Cut Your Knits to Fit! (Yes, You Read That Right)

I know you guys cringe when you read "cut" and "knit" in the same sentence. I know it hurts, but sometimes you really just have to treat your knitting like fabric and trim just like a dressmaker would!

Let me tell you what happens when you take a realllllly long time to make something. According to Ravelry my Stained Glass Madness began in August 2009. Yes, that was 4 and 1/2 years ago. Thanks to a knit-a-long on Ravelry for old, languishing Rowan projects, I got off my ass and finished up the entire body of the long-sleeved cardigan!

Original Rowan colorway, pattern is Scales by Brandon Mably

But after trying it on, I realized there were some really weird "curves". The fronts were simply not symmetrical in very distinct places! I marked with safety pins how much they were off.

Yes, there are parts of the pieces that are significantly larger than they should be. I checked and it's not a stitch counting mistake, so it must be a tension mistake. There are many stories of your tension changing depending on circumstances. Maybe you're stressed or super-excited and knit tighter. Maybe you are on vacation in Northern Quebec and you have not a care in the world. :)

Funny thought -- could I use this cardigan as a "stress map" of my last 5 years of life?

The back I did quickly and tightly:1) I was in a stressful life transition and had a month off, 2) it was just really fun to do.

Then, there was an apparently languid time of my life (relief, perhaps?) where the end of the first cardigan half and the beginning of the next were larger!  This definitely overlapped with Quebec Vacation Time.

The tighter finishing of the last cardigan piece represents my life now. How DO I feel? Happy, facing an unknown job/location future, and honestly really busy mentally in my craft and increasingly online life.

So what do you do if your knits don't fit together right? Get to the cutting table! This is one of the reasons I LOVE seamed garments, you can really adjust for fit.

Try on your garment and safety pin the seam the way it should look.

Re-sew your seam.

Treat the excess like a steek. First you secure the stitches. You can use a sewing machine and do two parallel stitch lines. My sewing machine is busted and only goes backwards, so I made a line using slip-stich crochet. I stuck the crochet hook in about every 1.5 stitches.

Get ready...

CUT! Bonus: look at all those ends you don't have to weave in. You can use any ends that are around to tack the seam down, if you so desire.

Now, why cut at all you ask? Well, that excess fabric is going to roll. This means that your seam will be lumpy, and you don't want that. Another option is to sew down the excess, which I did in in the too-scared-too-cut days of my Brocade by Kaffe Fassett.

I really don't recommend it, the seams are way too firm and thick. (I'll need to take a picture of the inside and add it to this post).

Check out some more posts about cutting your knits to fit! Here is a post about my Staccato coat by Kaffe Fassett where I had to re-do the armholes by cutting.

Also, check out this awesome two-part series by A Pile of Sheep about how she took a knit she knew she would never wear and totally re-worked it. I had so much fun reading it!

And as for my cardigan -- I know you will say I should just end here and wear it as a vest. But I've decided I'm going to go through to the end, come what tension may! I'll update you in a COUPLE OF YEARS. Bwahaha!

See my Stained Glass Madness progress on Ravelry

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