Butterfly Math

OK. In order to understand the way I did the math for the Butterfly blouse, you need to understand two things. One, I hate math. And two, when confronted with tasks I hate, I become a lazy, lazy girl.

But knitting, I like. So I started the Butterfly process by knitting the first ball of yarn in its entirety.

The yarn, by the way, is Wick from Knit One, Crochet Too. They do that cutesy marketing thing where they call rayon "soy," but we all know better, and so we'll just call this one a rayon/poly blend and leave the mislabeled-rayon rant for another day.

Anyway.

I got gauge by purling in the round instead of knitting in the round. I could tell you I multiplied my gauge by my stitch count and so forth to determine my pattern alterations, but that would be a lie.

I mean, why do math when there are pattern schematics? I can look at a map and see the final finished measurements. So, I know from this handy dandy little map that the hem circumference will be 57 inches. I also know that the next size down would be 52.5 inches, but I didn't cast on that size even though it would fit with room to spare. I want this to be very loose fitting, just like it is on the Knitscene model. The drapey-loosey fit of this garment is part of the appeal.

The pattern is knit in three pieces. The first piece is a tube and forms the body from the midriff to the hip. The other two pieces, which are identical, are long shaped rectangles that start under the boobs, go up over the shoulders, and down the back to join the tube roughly where your bra strap would be. These twin shaped rectangles are stitched together at the sides, leaving an armhole gap, and at the front and back, leaving V-neck shaping on both sides.

So, I knit the first ball as the start of the body tube. Came up with 2.375" in length for the whole 120-yard ball. 2.375" in length times 57" in girth comes to roughly 135 square inches of fabric out of each ball at the current gauge. According to the pattern schematics, the tube is supposed to be 12.5" long, meaning it would take around 5 or 6 balls of yarn. I only have 9 balls, and there are those pesky bodice rectangles to knit.

This is tricky because they're not really rectangles. They're shaped long pieces -- bigger over the boobs than at the back. I could have mapped the pieces on graph paper and figured the square inches that way. But that would have required finding my graph paper, and you know, here comes that lazy thing again.

So what I did instead was envision the long rectangles as a series of smaller rectangles of varying sizes. This is not technically true because they'd be more like, er, rhombuses? Four-sided thingamabobbies without right angles. Whatever. We can pretend they're rectangles. It's close enough.

I broke out each section of the rectangle and calculated its area, then multiplied all that by two because there are two of these pieces to be knit. Make sense?

Are you bored silly yet? I just about was, by this point. Because this was the part that required a calculator and numbers. ::shudder:: You know, first you have to take the number of stitches and divide by your gauge to get the inches, and then you have to multiply the inches by the length to get the area. It's all very mathy, and I'm a word girl.

Anyway, eventually I managed to calculate the same number twice in a row, so I took it on faith that that was the correct result. The bodice rhombussy-rectangles will require about 650 square inches of fabric.

I have enough yarn, 9 skeins, to knit 1215 square inches. The body tube is bigger than the shoulder-bodice pieces -- I can tell that just by eyeballing the pattern schematics. No math required, thank heaven.

And I have to leave some yarn to knit the little placket on the front and the little crocheted bits at the hems. I have no idea how many yards I'll need to save for that. I can't even think how I would estimate it. So we'll just call it at half a ball -- 60 yards or thereabouts -- and then guess what? The rectangley thingies plus the guesstimated half-ball for plackets and trim adds up to five of my nine balls of yarn. Five plus a little, actually.

So I'm doing the lazy thing. I'm going to decrease the body tube as I knit it so that the hips will still be very fluid and drapey, but the midriff will be a somewhat closer fit. I'll also shorten the body tube piece -- I have no choice -- and by my rhombussy-rectangle calculations for this tube, I figure it will end up being in the neighborhood of 10" in length rather than the 12.5" called for in the pattern.

I can live with these alterations. I may have to tinker with the bust pleats and gathers when sewing the tube to the rectangles, but I can live with that too.

So. Just to be on the safe side, I'll knit the bodice pieces first and then knit the altered tube, saving half a ball or so for finishing.

This was a very boring post, I know. But you know, I thought maybe if I explained my cheating, lazy way of figuring this stuff up, it might help someone else down the road. I've read a lot of articles about schematics and alterations and math, but they get so darn complicated.

My way is easier. I guess we'll find out if my way is accurate!