Adventures in Steeking

Alternate title: Measure Twice (or Thrice, or until you are absolutely positively sure), Cut Once.

I really thought I was done with the body of the vest.
The thing about steeking, though, is that you can’t try the garment on as you go.
So I was comparing it to another vest that fits well.

Saturday morning I was up bright and early, and set to work machine sewing and cutting the steeks

It was actually kind of fun

But then I pinned it together to try it on and realized that the armholes were too shallow. Ugh.

Not as shallow as this photo suggests, because the top edge is all curled up. But short none the less.

So I needed to develop a strategy to add some depth.
I thought about knitting an inch or so more in pattern on the back and each of the fronts, but realized that since I had incorporated a few short rows at the very top to slope the shoulder just a bit, the pattern would be wonky at the edges.

I thought about knitting alternating stripes of brown and white from each front about two inches and then binding it off to the back. But that plain knitting would have a different gauge and thickness from the rest of the body that is stranded.

So it seemed the only thing to do was to knit in stranded colorwork bands perpendicular to the body stitches- like afterthought saddle shoulders.

It took me a couple of tries, as my right-handed colorwork technique is pretty rough-

It took me a while to figure out that I needed to eat up 2 stitches from the body at the end of each row.
I still need to even out the joins on the edges a little, but I think it turned out ok.

And it echos the striping that separates the front and back underneath the arms, so I think it works as a design feature 🙂

So now I’m moving on to edging- a nice deep ribbing at the bottom edge first (about and inch left to go).
Then the fronts and collar.

Whew. That was close.