Mother’s Helena: What I Did

This is Clara's mother's Helena. I made Helena for Clara and knew it would please both Clara, and her mother if I made a matching sweater for mom. See Clara's Helena and Clara's and Mom's together below.

Step-by-step, here's how I made a Mom's Helena...

1. I babysit once a week, so on one of my babysitting days I found one of my daughter in law’s sweaters, measured the bust, arm length, sleeve depth and body length. My dil had a sweater with ¾ sleeves and a bit of swing so I was able to use those measurements. If you only have a traditional sweater to measure, the bust is the important measurement. You can guesstimate the others.

2. Generated a pattern for a top down v-neck cardigan with Sweater Wizard, using the measurements from dil’s own sweater. Size 7 needle; Cascade 220. Any top down v neck cardigan pattern would do.

3. Modified the sleeve increases so that the last four increases were spaced every four rows followed by 1 ½ inches without increases.

4. Modified my basic pattern to make it a Helena as follows:

Worked in stockinette 3 rows after separating for the sleeves.
Using size 5 (2 sizes down) needles worked raised band (k2 rows, p1 row, k2 row)
Back to size 7 needles
Increased to 200 stitches from 168 for bodice swing immediately below raised band
Worked lace pattern for 8 repeats
Switched to size 5 needles and worked 6 rows, then eyelet row, then four rows and bind off

5. Sleeves: I needed to go up a needle size to size 8 because I knit tighter in the round

6. Knitted on the 7 row garter stitch edging pretty much as directed in Helena directions. I used one button right below where I had finished the neck shaping. I put the button hole in the middle row of the edging, the 4th row.

The sweater was easy to knit and looks great. I’m pretty pleased with myself right now!