Something Different

It's been on my mind lately to make a sweater that has Mexican peasant blouse embroidery on it.  Not wanting to spend months embroidering, the idea for crocheting the motifs instead of embroidering them seemed like a good one, faster and easier.  While shopping for crochet threads, I noticed that there are many more colors available.  Since Irish crochet is so popular in Eastern Europe, there are many available patterns for crocheted flowers and leaves and there are even YouTube videos to show how they are created.

After trying a few different patterns, I now have a small binder full of patterns and a box full of finished motifs:

Here's a preliminary placement idea:

Today I drafted out a pattern for a yoke-front pullover 3/4-sleeve tunic sweater with crocheted edgings.  This is all part of the plan to have pretty sweaters to wear around the house in cold weather instead of not-very-flattering sweatshirts.

Despite being sidetracked by all this crocheting, the pale plum sweater had been blocked and is read to be sewn together.

A Royal Blue Knit That Worked

Years ago I knitted a Royal Blue cardigan for myself and it just went wrong somewhere.  It looked horrible on me but OK on my daughter so I gave it away.  This week I tried making another Royal Blue cardigan and it went wrong too.  However, this time I was determined not to let the cardigan end up badly.

I made a mistake following my own directions (forgot to read one paragraph about adding extra rows above the sleeve band because the garter-eyelet band was narrower than my usual 2" ribbing) and the sleeves ended up too short for the 3/4-length I wanted.  This made the whole sweater look square and clunky.  I stewed about it for a day or so, then cut the bands off the sleeves, added length by knitting another inch, then grafted the bands back on.  I crocheted a wide border onto the body of the cardigan and a narrower band onto the sleeves and neckline.  Then I tried it on and hooray, it looked fine.

This a a raglan cardigan with waist shaping at the sides.

Here's a closeup of the bottom edging.  I wasn't sure how crochet would look tacked onto the garter border, but it looks quite nice.

The sleeve crochet border is a band of picots from the wider edging pattern. In this photo you can plainly see where I added the length, but it isn't noticeable in real life.

I was wondering if I would have to fudge the spacing to make the border come out even in the center front, but it just worked out by itself.

Now I have a Royal Blue cardigan that I like and that fits correctly, and it should get lots of wear.