8/31/11: Well, as pretty as the dress is, it has some problems. Or more specifically one problem: The straps were just too stretchy. They just couldn’t support the weight of the dress. I kind of expected the yarn to hold up better, but Shine Worsted was way stretchier - I had to double check that it was actually a cotton blend, instead of a wool blend. So instead trying to line the straps or reknitting the dress, I decided to frog it and knit up a completely different pattern. That way I could also fix the bell shape of the dress. I’m just not a fan of bell shaped dresses/garments.
7/09 I used needleknit’s version of the pattern for my modifications:
I cast on 185 stitches (to knit the dress in the round), and knit 6 row garter stitch border. For the stockinette portion, I used matched decreases (k2tog) every 7 rows, reducing it down to 165 stitches with a skirt length of 10 inches long. For the yoke, I reduced it down to 111 stitches, and knit it in k1p1 seed stitch (p2tog for the last stitch of knitting in the round to reduce to 110 stitches). I bound off 4 stitches for the armhole, then bound off 1 stitch at the beginning of each row three times. The entire yoke is approximately 4 inches long. I decided to make the straps extra long, with buttons, but, since I ran out of the Hollyberry, I knit part of the straps in Terracotta.
Now I just need to block the dress and add the buttons!!!