I tried to get gauge with #4 yarn, but there’s no way; I knit too tightly. I have to use bulky.

After many tries with various needles, I settled on size 11 for the CO & garter rows at the beginning, then I changed to 10.5 for the remainder.

When I got about 1.5” past the stripes, I knew the finishing construction just wasn’t going to work considering how bulky the yarn is. I looked at my options & decided to end it - BO on the next RS row, then spritz blocked it to see how it was behaving.

It still looked a bit unfinished (see photo) to me so I did a single crochet edge, adding a loop for a button I added to the top of the other side.