I got brave and set about attacking a large project and knit a dress from a vintage pattern. I had just the pattern I wanted to try and it didn't look too complicated (don't you hate it when you tell yourself that on no other evidence than the picture??)
And it was easy...too easy! 18 inches of stocking stitch which I chose to do in the round since the idea of having to do it separately twice made me feel ill! But it seemed to go on FOREVER!! But finally I got to the end of that and started with the red for the bodice.
Now it started to look more like a dress and not an endless tube! It wasn't difficult doing the shaping for the v-neck and the armholes (had to go back to straight needles for that!) and quickly progressed through the sleeves. But that's where I finally hit some problems!
Do you see the ruffle here? It took me 5 tries to get the directions right! I'm the only one who can probably notice but the increases on one sleeve are much looser than the other sleeve. It took me a while to figure that out. And the lace just before the ruffle? That I fudged...a lot! I ended up getting a pattern from my Barbara Walkers stitch collections to find a pattern like the one I could barely see in the picture and used that. I simply couldn't get the pattern as written to make any sense at all!! But at last...I finished it!
...well, not quite...
As hard as I tried I couldn't understand the instructions for the crocheted edge that goes around the neck and ruffles. Crochet is SO not my thing and in the end I fudged this too. Or I might have been doing as I was supposed to but I just followed what the picture looked like. I also added it to the skirt because I thought it looked nicer that way.
So, huzzah!! I did it!
But there is something here you may have noticed and I didn't until I tried it on. The shoulders are hugely wide!! You'd have to be impossibly well built to be able to wear this or wearing killer shoulder pads!
It hangs over my shoulders by about 5cms. I tried to convince myself that it wouldn't matter but it does, oh heck it does!! So it's been relegated to the naughty corner so I can cogitate on it and figure out what my best option is with it. It might have to wait till winter. It is truly horrendous trying this on in 30C heat!
But it has been a great experiment :)
Happy knitting :)
