Appallingly Luscious, like freesias or something, ([info]kestrel127) wrote in [info]advanced_knit,
@ 2003-10-24 10:22:00
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Current mood:hypothetical

Purely Hypothetical...
Say, you design a shirt. DK weight cotton, half sleeves, and a v-neck. You knit the shirt. You're proud of the shirt. Say this is your first design project. Say that it's now completely finished, and in a moment of pride, you wore it work.

Only to find out after half an hour that the thing is practically sliding off of your shoulders because you made the shoulders too small (I think 16 stitches at 5.5 stitches an inch, so about 3"), and with the set in sleeves pulling the seams down onto your arms, your bra straps are constantly showing.

In your fit of pride, you didn't actually, you know, BLOCK the shirt. You hate blocking. You almost never do it. Yes, you know you're weird.

You REALLY don't want to have to rip it all out and redo the shoulders. Would blocking fix the too small shoulder straps or should this purely hypothetical preson frog their heart out, crying the entire time?


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[info]siercia
2003-10-24 07:33 am UTC (link)
Could you, hypothetically, sew in some of those little bra-anchor straps like they put in sleeveless facny dresses? Little strips of canvas strap that you snap around your bra straps, preventing them from showing? Or would that just pull your straps off your shoulders?

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[info]kestrel127
2003-10-24 09:02 am UTC (link)
Hrm. If I knew what you were talking about, I'd have a better answer.

Do you mean reinforcing the shoulder areas with a couple of bits of canvas to help tape it down? Or some sort of hook and loop contraption?

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[info]pers
2003-10-24 01:09 pm UTC (link)
Like a little strap that you put under your bra strap and snap in place. Your bra strap is essentially held in place by a little loop on the inside of the garment.

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[info]platys
2003-10-24 07:36 am UTC (link)
I honestly don't know if blocking would fix it or not. I'm thinking that it would only delay the evil sagging shoulders, not prevent it.

However, what if you reinforced the shoulder and arm seems? Would that help? In my huge sweater, I had the same shoulder sagging problem. Hiking up the shoulder seams helped a ton, but that arms were too long anyways. I wonder if you put in some sort of tape or ribbon in the seams that it'd stabilize things a bit.

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[info]kestrel127
2003-10-24 09:00 am UTC (link)
Well, I'm going to block it before I do anything new, but I find this tape idea intriguing.

Like grosgrain ribbon or something else?

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[info]signsoflife
2003-10-24 08:54 am UTC (link)
Could this hypothetical person pick up and knit a wider or differently-styled collar, perhaps?

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[info]kestrel127
2003-10-24 08:59 am UTC (link)
Not really. The front neck shaping is very much made for a v neck (a kinda low cut v neck). And I already have about an inch of k1p1 rib for the collar (I added half an inch in an attempt to combat this problem, which irks me because there's only 1/2 inch ribbing on the cuffs).

It's a good idea. I tried it already. =)

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[info]emmacrew
2003-10-24 09:15 pm UTC (link)
Cotton tends to not block smaller. It tends to grow in the wearing. But then it also tends to shrink back a bit in the washing. My mom knit me a cotton tank top and the first day I wore it it grew so much that the bottoms of the armholes were below the lower edge of my bra. I had to use paper clips to take a big tuck of fabric out at the shoulders so I didn't spend the rest of the day flashing everyone. I had to rip out a bunch and re-seam much higher. So my guess is that re-doing the shoulders is the way to go, sad as that is.

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[info]ivete
2003-10-29 08:58 pm UTC (link)
If you have a picture of the hypothetical sweater, that may also help in diagnosing a possible solution.

I was going to suggest the addition of more ribbing at the neckline as has already been mentioned. The other thing I was thinking is that if you make the back neckline harder somehow, it won't allow the shoulders to slide off (if that makes sense). You could reinforce the entire neckline with a heavier ribbon, or you could thread a thin elastic through the whole thing. Or if you like the idea, you could add a tie to the front or back neckline by sewing a crochet chain or an icord to each side of the neckline and tieing the ends together in the middle.

HTH! (I just found this community yesterday and I'm happy to be here!)

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[info]kestrel127
2003-10-29 09:11 pm UTC (link)
They were all good suggestions, and in the end, I'd have to frog and make the shoulders wider.

BUT, in wearing it, I realized that I'd designed with a 42" bust in mind. I honestly don't know what I was thinking. I'm a 40", so the thing is big on me and all the side shaping is lost and, well, I don't like that. So I'm probably going to frog, reknit making it a leetle longer, a couple inches smaller, and you know, with wider shoulders and all.

The good news is the sleeves will be OK.

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[info]kestrel127
2003-10-29 09:15 pm UTC (link)
Oh, and welcome! Enjoy the show!

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