Sock Camp was a great opportunity to make progress on my Swirl jacket. What once looked like brain coral is now clearly a giant octagon with a hole in the middle.
the start of a Swirl
If you look closely, you can see an orange stitch marker clipped to the fabric, at the top of the opening. That’s where I switched from knitting in the round to knitting flat, decreasing as I went along to shape the opening. The live stitches that remain are all at the bottom of the opening.
But how will that octagon translate to a wearable garment? Jane the mannequin demonstrates:
don’t you love those lapels?
live stitches run across the back waist
The lower portion of the octagon wraps around the hips and under the arms, while the upper portion flips back to form the generous lapels and the back collar.
From this point, I’ll knit the live stitches—which currently run across the back waist—upwards to form the lower back bodice. Then I’ll cast on at the beginning of each row to increase rapidly. These added stitches will give me the length I need to knit dolman sleeves from cuff to cuff. After reaching the back neck, I’ll divide to create a neck opening and complete the sleeves by working downwards from the shoulder line. The only bit of finishing is a single seam that runs from the underside of one wrist to the underarm, across the front bodice (under the lapel) up a raglan line to the back neck, and down the opposite raglan line and sleeve to the other wrist.
Can you picture it? Maybe not now, but maybe after I post more in-progress photos. Suffice to say that I think Sandra McIver’s construction is ingenious, and that I really look forward to finishing (and wearing!) my Swirl.
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