Mother-Daughter Knits

 I've been reading Mother-Daughter Knits by Sally Mellville and Caddy Melville Ledbetter and by this I mean actually reading it, not just looking at the pictures and diagrams of the sweater and letting my mind wander off into new knitting territory.  And the book is well worth reading and worth knitting from as well.

Admittedly I picked up the book on a whim, and I do like quite a few of the designs, but I was particularly impressed about the clear simple way the authors discussing knitting a garment to fit and flatter the knitter/wearer.  

Thee is a good discussion on shaping and proportion, with good illustrations of the points.  I followed the technique to find your ideal sweater lengths, and was intrigued and happy to find that the correspond to the lengths that I have found to be perfect for me.  Granted it  took me years of sewing and knitting before I discovered this, but hey, I am only reading this book now.

There are also good directions for what to look for in knitting a garment that will fit, including 5 critical points where individual fit should override the pattern:

1.  Finished length

2.  Waist length

3. Shoulder width

4. Sleeve length

5.  Diameter at the cuff.

And then there are directions on how to alter patterns, in a very general way for making these corrections.  I was also intrigued to see the discussion of shoulder width which included the idea that  a shoulder might need to be narrower or wider to accommodate sleeves or other design features.  I thought the advice was right on target and should help anyone knit a better sweater, even me, because despite knowing better, I am far too often prone to just blindly following a pattern and then being disappointed with the ill-fitting result.

I didn't start reading this book until after I finished knitting the body of the Elaine Striped Cardigan and even though I altered the pattern at the shoulders, I may not have made the shoulders quite wide enough.  I am hoping that Sally Melville's advice to knit the shoulders 1" narrower to help keep a heavy sleeve from pulling it downward will help me out here, but I may be a little more than 1" too small.  We will see soon enough.

The first sleeve is being blocked now, so I will know how it fits into the sweater soon enough.

While I am thinking about sleeves, I think the method discussed for finding and measuring for the right sleeve length in the book is genius.  The clever part is now how to measure your own sleeve length, which I already knew, but how to translate that measurement to the pattern you are actually knitting.  I have other fitting and knitting books, but somehow it never really clicked until now.  And the idea is so obvious that I really almost had to hit myself in the head.  Once again, we will see how it works as I finish the current cardigan.

Obviously I am going on and on.  I'll have to do another post reviewing my take on the patterns, because there are quite a few I like.

Comments

[LisaB]

Thank you for writing about this book. I haven't knitted a sweater in years because I know that knitting a pattern according to its given directions will not yield a sweater that fits me. I haven't yet learned how to alter a knitting pattern to fit me, though I've tackled much of that in my sewing. It sounds like this book would be a good start in learning the same for knitting. Thanks!

[K-Line]

I'm not sure if I've asked you before but, do you prefer knitting or sewing? I can't even think of knitting till I spend a good time longer figuring out sewing, but it does seem like lots of fun.