These four sweater adventures used yarn from three value packs of two different lines of Knit Picks yarn. The first two sweaters came from the CotLin Reflections VP, containing 12 colorways. The CotLin U-Neck and the CotLin Circular Yoke both used 5 unique colorways, and I used the remaining 2 colorways for swatching. The third sweater, the Hawthorne Vest, used the Hawthorne Bramble VP, with 5 colorways. I’m now down to the final VP, the Hawthorne Fog Bank VP, with 7 colorways.
Category Archives: Series’ First Posts
Sweater Adventure #3: The First Hawthorne Garment
Sweater Adventure #2: CotLin Seamless, Top-Down Circular Yoke
I’ve made several seamless top-down sweaters, and I’ve made a number of seamless bottom-up circular yoke sweaters. But I don’t remember ever making a seamless circular yoke sweater from the top-down.
Sweater Adventures
Having read that people loved sweaters made from two yarns I had never used, I took advantage of some sales and bought value packs of both. I’ll post details of each step of the process from swatching to the finished objects.
Sewing Ribbing: Overview
This is the first of five posts in a series on sewing ribbing.
Have you ever come across a sweater pattern that starts off by quite bossily telling you to read through all the instructions before starting? Yes, I’m always eager to cast on and start knitting too. But if we don’t read through the complete instructions first, we may have some heartburn during the sewing-up.
If you prefer a different seaming technique than the one the designer specifies (or even just assumes you’ll use), your ribbing sewing-up will look, shall we say, less than ideal. Fortunately, the fix is very easy—if we haven’t cast on yet.
Even if the pieces are complete, there are still dodges available.
The Bottom Line
This table shows how we have to start and end each piece of a sweater for the particular combination of ribbing and sewing technique we want to use. The four specific posts show all the gory details, and they’ll explain how to alter the sweater’s directions if necessary.
Your project may use another rib pattern, like 2×1 or 3×3. Use the same technique shown in any of the posts above, making small charts and “sewing” the ribbing in the computer or on paper before you even cast on, so that you can be sure you’ll get a good result when you do the in-yarn sewing-up.
* In this series of five posts, “half-stitch seam” means any seam that consumes half a stitch from each edge, and “full-stitch seam” means any seam that consumes a full stitch from each edge. Typically, the half-stitch seam is the mattress seam, and the full-stitch seam is the backstitch seam. But each seaming method can be done the other way: mattress seams can consume a full stitch from each edge, and backstitch seams can consume only half a stitch from each edge. There are other sewing techniques as well, but AFAIK, they’ll also consume either a half or full stitch from each edge. (Unless you really like bulky seams in your handknits, there’s no point in consuming more than a single stitch from each edge.)
My Sweater Pieces Are Already Done—Now What?
If you’ve already worked all the pieces and the sewing-up looks terrible, try using the “other” sewing technique just in the ribbing.
If a half-stitch seam looks bad in the ribbing, try sewing it with a full-stitch seam. If a full-stitch seam looks bad in the ribbing, try sewing it with a half-stitch seam. In the rest of the seam, you can switch back to the other seaming method.
If neither sewing-up option looks good, you can always—brace yourself—ravel.
If You Worked the Pieces Top Down, Easy Peasy
If you worked the sweater pieces so that you bound off (instead of cast on) in the ribbing, then you just ravel in the normal way and rework the ribbing according to the table above.
Brute-Force Raveling, but Be Careful