As I start designing more of my own patterns, I've found myself wanting to play with shapes before making a big commitment with a people-sized model. So I started thinking about making more miniature versions of my creations. I thought this one was particularly useful.
I saw
this sweater at Urban Outfitters a while back. The construction was really interesting - essentially a big piece of circular fabric with holes for arms, but I couldn't for the life of me visualize how it was put together. It's actually a classic type of sweater shape, as you can see from this
Yesterknits pattern, but it's not exactly intuitive.
The
free Yesterknits pattern for the vintage shrug instructed you to knit a piece of fabric, essentially in the shape of a "T," and sew together certain edges. But the instructions on sewing the fabric together didn't necessarily give one a good idea of how the "T" turned into a sweater.
So I tried this little tiny test. I cast on 30 stitches (not the right number for the ribbing, but divisible by three) and knit in 2x2 rib for 10 rows. Then I cast off 10 stitches on each side of the work and kept knitting the middle ten stitches for another 10 rows. Then I cast off. Here's the resulting piece:
Now here's the part I couldn't figure out without trying it myself. You fold the flap made by knitting the center 10 stitches down and sew side A to side B. Then sew side
C to side D (sorry... I fixed a typo here!). You'll see the basic shape of the shrug. It really does end up circular:
It also ended up being just the right size for the fabulous Ani DollFranco to model for you:
The 30 stitches cast on initially are the top / collar side. Everything else kind of wraps around the body.
There are two main differences (besides the, um scale) between this sweater and the UO sweater. First, proportion. I didn't bother figuring any of that out, but you'd have to play with the proportions on a final version. I just used as many 10s as possible because I was in a hurry. But I suspect you'd have to knit more than 10 rows initially to get a wider collar. Second, ribbing. The UO sweater has two different rib patterns - one for the stitches that border the shrug and one for the inner portion. You could accomplish this by starting and finishing with a certain number of rows in, say, 3x2 rib before switching over to 2x2 or whatever you finally decide to use.
I don't know whether I'll ever actually make the sweater. Maybe Ani DollFranco's version got this out of my system enough for now. But I can't wait to see yours!
