Stiff shapeless sweater
knit in 1983.
Today: Still shapeless.
This sweater coat has fitted sleeves. Yet, as if by magic, it achieves shapelessness. How?
I think it’s due to the stitch pattern, which relies on slipping stitches to create a woven effect.
Mind you, I love slip stitch pattern but slipping stitches tends to create a dense fabric. It makes great purses and slippers because of that. Slip stitch also can be used to knit wonderful sweaters– provided you counteract the denseness by knitting a particular yarn on much larger needles than you would ordinarily use to knit stockinette.
Examining the stiff non-draping fabric, the materials list and the gauge, I suspect the fabric in this coat had no stretch and felt truly bullet proof. Bulletproof can be fine when used to make tailored coats — but anyone who sews know even the straightest looking tailored coat had much more shaping that a knit coat. Knitting patterns rely on the stretch and drape to flatter a woman’s figure.
Ahhhhh well…. I remember the 80s. This wasn’t that shapeless for the 80s.
From McCall’s Needlework and Craft, July/August 1983.
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Very 80’s. The trend, as I recall, was to be as thin as possible while wearing clothes that COMPLETELY concealed said thinness under a circus tent of fabric.
It just occurred to me: did this same sensibility transfer from women’s fashion in the 80s to men’s fashion in the 90s/today and result in those asinine-looking baggy pants that “gangsta”-wannabees wear? Personally, I think the only message communicated by that style is “I’m too stupid to be able to select pants that fit me”, but then again, I’m no gangsta.
Comment by Stitchay Woman (0 comments.) — 7/30/2006 @ 6:09 pm
I still have that magazine! There was a cuter cropped cardigan on a model in the same group. But since it was a crochet pattern and I didn’t know how to crochet, I never made it. I might someday. I’m learning to knit.
Comment by Elzondriel (0 comments.) — 3/29/2007 @ 2:46 pm