To my complete amazement, this vest won a first in the sleeveless vest category at the Sydney Royal Easter show in 2014!

Made from tons of leftovers - see photos). This is what Kaffe Fassett was born for - to give us ideas for using up part-balls. I sorted the balls into colour groupings, then made ‘magic balls’ from each bag - about 40 metres for each stripe of poppies and about 80 metres background at a time, alternating balls of browny and greyish shades. Balls were generally worked from dark to light or vice-versa.

Knitted in the round with steeks at the centre, armholes and neckline.

A border of a pattern of small poppies with stems.

January 2014: To my horror, nearly 5 years have gone by since I did the border and knitted three and a half poppies! I’ve just picked this up again. I can’t believe it’s been so long. I’m going to make it into a longish open vest with cap sleeves; however as I’ve entered it into a show as a sleeveless garment the sleeves will have to be added later. I slightly shaped it from the hips to the bust by decreasing a stitch between every four poppies alternating which poppies, on every repeat for four repeats, thus decreasing 16 stitches all together and ending up with 1 stitch between the poppies instead of two. This is an interesting technique which I may try again with repeating patterns,

Feb 24th: Finally finished the body, with steeks at the front, armholes and back neckline. It looks really weird! Next thing is to crochet and cut the steeks, then pick up to finish the armhole and front band.

Finished the armhole edges with I-cord because it’s simple and neat. There are nearly 400 sts in the front band; I used a modified half-poppy to finish that, which sandwiches the trimmed steeks neatly away.

Washed and blocked lightly.