I know I have been doing and showing a lot of quilting lately, but I have picked up a knitting needle now and then.
I finished the knitting of my Boxy Tee and then blocked the pieces so they would be easier to sew together.
I was pretty disappointed to see that the purple bled. It's especially noticeable on the pink and light blue:
It was one of the yarns purchased as yarn and not harvested from a second hand sweater. I didn't even think about it and left the pieces soaking in a pot for a long time. If I had been worried about it, I could have soaked them flat instead of crumpled up, would have removed them quicker and could have used a colour catcher sheet. I'm going to block it again after it's seamed and the trim is on so we'll see if I can remove any of the excess dye. I don't hold too much hope though.
Then the pieces sat for quite a while. 1. I got absorbed into some quilting projects, and 2. I wanted to ponder which side to consider the "right side" and decide how to sew it together.
Here's a comparison--front:
back:
The colours blend better on the "purl" side, but I have a hard time not thinking of it as the "wrong" side (which it usually is). It's hard to enjoy wearing something if your brain is constantly screaming, "It's inside out!" Also, the fabric tends to balloon out in the direction of the purl side which affects how it hangs on the body. With the knit side out, the garment tends to cling (in a good way). With the purl side out, it tends to pouf away from the body. This does not conform to traditional ideas of what "flatters" you, but maybe I shouldn't conform to the idea that skinnier is always better anyway.
In the end, I decided to try a reversible garment. I'll probably only wear it the one way (purl side out) but I'll feel better knowing I could wear it the other way. :)
The pattern has you pick up stitches along the edge of both pieces to be seamed together and then do a three-needle bind off to attach them. I decided this would look a lot like a single crochet seam and went with that instead.
The crochet seam has the added advantage that it looks the same on both sides since the selvage stitches (or seam allowance) are encased in the crochet stitches.
At first I was crocheting through just the selvage stitch (I slip the first stitch, so you get a nice chain up the side) but found that it wasn't overly neat. For one thing, sometimes I wasn't consistent about it, so I'd get odd spots like the one highlighted below:
And in other places, there were large gaps because the selvage stitches were loose. By the end, I was crocheting into the first proper stitch and it was looking better.
(Although in these pictures it is obvious it still needs a good blocking.)
The crochet pick up also gave me a place to hid all the ends.
With all the colour changes, there were a lot! I just pulled them through the crochet loops for about an inch and cut them off. The crochet is quite tight and doesn't stretch much so they are quite secure. I worked in the ends on each seam as I finished it so I didn't get stuck with a mountain of them all at once.
While reading through project notes of this pattern on Ravelry, I noticed another knitter used single crochet for the seams, but she didn't like that the neat "V"s of the stitch sat to the side and weren't visible from the front. In the picture below, I have folded the garment so the Vs face forward (nice and pretty). If you look at the picture of the seam above (the one after the knit/purl comparisons), you can see that when the garment is flat, you see the side of the stitch, not the top.
Although, I would love a nice neat row of Vs showing as well, I am not bothered by this. The main intent of the pattern is to get a strong contrasting line of stitching on the seam, and you get that. What I don't like as much is the way it looks on the other side. It's more obvious in some places than others, but horizontal bars of red are visible and it doesn't look great.
I am planning to single crochet along those bars so that this side with have a "mock seam" visible and will have the same look as the pattern intended.
Once the seams were sewn, I could work on the armhole, neck, and hem trim. It was an interesting garter hem with a braid detail and then an i-cord bind off. (Talk about finishing a run with a marathon! It's been a lot of knitting to "finish" the garment!)
And as an added bonus, doing a four colour braid results in a big tangled mess of yarn.
For every stitch, you twist the working yarn. It's done in the same direction across the whole row, so you get a lot of built up twist. (Many times, the trim is done over two rows, twisting the opposite way on the second row which straightens out your yarn.) But there was only one row of twisting in this case. The good news was that I could cut three of those colours as soon as it was done and untangle the yarn.
The multi-colour trim also left me a lot more ends to work in!
I couldn't work these into the crochet stitches if I wanted to keep the garment reversible. I tried to hide a lot of them under the twisted stitches of the braid, but now it looks like the braid isn't tight enough to hold them in place; a lot of them are showing their ends already. I may have to anchor them down better.
For the bottom hem, I could pick up the stitches from the provisional cast on that the front and back pieces were started from. When I was completely done the hem, I realized I had made one mistake:
On the first row, I knit when I should have purled, and it put the "two-colour" row of garter on the stockinette side. I would have rather had it on the reverse side with the rest of the two-colour rows.
Then the stockinette side would have had two neat rows of garter in each colour and the reverse side would have had alternating two-colour and single colour ridges.
Oh well. It's a tiny thing and likely never to be noticed by anyone. It would have made me happy if it was the other way though.
As I put the garment together, I was sure it was going to be much shorter than I wanted it to be. I figured it would just hit my waist band. But when I tried it on, it was fine. Not quite as long as my impression from knitting the back and front pieces (since they're only half the width, they give a very long and skinny impression), but comfortably long.
This was part of the reason I made the hem longer than indicated in the pattern. (I added an extra garter ridge in each colour.) It did help with the length, but I also think it is in better proportion to the whole garment now too. A skinny trim is ok on an armhole or neckband, but I generally prefer something with more "heft" (in visual appearance, if not in weight) for the hem.
All I have left to do is finish working in the ends of the neckband and give it another dunk to block it. I am thinking about stretching it a little more vertically when I dry it this time. I'll measure my current gauge and see how much different it actually turns out.
