About That Vest

In my last post, I mentioned a vest knitted last year that I had to fix. This Elesbeth Lavold celtic vest pattern from Knitter's a few years back, was very popular with blog knitters.

My work knitting circle buddy, V, and I also both loved this vest, and made it in the same color. Hers fit better than mine - she made the medium and I made the large.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but the shaping under the arms was a bit too pronounced for me. See how it slopes outward? When I wore it, the underarms stuck out. See, I had made the larger size so that I was sure to be able to button it. Wrong idea.

Unfortunately, while I was knitting, I didn't realize how the underarmage would look, or I could have just not done the shaping. Once done, I loved the vest, but not the way it looked on me, so I put it aside for some future steeking. But I kept not doing it, because the thought of cutting my knitting sent shivers down my spine.

Over the New Year's weekend, I picked up the vest, set my jaw, and took it to task. After all, why all that knitting never to wear it again, right?

Here's the vest with the preliminary basting. All I did was make a straight line up from the body of the vest. Next step is c.u.t.t.i.n.g. OH NO!

I took a deep breath and put the scissor to the seam! This is definitely scary!

Done! I did it! I can't believe I had the courage. Next I took my trusty crochet hook and hooked up a seam inside the baste line. A little sewing down of the seam, and a little steamin of same, and voila! The vest now fits me the way it's supposed to, and I love it again.

I laid out the finished vest to take a look at my work, and just look what I found:

The vest had sat so long in the basket waiting for me to take courage, that a nasty old moth must have gotten hungry and left me a nice hole. There's no way I can fix this -- I tried and it was a disaster.

More on this disaster next time...................