Let's track a design from idea to finished garment

The holiday celebrations are over for now and we think it's time to make something
fun and a bit challenging for yourself.
That was our first thought for this month. After a little brainstorming and
inspiration, we decided to explore knitted motifs. It's easy to find crocheted motifs.
Knitted ones are a bit scarcer. So we had to a bit of looking before we were happy.
We found a leaf motif that uses a row of ridges placed regularly on a stockinette
background.
We liked this one because it's essentially a hexagon, which makes more possibilities
for putting the motifs together in pleasing patterns. You can stagger them, or put
them end-to-end, or line them up in even rows. 
So we put together a mixture of rich variegated colors of KPPPM and interspersed
a few solids until we had a combination with movement and interest.
The colors are based around wine, brown, gold and blue.
You could use grey, gold, pink and red.
Or maybe blue, green, ecru and purple.
At this point, we decided to make a large rectangular wrap, placing the motifs in
rows, as in the first drawing photo. As you can see, our first attempt made the rows
diagonal.
Along the way, we tried knitting an entire row as one piece, increasing and
decreasing to make points, as shown in the middle drawing. 
But that changed the look of individual motifs we really wanted.
Next we put them together in groups of four leaves of the same color, picking up and
casting on to create a cross shape.
This was very exciting, but not really practical, because this arrangement left large 
square holes that would have to be filled in!
That's fine for a long-term project, but too much for a monthly one.
While knitting groups of four leaves, we managed to pick up and knit in the wrong
spot. Oh no!
That's when we noticed how cool they looked as pairs: each worked in the opposite
direction. Those pairs are in the photo at the heading of the newsletter.
In the bottom drawing, you can see how things looked when we colored the pairs
of leaves. Now we're happy.
Here's when our time considerations came in.
This would certainly make a gorgeous long wrap. And we intend to make one
sometime.
But when we realized we'd need at least 60 pairs of leaves to get a decent length
and width, we changed our minds again.
What to do?
What if we put the leaves together into two rounds and made a skirt?
We'd need fewer leaves. And the points at the bottom look pretty.
After the leaves were sewn together, we picked up stitches around the top and
turned the pattern into a striped yoke, continuing the shaping and decreasing
until we had a nice waist.
And it worked!........ Continue reading