Oh, I do like to cut up them sweaters! Well, kind of. I do not have an aversion to it anyway. As you already know, Sally is a wonderful knitter, but there are some things that she defers to me. She asked me to shorten one of my favorite sweaters of hers. It’s funny, because she called me to ask if I was working on her gold sweater, and I was at that exact moment in time (she knows me all too well), and then she asked if I would post pictures of the process.
This is Sally’s design, knitted out of GGH Mulberry Silk held with Kidsilk Haze. The result is a fairly heavyweight yarn. The design is three-quarter length sleeve, fitted, with the identical v-neck shaping front and back. She attached the neckbands using a 3-needle bind off. With a lot of things, however, it is difficult to anticipate the perfect fit during the knitting phase. The sweater was at least 4-5″ too long to be wearable in the way that she wanted. The blue marker shows how much needed to be removed. The color is more true in later photos.
The first step was undoing the seams and detaching the bottom bands, which I needed to preserve and reattach.Â
Then I removed the mid-section that was to be discarded:
I ripped out some yarn from the mid-section to use for grafting. It’s easier to use the yarn when it has been straightened. I wet the yarn and wrapped it around a glass — it dries very quickly:
Then I grafted it back together using garter stitch. I had to machine sew the side seams because the bottom border was wider than the part it was grafted to because of the shaped waistline. And voila:
Here is a close up of the neckline and hem:
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Another patient recovering nicely. I just love this sweater. It is very dressy, but would keep you warm for winter functions. So many times you freeze to death if you need to look nice in Minnesota!Â
Adding Kidsilk Haze to a lightweight yarn is a wonderful tip for increasing the gauge. Sally and I have both made sweaters where we added Kidsilk Haze to Koigu to obtain a worsted gauge. Here’s an example:
By adding the Kidsilk Haze, I was able to knit Koigu at 5 sts per inch and get the softest fabric! This is one of my favorite sweaters to wear. The pattern is Emmeline from Rowan Magazine #28. I never would have noticed it, but someone from the Yarnery knitted it up in the “Kid Koigu” combination and the rest is history. It is called the Yarnery uniform because everyone there has there own color version.
It’s beautiful! And I’m so glad it’s out of intensive care.
One of the reasons the sweater was too long was that it was too long. Ha! But the other reason is that styles changed; I did wear it when I made it, but decided that for wear now it needed to be shorter. Or I needed to get taller. Making the sweater shorter, when you have a skilled knitting surgeon available, was the obvious solution.
Comment by surly — September 23, 2006 @ 11:06 am
That’s amazing. Knitting surgeon indeed! (Beautiful design as well, Sally)
Comment by Wendy O — September 23, 2006 @ 12:26 pm
Koigu with KSH – what a great idea. I bet that fabric is incredibly soft and wonderful! Thank you for sharing that one!
Comment by Dianna — September 23, 2006 @ 2:31 pm
From Susan — after posting about the “Kid Koigu” sweater, I wore it to my knitting class today and afterwards as I ran errands. I got a ton of compliments, plus people just had to touch it and said how soft it is.
Comment by surly — September 23, 2006 @ 2:56 pm
Fantastic work, Susan. I’ve said it before to others that there are alternatives to ripping and re-knitting and this is a perfect example. Oops! I’m one of those who still persists in finding yarn of just the right weight. I should really try that.
And for Sally, that’s a gorgeous sweater. When are we going to see a book from the two of you?
Comment by Marina — September 23, 2006 @ 3:29 pm
I absolutely love the Koigu sweater with Kid Silk Haze. Do you happen to remember the colors that you used?
Comment by Betsy — September 23, 2006 @ 5:50 pm
That’s lovely! I always try to avoid grafting on my own garments but I end up doing it on my student’s handknits just because I spotted mistakes. 😛
Comment by Emy — September 26, 2006 @ 2:34 am
Wow, that looks great! I think I’ll go chop up some old sweaters for practice.
Comment by Carrie K — September 26, 2006 @ 7:26 pm