It is now the day before our second session and I have not given you more information on what we are learning.
I am thoroughly enjoying my journey in year two. It is amazing what NOT working does for a student taking on this level of certification.
Project one is a puffy/gathered sleeve garment. My inspiration came from the Skater's Top by Veronik Avery. I am knitting this garment out of a fiber exactly like Kidsilk Haze but made by another company.
Here is the body sewn up but without the neckline ribbing.
The concepts involved in creating a puffy sleeve is very intriguing. During class when Jean showed us how to make the design, all I could think was "how cool is that?". I feel fortunate that as we are learning this concept just as the puffy sleeve has come back into fashion. I am seeing them in many fashion magazines.
For this short sleeve tee, when creating the puffy sleeve, after you have drawn the sleeve cap curve, you take tracing paper and draw the cap only onto the paper. Cut it out. Then anchoring at the underarm point, pivot the cap at that point upward. Then you can draw the new sleeve cap.
With each garment we design, I learn more on how to determine if a certain pattern will work with the design or not. I learned, after knitting the front, that the stitch pattern I chose isn't going to work out as well as I thought it would.
The lace pattern I am using is a 9 stitch repeat and there is no center stitch, per se. It is not a balanced pattern, as you can see above.
I should have mirrored the lace stitch pattern on the left and right sides of the center front and center back, or use a different stitch pattern altogether. Luckily the fuzziness of this yarn will disguise this *problem* a teeny, tiny bit but *I* will know there is a problem. I wasn't willing to start all over and re-knit the front once I realized the issue but I will chalk it up experience.
Not only did I make the sleeve so it will be gathered at the top of the sleeve, but I also did short rows right after the provisional cast-on to create a little puffy shelf-y thing at the bottom of the sleeve right before the ribbing. In essence you are creating a collar shaped fabric on the sleeve.
To create this on your actual pattern you create an area of short rows.
To explain how this creates additional fabric, the photo below of my notes may help you to understand. The orange line is the provisional cast-on and you knit up from this line. The purple line indicates where the ribbing is done downward. You still knit down from the provisional cast-on but the drawing is trying to indicate and show the extra fabric that you will create.
Project Two. Dolman sleeve garment. More detail to come later(I would rather do some spinning today!). Originally I was going to do a very short sleeved pullover out of Euroflax for a cute summer top. That design went out the window the day of class where we learned the dolman sleeve concepts. I didn't want to do a short-sleeved garment as I felt I would be short changing my learning on the technicalities to create the dolman sleeve.
I landed on doing a dolman sleeved version of Kate Gilbert's A Cardigan for Arwen. The dolman area of the sleeve will be very small(no wing bats for me). I won't do a hooded version but I have yet to determine how I will finish the neckline.
Here is my progress on the front. The back is done up to this point but it is just stockinette so there is no point really showing you.
We also had to knit 4 guage samples out of 100% wool with about 110 meters(120yds) in 50g. Each swatch is 25 sts, 25 rows. One swatch for 3.25, 3.5, 3.75 and 4mm needle.
This will help us determine, in our own knitting, about how much each change in needle size will give us in our knitting.
To help me keep track of what needle size I used for each swatch, I put little knots in the cast-on yarn. Here is an example of my knots for my 3.25 swatch.
Have a great weekend! I know I will! Going to Nihon Vogue class is always exciting and fun, and little exhausting.
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