

 

So here are the two pieces as they come off the machine.  They have been lightly steamed as I still wanted some elasticity in the ribbing.

 

 

Now this was the interesting part!  The seam was made up of cast off stitches on the short section and side edge stitches on the triangle shaped part.  I found by pinning I could easily ease the row edge knots and loops into the cast off stitches.

 

Yoke seaming is now done with the opening rolled back to create a collar shaping.  It does tend to look like someone has very round shoulders.  The way it fits the shaping forms over the curve of the shoulder and seems to take that triangle shaping out allowing the fabric to sit on the shoulders nicely.

 

The side seams are now done - really very little sewing on this one!  The space between the blue yarn markers are the armhole openings.  I don't think I will do anything further at the sleeve openings as this is a very casual vest.  The three columns on the edge seems to be enough.

 

 

Here is the back of the vest

 

I changed the pattern quite a bit in that I wanted ribbing on the bottom and a different rib throughout the body and of course that centre panel but then that is what we are all about isn't it.  Experimenting all the time with new textures and the look of the fabric.  I do love the vertical ribs on the main body of the vest and the only horizontal section is at the top front yoke area only.  Especially nice for my mature figure.

 

 

Now I am deciding if I would want to actually add sleeves to this - why not....  I could work with this as a drop shoulder sweater if I wanted sleeves and put them in before I sew up the side seams.  May do that on the next one!

 

If you are interested in the pattern you can find it at http://www.berroco.com/patterns/aquari