Fitted Knits

There are lots of times when I wish I could sew.  I've seen beautiful things made by other talented seamstresses... and the skill would come in such handy when it comes to altering my purchased items.  But unfortunately for me, I can't sew a straight seam to save my life.  Knitting, however, doesn't REALLY require any actual skill.  I learned the basics of knitting from my grandma, but scarves bored me to death and I never really got into it.  Everything changed, however, when I picked up this book a couple years ago:

It literally changed my life!  Most handmade sweaters I've seen before were boxy shapeless ones, and most sweater patterns are for generic S/M/L sizes that of course would never fit me.  But from this book I learned how to make a seamless, fitted sweater customized to my own exact measurements, using any kind of yarn.  It's really just about the math... and with some basic knitting skills anyone could easily do it.  And with a little experience, you can even just look at a sweater sold in stores and figure out how to construct it.  I don't even use patterns anymore, I just buy the yarn that appeals to me and sort of design my own.  There's also a wonderful online knitting community called Ravelry where tons of knitters post pictures of their work and review yarns/patterns, and that's been an invaluable resource.

I don't have that much time to knit anymore, but here's some pictures of the sweaters I've made in the past.  The first one was made from a pattern, the rest are my own experimentations with design.

Pink V-Neck Pullover

Purple Tweed Cardigan

Cotton Lace Top

(the lighting was horrible when I took this pic, actual color is more like on the dress form)

Cream Tweed Cable Boatneck

 

It's actually kind of funny because I live in SoCal where the weather is probably too warm for sweaters for most of the year... so it's a good thing I'm always cold!

Fitted Knits: 25 Projects for the Fashionable Knitter 

It's Blue But I Love It

My old Posterous blog wouldn't let me export the old entries and comments, so I decided to just start over... here's to another new beginning!

Guess what came in the mail this week... my very own dress form!  Thanks to a nice tip from SHORTcuts and dropping $92 after discounts, this is what I unwrapped:

The dress form can be adjusted to fit petite women with the following measurements:

Bust: 28 to 34 inches
Waist: 22 to 29 inches
Hips: 30 to 38 inches

Granted, it's blue and the adjustable dials don't work all that well... but I still love it!  The preset measurements were actually already my own, so I didn't even need to adjust it!  It was like pulling a mini-me out of the box!

This is the side view (hubby was playing Final Fantasy in the background lol):

I was actually a little surprised at how petite I really am!  I don't sew but I do knit, and it's really useful to have something to try the sweaters on to check the fit as I'm working on them instead of struggling to put half-finished pieces on myself as I'd been doing.  The dress form is pretty true to my size, as you can see from one of the sweaters I made a while ago:

And when I'm not using it for fitting purposes, I can always dress it up in cute outfits for display or use it to store accessories like ExtraPetite suggested... or even use it as a coat hanger!