I’ve started this project out the right way -- gauge swatches!

I did three swatches, each on 3.5 mast tension but with varying stitch size set on the carriage. The straight measurements over 4 inches (actually, 2 inches doubled):

Stitch size 4 (this fabric was much too dense for what I have in mind): 36 stiches, 54 rows.
Stitch size 6 (this is the setting I plan to use): 26 stitches, 40 rows.
Stitch size 7 (this was too loose of a hand): 25 stitches, 35 rows.

Since I plan to knit the sweater on the diagonal, I will need to refactor those measurements to get actual numbers to work with, but they’re a starting point.

Barbie says, “Math is hard! Let’s go shopping!”

Seriously. It took me a whole night to figure out how to do the math to figure out how the lengths of the sides would work out. And then I realized I’d been envisioning them wrong and had to do it again.

Once I filled out my fancy schematic and knit up the first couple of examples, I realized that I was confused when I put the schematic together, and what I wanted the arrows to mean was not what they actually meant, which meant I was knitting all the pieces backwards. Not a problem for the rectangular pieces since they all have exact opposites on the other side, but a problem for any of the pieces with shaped edges. Fortunately, there was only one of those, so I picked it apart a bit to use while I figured out my other mistake and redid the schematic, and I’ll just keep it on hand as a handy reminder of what direction this stuff is all supposed to work in.

As I got into looking at the pattern, I realized that my underbust line was not really the right size. I should have known that just based on what all my empire waisted tops look like already.

The first problem was getting 32 inches of bust into 24 inches of waist, but I did that by simply gathering as I was stitching together.

The bigger problem was, knowing I had to change that meant I had to change the bottom of the sweater, as well, because if the waistline was only 48 inches, I couldn’t get 60ish inches around the bottom using only straight strips. That meant re-thinking the bottom shaping. I decided to go with triangular patches at the side seams to add shaping.

I finished knitting all of the top pieces and sewed the whole thing together. It fits like a hot damn, about which I am tremendously excited, not least which because that means I don’t have to undo all that mattress stitching to fix any fitting problems that might have arisen.

I’ve now knit all of the bottom pieces, most of them completed in one long day spent knitting and watching Covert Affairs. It only takes a few pounds of pressure to move the carriage on my Duo80, but repeat that same movement a couple thousand times in a day, and you start to notice it in your arm and shoulder.

The whole body of the sweater is now sewn together and all the ends are in place and it fits me perfectly, and I’m very excited about that and now I need to figure out how to do the set-in sleeves and I am considerably less excited about that. Also, I need to pick an edging to finish all the raw edges.

I wiffled and waffled on how to do the arms, but fairly quickly decided on using slightly narrower strips to the elbow and the cuffing them under the elbow with one more strip. After doing the first arm, I realized I really needed to make the strips narrower at the elbow end, because although my arm fat sort of looks even all the way down, it isn’t. The first arm was done when I realized this, so I just redid the seams to make those ones a bit smaller toward the bottom. For the second sleeve, I actually knit them smaller, which is a little neater.

I picked i-cord for the edging and decided only to edge the neckline after I also decided to add a horizontal band to the bottom of the sweater. That band evens out the sweater bottom considerably (the diagonal strips aren’t quite square, so it was wavy before) and leaves a much nicer edge anyway.

So now I’m done!

I’ve updated the schematics to basically reflect the things I actually knit -- the lowest schematic was my original plan, the two nearer the top are the updated ones. This is obviously very custom-sized, but you can see how the shaping worked for the pieces and do the math for your own gauge and body-size if you want to try this on your own.