Last month I had the great fortune of having went to my first ever knitting convention and workshop. In the workshop I learned a great deal about knitting a sweater to fit ME, based on my own body measurements. So, this month I would take all what I had learned and put into action. In this case it would be a sleeveless zip-up vest/gilet.
This Gilet Vest is made using yarn that I already had in the cupboard (again, another trait of mine). I used Three Irish Girls club yarn: 2 skeins of Cary’s BFL in “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree” (green/yellow/brown) and 2 skeins of “Accentuate the Positive” (brown). At first, I wasn’t overly excited by these colours when they arrived and I must admit, they were not ‘talking’ to me the way most of my yarns do. I could say it was a mutual respect to keep each other at a safe distance until we were ready to engage!
After a fair amount of sketching, number crunching and swatching, I finally came up with something that I would enjoy making as well as wearing (ultimately).
Everything I learned on Carol Feller‘s course last month was being put to the test. That was until I got three quarters of the way down the body (sorry, I am working top-down here). I noticed that the decrease I made around the waist was not enough, therefore the subsequent increases for the hips were far too many! This left me with more volume swinging around my hips than was necessary! AAGH!
Uh, Oh!
So… how did I correct this? Did I rip it all back to below the bust line or did I just carry on and take it on the chin? Well, I did a bit of BOTH. 
I ripped back about 3 inches and tried my best to put in some decreases to level it off. I finished it off by adding a 2 x 2 rib in the hope that it would bring the hip in a bit more.
So… what about all that ‘volume’ around the tummy and hips? Surely only a pregnant woman needs that amount of room in a sweater?!
Here is what I did. I made a kangaroo style pocket and sewed it onto the front of the vest. This way, it would not look out of place on the sweater and all that volume is now hidden behind a pocket. A disaster, so mischievously averted!
Everything I learned from the course was really put to the test! My calculations were all correct from the neck downwards – the only error was that I must of either imagined that my bum was bigger than a Hippo’s, or that I drifted into a knitting trance and just couldn’t stop knitting! Either way, it worked out OK in the end.
JimiKnits... and other bits. 