Doing a Sample Swatch for My Next Project

Yesterday afternoon, the Hey Teach cardi pattern was calling out to me. I grabbed some worsted weight yarn and decided to do a test swatch of the pattern. This was the result of last night's work:

My test swatch (bottom ribbing, base, more ribbing, one section of lace pattern)

This morning my Debbie Bliss Stella (Denim) yarn got some action. I started to knit the cardigan in size 8 needles.

The start of Hey Teach lace cardigan - back piece

After looking at the swatch, I decided to make a slight change to the pattern. For the ribbing under the bust (before the lace pattern starts), I will use my smaller size needle (#7) to give the cardi some shaping and then go back to #8 for the lace knitting.

Another change I'll make is to use 4 small buttons in the front lace area and keep the bottom of the baby doll area open. When I wear cardigans, I rarely button up in my waist area. No need to accentuate one of my problem areas. :)

Hey Teach lace cardigan by Hélène Rush (from Knitty.com)

From my sample swatch, the lace pattern seems to be easy to follow.

In the Sewing World, I Would Call This a Muslin

You know, sew it out on a rogue or leftover piece of fabric to see what the end results would look like. Apparently, the sleeves were bothering me so much that I woke up really, really early in an attempt to do something about it. I pulled out a leftover wheat-colored yarn from my scrap stash that happened to be the same yarn I'm using for my sweater (Wool-Ease Thick & Quick). I started knitting a test sample of the sleeve. Well, what do you know? I think I've got it down. The sides of the sleeve are looking straight. In my two attempts last night, the sides were nubby and just looked terrible.

My test sleeve

So, DH woke up early to find me MIA. He wandered into my sewing room to find me sitting on the floor with my finished test sample. I was smiling from ear to ear, he was not as thrilled as I was.


My first muslin attempt, was knitting a mini sample of the front/back section of the sweater. I was curious to see what this baby would look like before I used up the 7 skeins of yarn.

My mini test stitches

I'm on a roll with this sweater. Once I'm done with knitting the two sleeves, the next step of sewing all the pieces together will be an interesting experience for me. I'm armed with a few books to help me through this process.