Claire’s Sweetheart Dress

My sister had bought the Tahki Yarns Cotton Classic in a light periwinkle, before Claire was born, intending to knit her a dress for when she would be around 6 months old. Her busy law practice got in the way.

Claire is now 3 years old and I wanted to use the yarn to make something for her, but would need to combine it with other color(s) in order to knit her something that would fit. Thanks to the brilliant suggestion of Jan at Yarn Theory, we were able to find colors she had in stock to make this work. I will use the pale green  at each of the hems and the I-cord at the neck.   The butter yellow is for the bottom of the dress, and the light periwinkle the upper part and yoke; Val wanted the periwinkle to be up by Claire’s face.

Yarn for Sweetheart Dress

My photography hardly captures the true colors, but it gives you an idea.

I started swatching in late October/early November, when I was visiting them. By late November I finished the swatches — 4 of them all together.  On the first swatch, I used needles size US 6, the second US 7, the third US 8, and the fourth back to US 7. Because I’m really concerned about having enough yarn, I frogged the first one done with 7’s. Unfortunately, that meant I couldn’t compare the feel of the fabric to the others. Once I realized I could frog the swatches if necessary to use the swatch yarn for the dress, I had no problem doing the one on 7’s over again and I did.

The US 8 gave me the closest to the pattern gauge at 5.25 stitches per inch; it specifies 5 stitches per inch. I didn’t like the feel of the fabric at all and my sister was concerned it would be too “airy” for Claire. The one on US 6 was too dense at 6 to 6.5 stitches per inch. As Goldilocks would say, the one on the 7’s felt “just right!”    My gauge is 5.5 stitches per inch, so I am having to do math to adjust the number of stitches the pattern indicates to my gauge. It should be pretty simple until I get to the yoke where all the decreasing begins.

Swatches using light periwinkle

Once I got past that hurdle, now came the hem.  This was the first time I have knitted anything with a hem. It requires a provisional cast on.  I decided to do the Cast On Waste Yarn And Knit several rows provisional cast on thanks to the information I found about provisional cast ons at the TECHknitting^TM blog.  I did that just fine.  The holes are yarn overs; that is where the fabric is folded to form the hem.

Provisional cast on with blue yarn being the waste yarn

Here’s where my trouble started.  This was done in the round.  The next step was to remove the blue waste yarn; that results in the green yarn having “live stitches”, which are put onto a second needle.  Finally the fabric is folded and one stitch from each needle are knitted together.

Hem ready to be folded and knit together

It should have worked–it didn’t.  I couldn’t for the life of me get it to fold properly so the knit side would show instead of the purl side.  I finally did figure out a way to do it and went merrily along–wrong again.  Somehow, I twisted the fabric. The only thing to do was to rip it all out and start over again.

This time, I decided to use the crochet provisional cast on and to knit back and forth in rows until the hem was complete.  That would avoid my accidentally twisting the fabric in the round and since I hadn’t done a hem before, I felt that would be the best way for me to learn.

Crochet Provisional Cast On, Flat Knitting, Blue yarn is waste

That worked!  I finished the hem with flat knitting, then joined it in the round after starting the butter yellow.

Bottom part of dress

Detail on bottom part of dress