Fun Lion sweater

This lion sweater was fun to make. I knitted Perendale wool 4 ply wool, 2 strands together that I had dyed a deep blue and a yellow gold. For the mane I used handspun superwash Polwarth. The tail and face were embroidered after the knitting. I used a photo of a lion sweater in Ravelry to draw the design.

Felted skirt

 I thought a wrap around skirt would enable me to pick up the triangle motif from the top. I made a paper pattern and enlarged it by a third so I could lay out the merino fibre. I prefelted it slightly, dried it, and cut out the areas for the triangles of colour. I carefully positioned the triangles which had been prefelted by hand, no water. On the inside I put fibre across the "seams" to hold the triangles in place.








More prefelting followed. This time I rolled the skirt thoroughly. Once dry I used leftover yarn from the jumper to hand stitch a running stitch in the triangles.

Finally I fulled the skirt until it reached the size I wanted. I also rolled a long cord to thread through the waist which I had strengthened with 5 rows of machine stitching. It looked fine to me on my dressmaker's dummy.









My work was accepted for the exhibition. Unfortunately I couldn't go but a friend took some photos. The skirt was exhibited back to front and those sleeves on the jumper looked too big and flappy. I realised I hadn't actually tried on the jumper. When I got it back I unpicked the sleeves and with the help of Tasha of bygumbygolly.com I knitted seamless set-in sleeves using wonderful short rows. Thank you Tasha. As soon as I get the second sleeve done I'll add a photo.

Short row top with 16+ colours

My design involved a panel front and back knitted using short rows. I used steps of 7 stitches in a 42 stitch row and alternated 2 balls of wool. One ball starting a triangle beginning on the right, the second a triangle on the left. I discovered that it took about 3g to make a triangle. I was pleased the way the colours merged as I knitted from one colour to another in the ball. I made the back panel longer than the front one and curved the neckline.

The next step was to pick up stitches along the edge of the front panel, cast on some for the neck, then pick up stitches along the edge of the back panel (206 sts). I knitted in garter stitch until the work measured 21 cm. I left the armhole stitches on a needle and to shape the bottom of the armhole decreased 1 st every right side row until 64 stitches remained. A 3 needle bindoff joined the sides together. I was determined this would be a no seams garment.

For the sleeves I worked out a garter and stocking stitch relief pattern that was similar to the triangle shapes on the panels.

By now I had decided to enter the top in the Creative Fibres Experience show in Hamilton. What it needed was a skirt to complement it.