Heather's Poncho Sweaters I designed the first poncho sweater for my daughter Morgayn. It had a front and back that matched, with deep v-necks and matching pointed hems. Two Plymouth yarns: Fantasy Naturale, which is a variegated mercerized cotton worsted, color Tropical Sea, and Italy Baby, a soft cotton fingering weight, which is the solid royal blue. I doubled the Italy Baby yarn for the hems and stripes. The hems are 8 rows deep, the Tropical Sea stripes 16 rows, and the blue stripes 4 rows. It's basically a raglan rotated 45 degrees for the neck and shoulders. The shoulder raglan points (but not the front and back) then move to normal raglan positions to shape the underarm. Once the arms are split from the body, there are decrease points on the sides to match the increases at the center. This is another design that benefited by being test-knitted for a doll before being tried on a human. No dolls were harmed in the knitting of this sweater. I was pleased with the way the hems came out on this sweater. Neck, sleeves, and bottom are all rolled hems with a row of purl to define the edge of the hem. This sweater was originally designed with 3/4 sleeves, but Morgayn didn't like them and so they were later lengthened to come to the wrists. I made the second poncho sweater for my daughter Matisse in various shades of Amazon cotton. It differed from the first in using short rows to fill in the back of the neck. I'm making a third poncho sweater out of the same Amazon cotton that I used for the second poncho sweater and my cable tee. I wanted to get a more precise idea of how many stitches wide I needed to make the sweater, so I decided to knit up a gauge swatch using the same method that I use for the poncho sweater: double increases every other row at the center matched side decreases. So far, so good. I finished the gauge swatch, measured the stitch gauge, the row gauge, and the horizontal gauge across the biased fabric. Then I washed the thing and measured again. Huge surprise. Ordinarily with cotton yarns, I get about 20% shrinkage lengthwise and less than 5% shrinkage widthwise. With this exact yarn on my cable tee, I got 18% shrinkage lengthwise and 2% shrinkage widthwise. With the bias swatch, I got 10% shrinkage lengthwise, 6% *expansion* widthwise, and no change to the horizontal gauge whatsoever. I'm thinking that the bias might somehow be stabilizing the fabric. The gauge swatch is sitting here on my desk. It's stockinette, and there's very little curling at the edges. It's the flattest-lying piece of stockinette I've ever seen. After this sweater, I wrote a perl script to figure the poncho sweater pattern given the gauge and dimensions of the wearer. I intended the third poncho sweater for myself, but it shrank more than anticipated and I ended up giving it to my daughter Matisse. The color suits her more than it suits me, anyway. This version is also knit from different shades of Amazon cotton, with seed stitch trim instead of ribbing. The short rows to fill the back neck continued to evolve with this sweater, and I was much more pleased with this model than the previous one. I decided to put a cable down the front of my fourth poncho sweater. The yarn is a really lovely Venezia tweed, with accents in a Pingouin Metis cotton-linen blend. I originally knit this sweater for my daughter Morgayn, but she decided she doesn't really like v-necks, so Matisse once again scored the sweater. Why do I even try to knit for anyone else? The minute I start knitting, Matisse is at my elbow saying, "That would look better on me." She wears a sweater every day, so I get the satisfaction of seeing my handiwork appreciated. The short row shaping of the back neck fills the v into a crew pattern while keeping the basic chevron form and the pointed hem in place. I love the simple cable down the center panel. I think a more ornate cable would work well, too. For my next poncho sweater, I'm planning on a solid color cable up the center twining up the stripes.

Copyright © 2004 by Heather Madrone. All rights reserved.