Hi there!
I do know that it’s too late (but better late than never!), but please let me introduce you the Loire sweater that I published the other day and that ended up as another set-in sleeve “experimentation” sweater, to close this chapter correctly.
The initial idea was to design a sweater with soft stripes. And for soft and not very contrasting stripes, I thought (again!) of Tartan by fonty. This yarn is dyed when it’s still in top, and white wool is added to it in different proportions to create 3 shades from one dying bath. It is then spun in two weights (sport-DK and bulky). The yarn is very light, with an (economically) interesting yardage (140 meters = 50g), and moreover ecological thanks to this manufacturing process reducing the dye and water.
I chose Tartan 3 whose gauge is 22 stitches and 31 rows. Nowadays, I find this thickness perfect, not too thick or too thin, not too warm or too cool. My Everyday sweater has the same gauge by the way,:)
Here is my yarn.
As you may know, I’m an absolute fan of fonty yarn, so I’ve decided to buy their shade cards so as to avoid disappointments in regard to colors at future purchases. The colors I bought are the lightest and the medium blue of the second group from right. You can see how they are tone on tone.
For the sweater’s construction, I at first thought of dropped shoulder like in Everyday Sweater, but with less ease. But the silhouette didn’t suit me at all and I threw this idea away when I started adding a sleeve (the sweater must please me, huh?).
Then, I opted for the set-in sleeve construction. And if you use this one, you want the stripes to be on the same rows on the body and sleeves, don’t you? In my previous set-in sleeve designs like My Little Black Cardigan or into the deep sea (woods), I add the sleeves once the body is complete, picking up stitches around the armhole. But if I used this type of construction, we would need to work stripes on the top of the sleeves (sleeve cap) while working short rows, and it would complicate things uselessly. So I came to the conclusion that the body and the sleeves should be worked at the same time.
That said, the sleeve cap should be shorter than the armhole it will be set in to. To get this result, I decided to pick up stitches for the top of the sleeve cap along the armhole, after working a few centimeters. And I got a lot of trial and error to obtain a neat pick-up edge, because when I picked up stitches normally, the sleeves didn’t look well set in.
The armhole line is inspired by store bought garments, which means, the top matches the shoulder point and goes into the body to follow the curve ot the sleeve cap (we have to admit that store bought garments are well cut).
And another thing: when you say French style striped sweaters, we should have shoulder buttons #x1f605;! The button band and the buttonholes got a lot of trial and error too so they follow the neck and armhole lines.
Here is the top side of the armhole with all the experimentations.
As you have understood, we are very busy around the shoulders. After that, the sweater follows a classic construction, with sleeve and armhole increases. After the separation of the sleeves, the body is worked straight with no shaping to the hem. The sleeves are classically tapered, but are not totally in that they have ease all around to the wrist, because sleeves fitting the forearm too tightly are not comfortable.
And as a stripe lover, I arranged the stripes where they stay horizontal, because seeing stripes deformed around the neck in particular grieves me.
Here the sweater on me.
And you might say why Loire? Because the Loire river run through our city Nantes.
We are at 50 km from the river mouth, but despite this distance, we daily see the water of the Atlantic Ocean going up the Loire (which I’ve never seen in Tokyo because it is in a bay). The light blue and the medium bleu reminded me of that mix of fresh water and salt water we witness every day in our city, hence this name (but I should’ve named it Nantes?).
Here is the link to the pattern (though the discount is already over): Loire Sweater
You can of course purchase it in my Ravelry store, but if you need only the English version, it’s cheaper here 🙂
And I plan to design another striped but boat neck sweater with the same yarn, in pink…
And I’d like to finish this post with another announcement.
Considering the current situation, I stopped using ex-Twitter and moved to Bluesky.
Since a while, I’ve been posting the screen shots of my Bluesky posts on Instagram, because I do not agree with the change of their policy either.
If you are not comfortable with the current situation, come join the knitters’ community on Bluesky !!
And I would be happy if you could follow me too 🙂
↓ ↓ ↓
my Bluesky account
Lastly, I have another announcement (lol) !
You might have noticed with the pop-up that I created a newsletter subscription form? I’ll inform you of the publication of my patterns and their discount by this means. You will receive just a couple of mails a year, promised 🙂
If you are interested, the form is also at the bottom of the home page 🙂
Then, see you next time!