Stargirl Bra Top (Stash Project.2)

Project recap

Ravelry project page

• Time spent: 33 hours
• Yarn
  • Cascade Yarns ® Heritage® 6, Sweet Lavender
  • Romni Wools Pure Linen
  • Needle: US 7/4.5mm
• Pattern: Stargirl Bralette
• Designer: Uma Murphy

Yarn planning and stash

At the beginning I only planned to use the Romni linen yarn, but when I tried casting on with the linen yarn and knitted few rounds, I realized that the lack of elasticity of linen would make a poor choice for the rib edge and eventually cause the garment hard to fit in. That’s why I brought in the Cascade Heritage 6.

This is a simple pattern, however, since I want to use up all my stash yarns, it gets a bit tricky to determine the length of this bottom-up garment. I started my Stash Project series a while ago and the intention is to clean up those left-over yarns from previous projects as much as possible (Project.2 is still WIP). For this project, I know I have more than enough to finish the bra, but how long should I extend the body before starting the shaping? I eventually found out a way to estimate the length by using math magic and it worked like wonders.

Unravel the rib edge

I initially thought I ran short of the stash yarn Cascade Heritage 6 for the 2x2 rib, so I use the same colourway of Hobbi cotton yarn as a substitute to finish the rib. Later it turned out that I have another small ball of Heritage, by the time I’m already in the middle of the body, so I unravelled the 2x2 rib from the edge where the rib meets the body by cutting the yarn and pick up live stitches.

The i-cord straps

The pattern simply uses stockinette for the straps but I want a stronger support, so I changed it to 8 sts i-cord straps and also added i-cord edges to the neck. I use this video How I add an i-cord edging to my Mitred Square Blankets as the tutorial.

Sew live i-cord straps to i-cord edge

The goal is to sew the live stitches of i-cord straps to i-cord edge. This is what it looks like before the grafting. I put a stitch marker at the middle of the point where the strap should be.

The inspiration came from this video Half Grafting (or How to Seam Live Stitches to Cast On Stitches) - YouTube. Basically it’s the same as the Kitchener Stitch, except treating those little “V” as the stitches from the 2nd needle and only working them once by simply passing the yarn though the V purlwise. Once it’s completed, it looks quite seamlessly from both the inside and outside.

The look from inside (left) and outside (right)

New techniques learned

• Unravel rib for bottom up top
• Calculate the area/yarn weight to use up yarn
• Another way to do i-cord edge
• Sewing live stitches to i-cord edge
• (Practice) flicking purl