Progress of sorts

I have been making inroads on sorting out the WIPs, and the pile of shame is diminishing. It feel really good to be getting on top of the WIPs.

And now I’m thinking about my next challenge which is roughly along these RTW lines:

This is j.crew Chunky-Knit Fair Isle Sweater, $220.

I’m pretty sure that the design is Scandinavian, but never mind the pesky details.

The issue is that a somebody in my family has put in a request for a Lund sweater.

A Lund sweater is a sweater worn by Sarah Lund, the heroine detective of The TV series The Killing. Lund sweater lust has been sweeping the nation. I have since discovered that there is a US version of this series set in Seattle, but I think the US heroine is more Patagonia styled.

The sweater is a loosely knit raglan with Nordic snowflake patterning in bands across the sweater and sleeves.

The actual garment is from a Faroe traditional knitwear line, Gudrun & Gudrun; in addition to the version featured on TV there are other gorgeous versions available.

It seems that the sweaters may not blocked, the website states “Be aware that the sweater will get almost one size bigger when used. The sweater is supposed to be tight – we use to say that the sleeves are to be smeared on to get the correct fit. ” This might also have something to so with the chunky loose knit.

So I want to have a go at creating something akin to this sweater. This will be my first stranded knitting and also my first raglan sweater. I have started by charting out the snowflake motif.

I’m going to go with one of my favorite yarns, bulky Lopi.

Now I have to swatch and figure out things like how the pattern fits into the part where the sleeves meet the body and if it should be top down or bottom up. If you have any suggestions, please drop me a line.

Thoroughly Modern Granny Square

Vogue Early Fall 2011 bought some gorgeous granny square love in the shape of a swirly vest from Anna Sui.

This piece is a gorgeous update on the genre and very easy to make, essentially a large rectangle cardi with two holes for the arms.

The large scale granny square has also been seen out and about in other garments.

This looks like a piece from Fall 2011 Christopher Kane.

Christopher Kane’s crocheted cashmere pencil skirt was considered a top 2011 trend by Elle magazine.

Personally I like the elasticated waist band, it looks like a crochet casing for a piece of wide elastic, obviously the way to get a nice fit.

The cardigan from the the same collection is Granny Square raglan front and sleeves.

The back of the cardi is a basic black fabric that extends round to the front to make the bottom border and cuffs. The border fabric may be a knit fabric, it looks like it was attached to the crochet work with coverstitching, giving a slight sweatshirt fleece look to the piece. The crochet is worked with 100% cashmere and the cardigan was listed for $2,930.00 on the Neiman Marcus website.

What is very modern about this look is that the granny square is exploded to garment-sized proportions, rather than afghan square motifs stitched together to make a garment-sized piece of fabric.

Contrast the Kane designs with this pattern from Candi Jensen in Interweave Crochet Magazine 2004 to see what I mean:

Incidentally, the name of the pattern from Interweave Crochet magazine “The Thoroughly Modern Granny Square Jacket”.

I am completely and utterly smitten with the olive green/light grey/dark grey/black combo of the Kane dress on the right in the picture.

One modern handwork designer who does make use of the exploded motif is Jennifer Hansen of Stitch Diva Studios. Look at this piece, the bullseye sweater.  Although this is a knitted, not crocheted garment, the pattern makes a wonderful use of the exploded motif shape to create a fitted garment.

There are also a couple of other examples of this genre I really like. These are two knitted garments, both from Knitty Winter 2009.

And to end, a crocheted garment from the über-talented designer Shiri Mor, the Circular Motion sweater. The pattern for this ingenious sweater is available free at the Lion Brand website.

By the way, if you need a basic Granny Square pattern, please check out my previous post on this topic.

Know thy wayst

Goal for this summer – generate a TNT yoked skirt pattern. Getting this right could yield the cute skirt I always wanted and could fix my relationship with skirts once and for all.

Here are some of my fitting issues:

protruding abdomen (or low abdominal contour)

small hips

shorter lower torso (with high hip curve?)

flat seat

Please note that I don’t consider these “figure defects” as they are referred to in the majority of pattern fitting books and articles. Besides my genetics these characteristics are part of  middle-aged mom territory. I just want to figure out how to make the pattern fit my shape. For instance I have learned that I like garments that hang from my hips to sit a little lower than the natural waist so I want to accommodate this choice if possible. The whole process is a good puzzle for me to chew over and learn some valuable fitting lessons.

I have focused on Silhouette Pattern #2750 to work with. Here is the pattern envelope:

This pattern is deceptively simple, but there are some very sophisticated little touches that I am beginning to appreciate; part of the art and science of making patterns. The shape is A-line, slightly flared and very attractive as can be seen in these examples taken from the Silhouette Patterns catalog.

Unfortunately these images don’t show a back view and I would love to see the back view as the designer intended.

Here is a closer view of the schematic:

The schematic tells us that the pattern has the following elements:

Technically this is a four-panel (or four-gore) yoked skirt.

 A four-gore skirt has four panels and four vertial seamlines that are located at the center front, center back and sides of the body.

The front yoke is a dart-equivalent skirt yoke. This means that the yoke line is shaped to cross between the dart tips and pivot points for the basic dart(s) on the skirt sloper.

The back yoke is a style-line yoke  produced by designing the yoke line over folded waist darts. The darts are closed in the yoke while the remaining darts that extend below the yoke are stitched to fit the hips.

The attractiveness of the skirt seems to me to be a reflection of the pattern; the shape of the pieces and their position on the grain line of the fabric. I’m hoping to understand this pattern so I can incorporate the changes I desire. And then I want to make lots of skirts in prints and denim and become a “summer skirt girl”.