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Knit a Dress without Knitting a Swatch

February 21, 2024 by Sarah White

You might not know this about me, but I’m a stickler for gauge when it comes to knitting garments. It’s hard for me to get gauge (I actually just did swatches for a sweater and it took me three tries to get it right!) and I know how easily a little difference in gauge can make a huge difference in whether your sweater fits.

But I also understand how appealing the prospect of not knitting a gauge swatch is for a lot of knitters, whether you’re someone who “always gets gauge” or you just hate doing it.

When it comes to garments, patterns that work for any gauge allow you to just start knitting with the yarn and needles that you want to use, but they typically involve lots of math and/or trying things on once it’s big enough so you can figure out how the rest of the pattern needs to go so it will fit you. I’ve done this with top-down sweaters before, and in the case of the Mamaki pattern by Nicola Susen you can do it with a dress.

The pattern suggests you’ll need about 1.7 times the amount of yarn you would need for a sweater in order to make a dress with the same kind of yarn, so if you have yarn you’ve used before to make a sweater that can give you a place to start for yardage requirements. Or you can make it a total stash buster and use all the leftovers of a single weight of yarn that you have.

(I did something sort of like that last year when I decided to turn the scrap yarn sweater I was knitting into a tunic. But I did start with a sweater pattern I’d knit before, and I did check my gauge and do the math for increases I needed to cover my hips.)

If you want to make your own dress or tunic on the fly (you could totally use this same pattern to make a sweater, just knit to the length you want), check it out on Ravelry. This is a fun one to look at all the different versions people have made, too. A lot of the pattern notes are in German but the pattern is available in both German and English.

[Photo: Nicola Susen]

Next Pattern:

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Knit a Linen Stitch Hot Pad

Linen stitch is one of my favorite knitting stitch patterns that, every time I use it in a project, I think about how I don’t use it often enough. 

It’s an easy stitch to make, with slip stitches done with the yarn held to the front of the work on the right/front side and to the back on the wrong/back side, which makes the strand of yarn a visible part of the pattern. 

It also makes a fabric that is thick and looks kind of like a woven fabric.

I recently used linen stitch to make a double-thick pot holder, which I worked in a kind of interesting way. I didn’t want to have to do any sewing on the project, so I started it from a crochet cast on and picked up stitches from the side of the cast on to make the hot pad all in one piece in the round with the edge sealed. 

This requires working on two circular needles, which is another technique I don’t use that often and am always reminded how much I like it when I do. 

The combination of double thickness and the stitch pattern makes for a hot pad that’s already pretty thick, but I also added a bit of old towel to the inside before I closed up the end to make it super thick and extra protective for your surfaces. 

I found the engineering challenge of this construction method to be a lot of fun, but you could also just knit it as a tube (casting on twice as many stitches as I did) and sew up the ends by hand when the knitting is done. Either way you’ve got a useful and pretty addition to your kitchen, whether you work it in a solid color, stripes or as a stash busting project will all your cotton odd balls. 

You can grab the pattern over at Our Daily Craft, or check it out on Ravelry. 

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