Shapely, Sexy Steeks
You may have heard that is possible to grow a human ear on the back of a mouse. So obviously, in my head, this translates directly to knitting. What if I grew a sleeve on the side of a body tube?
When we knit with steeks, an enormous world opens up with regard to how we create the parts of garments. For example: What if my new Fana sweater were equal parts green with white, and white with green, in a color blocked arrangement? Something like this:
I need some sweater parts in both color arrangements, notably left body tube, right body tube, left sleeve and right sleeve. The reversed charts are like this:
And here’s a little sketch for how the color placement might look:
Stay with me now; it’s about to get thinky. Let’s say I want to knit a round where the chart colors reverse in the middle of the round. Each time there’s a single-color round (lots of times in a striped Fana), I’d have to physically switch yarn sources in order to have the proper strand in place when I come back to it in the round. That’s intarsia, which we all know is a Dark Art.
Nope.
Instead, I can make two tubes of knitting; one in each of the color configurations. Each of my tubes will become one half of the body, and one sleeve, once I cut them apart.
The sleeve needs to be longer than the body, so I started it first. Then I cast on more stitches for 1/2 of the body tube with some waste yarn, and joined the round with steek stitches on either side of the sleeve. As I work away, I can decide on the exact sleeve shaping. Since I’m just knitting sweater pieces, which happen to be conjoined, I can make specific decisions about the way each piece is shaped as I go.
About halfway along the first sleeve, I’ve decided I want gathers up at its cap. For that I’ll need more sleeve width, so I’ll start increasing at shorter intervals now. All the while, I’m also making half of the body tube with every round. The body tube halves don’t need any shaping in this case, so they’re just straight-sided cylinders. If the finished garment needed bust darts or waist shaping, though, I could easily also work them on that half of the piece.
For more ideas about sexy knitting engineered by adding steeks, join me online for a thought exercise/adventure! We’ll explore knitted construction that is shaped with the strategic placement of cuts, and I’ll help you understand how to plan them. Oh, and you get to make this super cute thing:
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