I finished a sweater while I was traveling in Texas in late November and early December although I am only now getting around to posting photos.
The pattern is Veronique by Chloe Thurlow from Rowan Magazine No. 73, Summer 2023. The above photo is from the magazine. The design is knit it Rowan's Handknit Cotton, which is a worsted weight cotton. I knit my version in a cotton yarn from Malabrigo called Verano. In my experience, Rowan's Handknit Cotton and Malabrigo Verano knit to exactly the same gauge, but the Malabrigo is lighter in weight. The Rowan yarn comes in at 186 yards per 100 grams and the Malabrigo is 205 yards per 100 grams. A seemingly small difference that is nonetheless noticeable in the drape and weight of the finished sweater.
In my hot humid climate, neither yarn works for me as a summer yarn but both produce garments that are perfect for the transitional seasons of Spring and Fall, and even for the milder winter days here in Tennessee. This sweater was knit not so much as a summer sweater therefore but as a transitional and layering piece. For that reason also I made the sweater slightly on the boxy side, as shown in the photo in the Rowan magazine.
There are a couple of things I noted about the sweater before starting. On the model, the focal point of the joining of the colors occurs slightly below the fullest part of the bust, but just below that point, probably not a full inch, guessing here, based on the photos in the magazine. This is fine on a younger, and perhaps not very full-busted model. This means that accurate measurements, and some fudging in the actual knitting are critical, as I am not sure that this would be particularly flattering if the design lines cross at exactly the full bust, at least not on most women.
One possibility is to make the top, yoke-portion, shorter, so that the dividing line is clearly above the bust line, and the lower portion is longer. This would be particularly flattering on someone who is not only fuller through the bust, has a longer length from bust point to shoulder, and/or is short through the torso, or short waisted. The advantage of knitting our own sweaters after all, is to create garments that are most flattering to the impression we, as individuals, wish to portray.
That short-on-top- long on bottom silhouette would not work so well for me however as I am long through the torso. My distance from shoulder to full bust is shorter than average in terms of most patterns (both sewing and knitting) and the distance below the bust to my waist is longer than average. To balance my figure, I would want the division line between the colors to be below the fullest part of the bust in order to lengthen that top portion, rather than accenting my long-waistedness.
In think I was fairly successful with that. I wanted this sweater to be very close to waist-length, which meant I did have to lengthen it slightly, and the bottom section is a few rows longer than specified in the pattern. I did not alter the top section at all, except for slight modifications at the shoulder line, as the length in the pattern ended clearly below my full bust. The dividing lines on this pattern fall slightly below the bottom of my brassiere band. I think it works for me, although it is also possible that I could have made the top portion every so slightly shorter, a row or two perhaps. This is not a big enough problem to make it worth fretting over and I am happy with the sweater as it is,
