A Skirt: Finished!

I finished my beach skirt!

When I last wrote about this project, in June, I was just starting the purple part at the top, and I said I would show you the pattern later. Well, later has come:

Wavy pattern with knits and purls

I created this pattern by a simple alternating pattern of knits and purls. I had a few false starts though. I actually miscalculated the number of stitches I had, and tried to do repetitions of 18. Then, when I realized that it wouldn't work, I used my fixer tool to good stead and changed it to repetitions of 12.

I am, of course, leaving out that I tried a different pattern first. My first version had a thin wavy line instead of what you see here - but I didn't like it. The nice thing about knit/purl patterns, is that they are relatively easy to change, without redoing everything: just let a single stitch unravel, and bring it back up the way that you really want it to be.

When I had the skirt as long as I wanted it, I needed to make a sheath for a drawstring. It wasn't that hard, but there were a lot of stitches on different holders to keep track of. I knit each stitch forward and back to double the number of stitches, put the back stitches on a string to hold, and knit up the front stitches (leaving a hole in the front for the drawstring). Then I put those stitches on circular needle to hold, and knit up the back stitches. After putting in the drawstring, I used kitchener stitch to bind it up.

Ready to kitchener. There are four needles, a drawstring, and a stitch holder in the picture. It was a lot to keep track of, and things kept falling off the holders because I was too lazy to use a real stitch holder.

The drawstring was actually pretty easy to make though. I just got a length of each of the three colors of yarn and spun them together. Then I folded it in half, and plyed them. It is a great technique for quickly making a thick string that isn't too long.

Drawstring

To fit with my ocean theme, I also added silver fish beads (from Etsy)  to the ends of the drawstring, to give it a little weight.

Finally, I had a stain to cover up, so I was going to use some handspun yarn to make "foam". Unfortunately, stitching using the yarn did not look good - the yarn was too thick, and uneven, and it didn't look like foam.

But I was able to sew some thick ramboullet roving to the skirt directly, and it looked better.

What do you think? Does it look sea-foam like?

Well, all in all, I think the skirt came out...ok. It is a bit large for me, and the drawstring sheath is a little loose. Also, it came out as a bit of a "mermaid" cut. because of the herringbone pattern. Not really my thing.

Well, enough criticisms. What do you think?

Skirt: front

Skirt: side

Skirt: Back