Scrumbles Saturday: Putting a Freestyle Design Together

Having made the pink scrumbles, I decided it was time to get back to working on my Blue Vest.  It has been over an year and a half since I first purchased the yarn.  Back then I had an idea what I wanted the vest too look like:

Blue Vest Original Design

On the left is the patterns I found to use in the different scrumbles. This is a knitted only project and I wanted to move away from doing all my scrumbles in even garter or stockingette stitches.  I needed  to find patterns that had a very small repeat. The best have 4 stitches and 4 rows as my scrumbles are typically 8 stitches by 8 or 10 rows.

On the right of the photo is the original sketch. From this sketch and knowing my own measurements, I drew a scale diagram using the squares of my knitting journal (the squares is why I like these as knitting journals):

Diagram of Vest to Scale

Using tissue paper, I cut out the pattern in three portions: two fronts and a back and then stuck them together:

Template for Blue Vest

Once the template is made the scrumbles can be placed on top of the pattern. This is when you realize that you don’t have enough scrumbles:

Blue Vest Scrumbles on Template

Despite the shortage of scrumbles, with mattress stitch and yarn of a similar weight and color to the scrumbles I started joining scrumbles together.  I often use the sewing to stretch out or shorten scrumbles to exaggerate their shapes.  What is nice about mattress stitch it that it can add an extra row of knitting between the scrumbles or it can be invisible if you chose.

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Copyright ©2008 cdavies