December 1964: Front Panel Classic Sweater

This month’s project was, as its name suggests, a classic sweater with a front panel detail. And while it may not be what you think of as a “Christmas sweater” (i.e. not tacky, no light-up reindeer baubles…), it was definitely my Christmas sweater this year, since I not only finished it on time, but on December 24th! (And there was much rejoicing.)

The sweater features many elements of classic 1960s casual design: a longer body (23 inches), no waist shaping, straight sleeves with an equal amount of ease (i.e. not much) from wrist to sleeve cap, set-in sleeves and a high crew neck necessitating a back neck opening. The front panel, like the one on the dress I knitted for the October blog project, appears at first glance to be some kind of cable or mock-cable, but is cleverly made out of a combination of normal knit and purl stitches as well as knit stitches made through the back loop.

The pattern uses plain Patons Double Knitting DK wool in “Flamingo”, which I would expect to be orangey-pink but judging from the colour photo on the back cover, is a cheerful bright orange. I love orange, so for once I made a project in the colour specified. My yarn was G-B Jil, an extremely normal, easy, inexpensive superwash DK wool.

The sweater knit up quickly and the only real delay came while waiting for the two extra balls of wool I had ordered to arrive. I had bought the wool at a local sewing/knitting shop that doesn’t order very often, and at the time there were only 400 grams of the orange wool there. I expected to use 450-500 grams, so ordered the two extra balls. It ended up using exactly 450 grams of wool and the two extra-ordered balls were even in the same dye lot, so there was no trouble with matching.

I made the sleeves one inch longer and used a button for the back neck closure instead of a zipper. Other than that, I made everything according to pattern. My only design worry was the complete lack of shaping — I was afraid it would make me look dumpy, since I have a pretty small waist and prefer to wear tight-fitting tops. The finished garment has zero ease in the bust and obviously a lot of ease in the waist and in retrospect, they should have written the (plain, no panel) back piece narrower than the front — it’s much more logical to have the front larger than the back, or at the very least, both the same, but effectively the back is wider than the front in this case, because the panel cinches the front piece in a bit. That said, it works out fine as written. The extra length and the tight ribbing at the hem make it cling to the hips, which keeps the waist part from ballooning.