First Knit Sweater

It only took over a year, with a ton of delays, but I have finally finished my first knit sweater. And it’s Cool Times Barbie!

I am so completely stoked with how the duplicate stitching turned out. …Even though I only noticed after posting the video that, um… it’s not actually done. I missed some of the purple. Going to get right on that.

After much deliberation, I decided to do the version of the graphic as it appears on her scooter, rather than the one on her top. At human scale, the extra orange swirl in the ice cream adds greater dimension, and was just more interesting to stitch. Plus, I like the purple. And, it’s not like I was ever going to find a day-glo orange to match her top, or a way to make the pink sparkly for variation. (Maybe in acrylic….)

I decided to knit this summer top in Lion Brand Coboo, since it was soft and in a breathable fiber. Of course, Coboo doesn’t come in bright 80s colors, so for that I had to resort to Hobbii Friends Cotton.

Watch part one: the knitting part

I used an 80s pattern for the sweater. The original pattern had a couple of cables running down the sides, so I simply eliminated them, instead aiming for the shape of the bloused 80s top. Though, in the end, the Coboo seems to have stretched out just in the course of making (and washing, due to a, um, cat-related mishap), so there is no blousing in my final result. I may decide to pick and reknit the waistband at some point. I also did a fairly terrible job adding the ribbing around the arm holes, due in large part to the fact that I altered the sweater after knitting. I took in the top of the side seams, as well as the shoulder seams, by about an inch each. Which made the ribbing much too long. So that may also get a re-do.

Watch part 2: the graphic and finishing

As for the graphic, I drafted that myself. First with a drawing on graph paper, which helped translating it to a grid in the cross stitch app, Flosscross. I tried using that version, thinking it would only be a little bit squished in the conversion from square to knit Vs. But it was a LOT squished. So I used photoshop to trace the design on to a rectangular graph.

Both versions are available for free in my Ko-Fi shop! Please share with me if you stitch them!

Despite the irregularities in the ribbing, it’s very wearable, and I’m quite pleased with the result. Now I just need to get working on the rest of the outfit.