My summer version of Simplicity 4463 is coming along. I have made up the front and the back, joined them at the shoulders, and attached the sleeves and the facing. After the problem of Butterick 5997 I am always worried about V necklines ending up too low, so I raised this one a bit - and then worried instead about whether or not I could get my head through it! Happily, it has turned out just fine.
 |
| Happy with the front . . . |
 |
| . . . and with the back |
There's a lot of hand sewing to do next, so it will be a while before I have a completed dress.
I'm also continuing to work away on my Confidette bolero. I must admit, I'm not enjoying this pattern as much as I did Wondrella. The back and fronts were fine, but once they were joined together, I found the long rows (over 200 stitches) a real slog. Assuming that I do knit a second version in my 'good' wool, I think that I will knit the three pieces separately, and sew them together. This also means that I can do the whole thing in lever knitting.
 |
| Confidette progress |
Yes, there are two balls of wool attached to the bolero in the above picture. I have changed the order of construction. Instead of knitting the main border and then the sleeves, I'm doing the sleeves first. Although I had a lot of wool left over from my first Wondrella, it turned out that I did need to buy an extra ball, and it was impossible to match the dye lot. The new lot doesn't look any different from the original, but in an abundance of caution I've decided to knit the body of the bolero in the original wool. If the new ball is a slightly different colour, it won't show so much in the stripes of the border.
I'm not thrilled with my pick-up-and-knit on the sleeves, either. It looks very loose, so much so that I think I will need to sew it slightly tighter - in which case I might as well have knitted the sleeves separately as well.
 |
| The join is very gappy |
 |
| It looks messy on the inside, too |
I'm not entirely sure that I have understood the instructions for the sleeve, either, and am bracing myself for having to frog it and try again. Hopefully with a better cast on. On the plus side, knitting the pattern in a basic acrylic before trying it in more expensive wool is currently looking like a very sound move!
Great progress on both fronts! On the knitting: 200 stitches can be a slog in stockinette, but I've found as I've gotten better at knitting with charts and such, having some kind of pattern really breaks up the monotony for me. I used to do a lot of seaming but find that it doesn't always look as neat as the seamless construction that most pattern designers favor these days. Now that I can manage tiny circulars, I can do the sleeves in the round as well (I used to knit flat from the cap and then seam up to the underarm because I hate dpns with the burning white hot passion of a thousand suns--ha!) I will also say that picking up stitches around an armscye is just a pain and tends to look like how yours looks no matter what you do, especially pre-blocking. It is kind of the nature of the beast. That said, wet blocking will often cure a lot of ills and fix tension issues! Hope it all works out!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the words of encouragement Juliana! I had wondered if blocking might improve things, but feared that it was beyond help.
DeleteThe good news is that I did a few more rows today, and I had actually got it right - no need to frog.
I'm with you on dpns. I rarely use the words always or never, but am happy to make an exception for the chances of me using those things again!