July 03, 2007
I love this design so much and I hope you will too. It’s the design I’ve worn the most – so easy to wear.
Edit to add: I posted this on Craftster, and while some of it is stuff I’ve already written here I thought you might be interested.
I named this design Briar Rose after the grimm brothers’ name for Sleeping Beauty. The shape was inspired both by vintage bedjackets and 40s and 50s silhouettes. A bedjacket inspired design seemed like the perfect thing for Sleeping Beauty to wear and while it certainly isn’t a bedjacket I am wearing it right now sitting on my bed? while typing this.
This started off as an experiment in seamless construction. One of the reasons that I made two was that I wasn’t entirely happy with the shaping of the first (pink one). It looks ok in these pictures but the armholes are really way too deep and this has the annoying effect of making it slip off of my shoulders. I wasn’t so unhappy with it that I wanted to take it off and rip it out, so I bought some yarn on sale and made a second one (the green). This was also a great opportunity to see how changing the yarn can make a big difference to the final look of something. The pink is Noro Cash Iroha – a silk, wool, cashmere blend worsted weight single – as you can see this resulted in a really drapey bolero. The green is Lana Grossa Royal Tweed which is a slightly heavier weight quite sturdy but very soft and fuzzy merino, it produced a much more structured effect so I also changed the border pattern to go with it. I’m probably kidding myself but I like to think that these changes mean people won’t think my wardrobe is full of variations on the same item! Especially as I’ve been wearing one of these most of the time recently.
The construction is actually quite simple, but not very easy to explain. Basically I started at the bottom and made a curved hem shaped with short rows. The sleeves were started at the cuffs (with lots of increasing to make them nice and puffy). I joined the sleeves and body at the underarm and knit from there up to the shoulders in one piece – sort of decreasing the body onto the sleeve stitches (that would be the tricky to explain part). At the top of the sleeves I worked lots of decreases over the sleeve stitches to gather in the puffiness and then each shoulder was worked separately, decreasing the shoulder stitches onto the sleeve stitches and then joining the front and back shoulders with a 3 needle bind off. I picked up stitches for the border all the way around the outside edge and to finish it I closed up the holes at the underarms with a 3 needle bind off. Figuring out what to do would have been a lot simpler if I had knit it in pieces, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun or satisfying.
March 29, 2023
March 23, 2023
February 03, 2022
Learn brioche with the free Daniel's Hat pattern
Tombreck - a free chevron beanie pattern
Working the brioche neck detail on the Polwarth sweater
Decorative Channel Island Cast-on
3 Easy Stretchy Bind-offs (p2tog bind-off; k2togtbl, k1 bind-off; Jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind-off)
Tubular Bind-off for brioche stitch
Paired increase methods compared
Brioche stitch double decreases
How to Knit in the round using Magic Loop
How to Knit in the round using DPNs
Avoiding ears when binding off
Tighter purl stitches for neater cables and ribbing
Cabling without a cable needle
Understanding "continue in pattern"
Joining the body and sleeves on a seamless bottom up sweater
How to pick a garment without a model for you (specifically addresses finding garment patterns when your gender identity isn't represented and the styles you want to knit might not be sized to fit your body)
How does ease affect inclusive size ranges?
Identifying and fixing mistakes in lace knitting
Getting started with stranded colourwork
Understanding colour dominance
Working stranded colourwork over small circumferences
Decreases in stranded colourwork
Holding the yarn for stranded colourwork
Ladderback Jacquard (a neat way to deal with long floats)
Cabling without a cable needle
Cabling without a cable needle on the wrong side
How to knit cabled decreases
Closed ring cable increases and decreases
How to work brioche stitch in the round
How to begin your first large cross stitch project
How to finish a cross stitch project with an embroidery hoop frame
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