My Retro-Fitted Skirt

It came out a little more "night on the town" than PTA but it's my Bell Curve Skirt and I love it!

It was almost not to be, though, because of some dastardly star stitches..... which actually were the reason that this skirt went from being merely a "nice" skirt to an eye-catching "wow" skirt that I'm thrilled with!

Those of you who have been following along on my knitting adventures know that I struggled with the Swallowtail Shawl because of the "nubb" stitch (P5Tog). Based on that experience you would think that I would avoid patterns with a similar stitch. Think again. I'm apparently a slow learner.

A major design feature of this skirt is the textured effect of the 4 columns of "star" stitches running the length of the skirt. The "star" stitch requires that you K3Tog wrap and reknit the same 3 stitches together. Not surprisingly it was miserable to execute.

There are many beautiful examples of this skirt on Ravelry and tons of great suggestions on how to make executing the "star" stitch easier, but none of them worked for me. I began to consider other options including blocking it heavily and wearing it draped over my head as a monk's cowl or, I pondered briefly, was the mini-skirt really such a bad fashion statement? That would be yes, at my age.

Fortunately I have friends. Better yet, I have knitting friends! I've mentioned them; I've hinted about them; but I've yet to name any of them.... until now! The first member of my Topanga Knitting Group to be unveiled is the very special Murielle who is a knitwear designer, a newly opened Etsy shop owner, and my own personal creative muse. She adorable, to boot.

She looked at the skirt, listened to my tearful story, and with a shrug of her shoulders pronounced that the skirt would look much cuter with a flouncy ruffle edging anyway. Really?

And she was absolutely right! And that's why she's a knitwear designer. The ruffle was made by casting on 12 stitches (using 1 needle size larger than used to knit the body of the skirt) and worked in seed stitch for the desired length (roughly 1.5 times the circumference of the skirt bottom) and then sewn on by machine.

Particulars: Bell Curve Skirt, free pattern on Knitty; Zoe yarn manufactured by Artfiber Designer Yarns; US 8 and 9 needles; modified by adding a seed stitch ruffle edging as described above. To get the best possible fit with this skirt make sure you have a tapestry needle handy so that you can take the skirt off the needles several times for fittings and adjust your increases as needed.

Lastly, I would like to say how much I appreciate it when someone takes the time to leave a comment on the blog. I try and respond to each of them unless it is designated as "no reply" or "anonymous" in which case I don't, for obvious reasons. But I would like to say thanks to the anonymous person who left a comment on the last post suggesting that I hang the quilt on the front door ~ I love that idea!