Today, I am wearing Lily by Marie Wallin. The cardigan is knitted in Rowan Felted Tweed yarn. I made extensive adaptations to Wallin’s pattern. For one, I cut out the crocheted lace edging which seemed too cute, and removed the bottom ribbing in the washed-out clay hue, which I felt diluted the fair isle colors.
Also, I added waist shaping to the sweater, which is designed to be a boxy shape which is not flattering for me:
On the back piece, I reduced 26 stitches from the hips to waist and then added then back in for the bust. This required planning, as I needed to make the large rose panel at the waist line up between the backs and fronts, but my experiment in lining up the charts worked, and you can't tell the garment was meant to be knitted differently.
I adapted the sleeve pattern as well, so that it was as fitted as the body of the sweater. In retrospect, I think the sleeves came out more fitted on the bicep than they needed to be, and in future I would leave more fullness there to balance out the shape of the garment. I also added in an additional pansy panel to the bottom of the whole sweater to replace the ribbing section.
Finally, I converted the pullover into a cardigan. Felted tweed is just too warm to wear as a pullover in the California climate for more than two months of the year. I felt that if I were going to put all the work into this piece, I wanted it to be a versatile jacket that I could wear all year long. The short sleeves make that possible, as they keep the garment from being too warm to wear in summer. The fairisle incorporates some of my favorite colors: celadon, amethyst, slate blue and white, so it will definitely match my spring and summer skirts and tops.
This brings me to #slowfashionoctober. I have been reflecting a lot this month on how to bring a slowfashion philosophy to my knitting. And I feel the single most important focus should be wearability. It seems better to spend three months making one piece that fits perfectly than three pieces that will take up extra space and yarn and not fit my daily needs.
For this project, I established a project notebook with my desired finished dimensions, and gauge. I diagrammed the shaping and measured each piece, blocking it as I went along and unraveling if necessary to ensure the correct fit. As a result, Lily fits me extremely well. Yes, the button band gaps in a few places, but I don't think that is because the fit is off. As Kate Atherley, the technical editor of Knitty explained it, button bands just gap. You can see that when the cardigan is laid flat on the table it is happening, without any curves underneath! So I will add in a few snaps.
Since the cardigan fits me, incorporates the most common colors in my wardrobe and is flattering, I will wear it a lot. I realized #slowfashionoctober really comes down to this: making pieces that make ME look good enough that I will want to wear them all the time. The next step will be to take advantage of all the notes and measurements I gained through this project and knit another felted tweed fair isle cardigan in the same shape. That way, I can leverage all the extra planning and work I did last time and create another successful jacket with, I hope, less effort.