Lucy

Lucy: the sketch

Lucy is my no-cost woollen jacket.

I made it with bulky red wool yarn. I recycled the most of it from an old “dismantled” jacket, the rest comes from a bunch of untouched balls of the same wool yarn forgotten in my closet since I knitted the first jacket years ago. I used the recycled yarn for bodice and sleeves and the new yarn for collar and ribbed edge bands.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, “. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The design I knitted choosing among many sketches I draw that were originally inspired to the late 1910’s and early 1920’s fashion, is a mix of elements coming from that period (big collar, frontal pockets moved to the side seam) plus bell-bottom sleeves, large enough to be used as a sort of muff, and a simple A-line typical of 1960’s, incredibly reminding (I didn’t it on purpose) to the jackets the Beatles wear in the “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band” album cover (1967). For that reason, differently from my other creations documented in this blog all named after actresses of actors, I named this jacket after Lucy, the girl in the sky with diamonds in one of the most famous songs from that Beatles’ album.

To complete this project I used a mix of mathematics and improvisation.

I drafted a flat-pattern on paper and improvised the collar. This time I also made a muslin to be sure that I added the right ease and correct the pattern (for instance I reduced the sleeves’ crown, a thing that’s good for a knitted jacket or coat but not if you have to sew a coat made of fabric). The use of a flat-pattern to make a knitting pattern makes also easier to place correctly a cable motif (as I did in the central front) or pockets.

Lucy in the sky with needles

I knitted the collar with no pattern. I picked up the stitches I had left on a holder and almost improvised it. I only calculated the number of rows I had to knit and determined with my “knitting intuition” how to increase the number of stitches to give the collar the right shape (and it worked!). The final result is a collar that can be use in three different ways (you’ll see as soon as I could post the photos where I wear Lucy).

Lucy: wool and wood

I knitted the pockets (drafted on my flat-pattern) picking up stitches just above the bottom ribbed band and then sewing them at the sides to the bodice. I added the buttons band always picking up stitches and knitting a ribbed band edge. In the end, I sewn on it the same wooden buttons that were on my old wooden jacket.

picking-up

Binding-off

I chose to use two different kind of cable stitches (see the charts below) that are more complicated than those I usually prefer to knit, but they are particularly suitable for a garment such a jacket (and this is almost a coat) and, what’s more, they help camouflage a wool not exactly in its prime.

Here is a list of materials and stitches I used to realize Lucy. It has been made from a flat-pattern I drafted using my body measurements, anyway reference size could be XS.

Materials:

• 750 gr of red bulky wool;
• Straight needles 7mm;
• crochet hook 6mm;
• Stitcher holders;
• cable stitch pin;
• Yarn needle;
• 8 wooden button.

Stitches:

• Tubolar cast-on;
• 1k/1p ribs;
• Double cable (the cable motif on the front) – see chart 1;
• Drivemenuts cable (bodice and sleeves) – see chart 2;
• Tubolar bind-off (see photo).

(just click on the photos to view a larger version)

Double cable chart

drivemenuts cable chart

More photos soon…

Related articles from the blog:

No regrets; Lucy: a new no-cost jacket; Lucy: first stitch’s chart; Lucy:cable motif’s chart; Something about Lucy .