Knitted Dress Fail & A New Project

21:34 Renée 13 Comments

Remember the dress I was knitting?

Well, to my horror and dismay it turned into a failure.

All this time I was afraid that, even though I loved the way the dress looked in the pattern's picture, I would end up not liking it when it was finished.

Well, that wasn't the problem. I actually love the dress, it's just as lovely as in the original picture. The problem turned out to be the size.

I never doubted the fit of the dress for one moment while I was knitting it. Naturally, knitting a whole dress takes a lot of time and yarn and you don't want to waste that. So I was careful, and, just as with any knitting project by the way, swatched and blocked my swatch, adjusted the number of stitches for a better fit and kept checking my tension while I was knitting. Everything went smoothly, my tension was spot on the entire time, after blocking everything measured what it should, some pieces were even slightly smaller... nothing to worry about.

Four weeks ago I finally finished knitting the last pieces and was ready to put it all together. After seaming up the major pieces (back, yokes, fronts, and 1 sleeve) I was eager to try it on and... discovered it was way, WAY too big. The waist was too big but not terribly so, the hips too, but the bust.. the bust was especially huge.

So what happened?

I immediately realized that the fault had to lie with the pattern, since I had been so careful and knew my tension was right. So I looked up the total number of stitches at the underarm and started calculating and discovered that, originally, the finished size of the dress at the bust was a whopping 40,5 inches. Say what?! That is supposed to fit a 32-34" bust and have a tailored fit?! My dress turned out smaller but it is still a good 5 inches too big.

I sat on it for a few days, wondering what to do next. Frog it? Try to fix it somehow with cutting and sewing? (Is that even possible if you need to lose 5 inches?) Finish it as is and sell it?
I didn't know. I was just so disheartened that I decided to put it away until I have the energy to come up with a plan.

I quickly turned to a new knitting project for comfort. I still had a lot of yarn left from the dress so I decided to knit up this lovely 1940s jumper that had been at the top of my Ravelry queue:


It's called In Vintage Tone and it is another pattern from the Australian Women's Weekly (posted about earlier here). It is knit in 4 ply. I had to change the tension quite drastically because the fabric turned out super stretchy so I made it to have about 3 to 4 inches negative ease (originally it had 0 ease). I've already finished the back and about 2/3 of the front. It is refreshing to finally knit something different than just stockinette stitch.

Please excuse the crappy iPhone picture.


Of course there is one big lesson I learned from all this: from now on I will always check the finished size before I start knitting. Too bad I had to learn it the hard way.

13 comments:

  1. Oh my, how sad, after all the work you put into it. Next time perhaps you better check the stitch counts before casting on - I do this everytime now, but I also learned the hard way :-D
    You could cut an sew if you have a serger your pieces will not unravel (if you cut lengthwise it is not unravelling much anyway), so maybe you still have chance to save it.

    Greetings from Germany
    Ingrid

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    1. After looking at the dress once more: it IS designed to sit loosely around the bust (not 5 inches, though), since it is gathered at the yoke seam. Did you do the gathers? Probably yes, but just in case ;-)

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    2. Yes I did do the gathers :) And naturally it is supposed to have some easy for that but if you look at the pictures, the yoke seams are pretty high above the full bust and you still have all that fabric to deal with! For a sewn dress this would probably work, but knitted fabric acts very differently. On the model the dress doesn't seem to sit by far as loose as it is on me, it looks to me as if it is still sitting pretty tightly around her bust? It is even too big for my dressform, who's full bust is 2,5 inches larger than mine!

      I don't have a serger but I suddenly had the idea that I could also try to make bigger facings at the center front and then make sewn buttonholes and then cut at sew at the side seams as well using a zigzag stitch. Maybe that will work :)

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    3. Or you could try to secure the stitches before cutting like you would when you are cutting a steek. Or felt them with a felt needle. I did that once on a steek, but it is time consuming. Luckily a friend of mine owns a felting machine and she let me use it. Good luck in any case, it would be shame if all the work went to waste.
      Greetings
      Ingrid

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    4. The steeking tip sounds good! Thanks for thinking along :)

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  2. Oh no! This is so frustrating :( I just realised I knitted the head of a sleeve wrong on a cardigan I'm making and I was so upset- I can't imagine a whole dress. I once made a sweater which turned out 4 inches too big. I ended up sewing it together like a would a garment giving it an inch seam allowance, and it turned out quite well. Best of luck!

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    1. I'm afraid that if I do that, the armholes will become too small!

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  3. Ooh wat jammer van je jurk. Ik zou het even aan de kant leggen en als je weer wat motivatie hebben uithalen en opnieuw beginnen.

    De trui is erg leuk!

    Ik heb zelf in geen maanden gebreid, kan me er niet toe zetten lijkt het wel.

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    1. Ach dat komt wel weer toch? Misschien raak je weer geïnspireerd door het koudere weer :)

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  4. I'm so sorry about your dress - I would have screamed. I hope it can be salvaged. At least you have some sewing options. I always check the width as I knit now, as I've messed up so many times, and will probably continue too!

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    1. Well I didn't scream, but I was definitely close to tears haha

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  5. ohh no. I hope you can still save it with the cut and sew idea. This happened to me recently with my first jumper knitted on a vintage knitting machine. Is too big for me. And I thought to cut and sew to save the project, but I hadn't courage yet, since I never tried cut and sew before. Ahhh! So frustating!

    Anyway, your new project is very nice and really love that color! Gorgeous :)

    Beta x

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    1. I've never done cutting and sewing before either so I'm pretty nervous about it!

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