FO: Indigo Ripples Skirt
The skirt is done! And I totally love it!
From start to finish this took exactly one week, which is perfect since I want to wear this skirt right now. I never thought I'd want to knit a skirt, but after working on this one I am already planning another one!
As I mentioned before I heavily modified the shape of the pattern in the magazine. The skirt as written is meant to sit at your natural waist, which is not were I wear my skirts, so that was the first problem. The second was that the skirt was apparently written for someone who has a waist, which I really don't. My hips are about 38" around at their biggest, but my waist at its narrowest is only about 30" around. The smallest pattern size had a 37" hip with a much too small waist, and the second size had the right waist size with a way too big hip measurement.
So what I did was measure my high hip at the height where I intend to wear the skirt. This is the area just above my hip bones. It measures 32". I then measured the widest part of my hips, and measured how far apart that line was from the waistband line. I knew I wanted to do all my increases in that number of inches.
What I ended up doing was casting on for the second size but increasing to get the smallest size's hip measurement. I put everything on waste yarn to try it on after finishing the increases and it fit very well, so I then had to decide about total length and proportion of stockinette to lace. I knew I wanted the skirt to hit at about knee length, and I also knew to expect a cotton skirt to stretch, so to err on the side of shorter rather than longer.
The pattern has the lace starting pretty high up, at about mini skirt height. I knew I wanted more coverage so I could wear the skirt everywhere, so I had to re figure where the lace would start. I ended up doing 11.5" of stockinette, which strangely is the exact measurement the pattern instructs you to do (but remember, their skirt starts much higher at the waist), and then working 7" of lace.
One other change I made was to the bind off. The pattern calls for knitting one stitch, casting on one stitch with the knitted-on cast on, then binding off 2 sts. This was so slow for me that I gave up after 3 sts and instead worked it by binding off one stitch, working a YO, and binding off the YO. Gives the same effect without having to turn the work around every single stitch.
And finally I changed the drawstring. The pattern calls for 52" of i-cord, but there is pretty much zero chance I will ever do that much i-cord. Instead I crocheted a chain that length and then worked slip stitches all along the chain. It makes a prefect square cord that's very sturdy and takes only a few minutes!
Here's a closeup of the skirt that really shows the details:
The color's more accurate in the first picture.
I'm going to wear it out tomorrow!
Project specs:
Pattern: Indigo Ripples Skirt from Interweave Knits Spring 2007
Yarn: 4 balls Classic Elite Provence in color 2610, an almost-navy blue
Needles: US size 6
Started: May 21, 2007
Finished: May 29, 2007
3 Responses
Gina
The skirt is just gorgeous!
Wanda
it’s beautiful. I really like how it turned out. Did the skirt wear well? I’m curious since the yarn you used is 100% cotton, right?
Ruth
May 30, 2007
Just gorgeous – if my IK ever arrives, I have definitely got my eye on that skirt!