Monday, March 23, 2015

Sweater Surgery

When I was at the Goodwill picking up a sweater to make into swants, I found an amazing fair isle sweater.  I wish I had taken a picture of it; it was a big, boxy 80's drop shoulder number made of some sort of hearty nordic wool.

But it was a giant men's sweater.

So I ripped it apart and am attempting to change it into a set-in sleeve sweater that will fit me (this is a really good description of the different kinds of shoulders, if you care).  The sweater was serged/overlocked together at the edges, so I just cut away the side seems.




Because it was a drop-sleeve sweater (and I have giant ape arms), I need to add a lot of length to the sleeves.  I happened to have some yarn that matches the yellow and white yarn already in the sweater.  I picked up the stitches where the sleeves were serged to the body of the sweater.  Now I am knitting until they are long enough, adding the proper shaping in as I go.



I also had to change the body of the sweater from a big rectangle into a set-in shape.  I mapped out the middle of the sweater and then how wide I wanted the shoulders and waist to be (in the neon thread you see) based on my measurements.



Then I cut the sleeve holes.  Cutting knitting is nerve-wracking, but the yarn is sticky enough that it doesn't unravel too much.

I left the original collar.  So now I just have to finish knitting the sleeves and then sew it all together on the sewing machine. 

No comments:

Post a Comment