To me, this is the ultimate Princess fantasy knit. Not the castle in the background? Now that I have completed my Madame Butterfly I feel rather cheated that this castle doesn’t come along as an accessory!
I have been wanting to knit a metallic sweater for years, ever since Chanel started producing fabulous silver couture jackets and pullovers in their couture collections.
Not to mention all the silver accessories!
Unfortunately, my first attempt to knit with metallic yarn was a complete failure. I doubled the old Rowan shimmer yarn which was a bright silver, in order to knit a tank-style sweater I planned to wear Christmas eve.
The effect was crunchy and tough on the hands while knitting and yielded a fabric that was unpleasantly scratchy against the skin. The overall fabric looked pretty cheap, and I unraveled it before I completed the back piece. To have spent a good $60 dollars on yarn only to produce a “hoochie”-type top that belonged in a dollar store was a severe disappointment.
After this learning experience, I resolved to stay away from purely metallic yarn and to instead use yarn with a metallic thread plied together with a natural yarn to give it better depth, texture and appearance. I found a winner in the Schulana moscu yarn:
The mix of metallic and mohair was a perfect balance, and the yarn added a dark beauty to the trim of my Coco, a Chanel-inspired cardigan. Unlike the shimmer yarn, the schulana mosco looked quite expensive and gave an elegant finish to the edges of the garment:
Last year, the Chanel couture runway show got me thinking of metallic yarns again. As their couture designs featured a gorgeous mix of black, silver, and pink with hand-woven textiles that screamed luxury.
I was so enthralled by the gorgeous textiles that I saw that I vowed to recreate one of them, and I chose this V-neck top:
But how to recreate this shimmery fabric in white, silver and pink? After much swatching, I discovered the Rowan shimmer could be tamed by pairing it with a strand of white Kidsilk Haze. The kidsilk softened the fabric of the Shimmer, and the white also softened the overly artificial metallic sheen of the yarn making it look more expensive. However, the Shimmer yarn loves to unravel, so the only way I could work with the color changes was to sew in the ends immediately after each row. Otherwise, the metal ends would unravel into long thin strands that snagged on everything and made me worry about the integrity of the knitted fabric. I also used a generous amount of the chemical “Fray Check” on the ends as well as the crocheted braid that incorporated the shimmer yarn to keep the strands from dissolving. In the end, my Gabrielle was a great success, due partly to the little metallic glints that came through the slip stitch pattern, providing a little glimpse but not too much metallic flavor.
Would I ever knit with the Shimmer yarn alone now that I have tried it in two projects? Absolutely not. But it has been discontinued and replaced with a better yarn anyway. Rowan has improved their metallic yarn now, replacing Shimmer with the Anchor artiste metallic. The new Rowan Magazine 54 is filled with designs taking advantage of this new super metallic yarn. Madame Butterfly is a prime example.
Empowered by my successful experience in the past pairing a metal yarn with kidsilk haze, I immediately pounced on the Madame Butterfly pattern when it came out. I am happy to say that the new Anchor Artiste Metallic is much sturdier and less prone to fraying than the old Shimmer, and it creates a more expensive looking fabric. In Madame Butterfly, the metal is never knitted alone, but is always paired with kidsilk haze, so the pattern writer really understood how to manage the yarn. I would strongly advise against trying to wind the metal and kidsilk haze together into a ball—their tensions are extremely different and they fight with each other, so the balls need to be kept separate and a strong tension needs to be asserted on both threads at all times to create a smooth fabric. It is not easy on the hands, but it is worth it in the end.
Don’t you love the sheer panels of kidsilk haze above the bust line? I thought it was very clever the way the metal yarn was used to make the garment opaque in the body of the sweater so there is no need to wear a camisole underneath. The resulting fabric from combining the two yarns is surprisingly comfortable and soft, although it was still crunchy to knit the metal yarn. There was no need to immediately weave the ends in either, as I had to with my old Shimmer.
The main modification I made to the pattern was to move the waist tie to the back. Honestly, the tie in front with all of that fabric at the waist seemed insane to most of the knitters that I discussed the pattern with. The actual pattern contains no waist shaping, and so there would be 42 inches of fabric gathered at the waist if you were to knit a size medium. Imagine all of that fabric bunching right under the bust line! If you are busty as well, the danger would be of creating a seeming “monoboob” extending from the top of your chest to your middle, which would be highly unflattering! Instead, I added quite a bit of waist shaping to the pattern so that the gathering due to the ribbon sash was minimal, and the openings for the sash was moved to the back.
The best part about the tie is that you can wear the sweater loosely if you want:
Or you can use the sash to cinch the top in at the waist to create an hourglass:
The sleeves were trimmed with crocheted ruffles, executed with a series of double crochets into each stitch.
You see, the fabric is soft enough that even the kittens don’t mind snuggling up to it!
I love knitting with the anchor artiste metallic and I would definitely use it again. But I’m still not sure if it is a good idea to knit it alone. Metallic yarns have a way of looking cheap unless they are paired with a natural fiber, in my opinion.