It has been so long since I have given you an update on my vest that I am sure you already forgot about it! I have been working on it but hadn’t had much progress and therefore didn’t have much to share besides all the unravelling I have been doing.

If you are new to my blog I started this series a few (several) weeks ago to learn how to custom-fit a pattern. I am taking a Craftsy class that teaches you how to do this with a pattern for a vest in tunisian crochet and I have been sharing my progress with everyone (check old posts here, here and here).

So after I finished all my swatches and finally started the back I had a lot of trouble. I have been thinking about what the problem really was and I think it lies on how comfortable (or uncomfortable) it is to achieve the gauge of the pattern. I did plenty of swatches to get the right gauge when I first started the class and even though I finally got the right one it wasn’t the way I would normally crochet: loose when I wouldn’t be loose and tight when I wouldn’t be tight. So when I actually started the piece my hands just went into automatic pilot and forgot all about what they had done before to achieve the gauge.

Not only that but I realised halfway through the back that my piece was 3cm bigger than what it should be, which would turn into 6cm if I did the front the same way. So I unravelled and started to crochet tighter, but it would still end up too big! Changed hooks, and still too big! I was really starting to get desperate when suddenly, with a much smaller hook than my original swatches, everything fell into place. Well almost. Row gauge is still a bit off but I will fix that with blocking.

Now the back is finished and the piece is 1cm smaller/bigger here and there, but nothing blocking can’t fix. I literally sighed with relief when I measured the finished back. One more unravelling would be more than I can handle for one project!

So my piece of advice to everyone: make sure your gauge is comfortable for you! Instead of changing tension try changing hooks which is much easier to replicate in the finished piece. And I would say if you can’t get one of the gauges always go for stitch gauge. specially on a garment. It is easier to fix row gauge by removing or adding rows than to unravel to remove stitches.

You definitely learn more from your mistakes than from your successes!

I will be back with more updates and hopefully less unravelling 🙂

x

Sol