No matter how great a design is, I always need to make some mods to make it fit my body and style preferences.
The biggest mod I’m planning is to change the sleeve type. Arwen’s sleeve is knit together with the body. Something like this.
At first I was excited to try out a new sleeve type, but after thinking about it, this sleeve will not work well for me.
Let’s take a look at a traditional set-in sleeve.
On the left, a pretty standard armhole for a set-in sleeve. On the right, what my armhole looks like.
When you’re busty, you have more stitches to decrease before you get to the shoulder width. See the difference in the widths of the pink shading?
So, let’s go back to the Arwen sleeve.
At first I thought I’d add a dart between the arm and the body, to ease in the additional fabric under the arm. Like this:
I think it will work, but I’d have to play around with the numbers, and possibly buy some cheap knit fabric and cut it up as a sample first.
I’ve been doing a lot of futzing around with design elements lately. So I’m feeling lazy.
Instead, I’m going with my tried and true raglan sleeve. I know I can make it work, and it gives me an excuse to write up a tutorial on how to create the right raglan for your body.
There are 2 or 3 other mods that I’m planning:
- Lengthen the body.
- Add a closure — probably a zipper .
- Add in some body shaping. I’m not sure if I’ll do short rows at the bust, or waist shaping, or a little of both. But just like I would need to add in some shaping to bridge the size differences between my body circumference at the armhole and shoulders, I need to bridge the difference between my hips, waist and bust.
I want to stress though, there is no problem with the pattern as written. These are mods for my body, so it will fit my proportions and style preferences.
In fact, a really nice feature about this sweater is that modifying its width or length is super-simple. It’s a great sweater if you want to ease yourself into modifying a pattern to fit your body.
If you’re between sizes and want a more custom fit, you can cast on a few less or more stitches and get just the width you want. Since you don’t have to worry about armhole sizing, you don’t need to plan for how to deal with those extra stitches when you get to that point.
I usually modify patterns too. I’m not basic woman bodytype, so..
How long the body of arwen is?
And how much yarn it needs, meaning the whole arwen.
tikru – since so many of you are waiting for your magazine, i posted measurements and yardage requirements on the yahoo group
i wish i could follow along! where’s my darn IK?!?!
I haven’t received my IK yet, but my first thoughts about that pattern when I saw it in the IK preview were exactly the same things you are pointing out now! I’m really looking forward to seeing your Arwen WIP.
Oh my… those are exactely the same mods I was thinking of making… I think I’ll go with the waist shaping instead of the short rowing for the bust area. I might be asking for help for the raglan sleeve stuff… I don’t have enough experience to make changes like that myself just yet
Cheers Eva – who ordered 10 skeins of malabrigo in Grape Violetas. I hope it is not too variagated to use with the cables.
A raglan tutorial! That will be neat!
I agree with modifications, especially the length. That was one I was definitely going to do. Keep us posted
Tell us more about adding the dart at some point. Do you do two lines of decreases when beginning the sleeve, reducing to the point of the triangle when the decreases converge?
I can’t tell you how much I have learned from your blog. These posts are truly invaluable.
I am eager to see your mods for this Jody! Especially since I love raglans!
If you wanted, you could add a diamond shaped gusset, much like a gansey, under the arm to give you more ease and less bulk.
Um, I’m STILL waiting on that tute you promised a looong time ago…now if I could only remember what it was about! I do remember I was really excited about it tho, LOL!
wow – i wish i had half of the patience you have to mod things.. i might keep my knitted sweaters instead of frogging them!
I had similar thoughts when I saw how the sweater was put together. I just don’t think those sleeves are going to work for me. Seeing your illustrations confirms my first impression. Thanks!
I’m looking forward to someone who knows a little more than me fiddling with the pattern. I’m busty, too, and I ALWAYS have trouble with the bust area (if it fits, the rest doesn’t, sort of thing) and the sleeves. I haven’t done many jumpers/cardis (only 2!) so I’m not really confident I know what I’m doing.
Has anyone thought about modifying the hood so it has a rounder shape, rather than a point at the back? I don’t really know how to do this.