An Experiment in Complicatedness

Bottom-Up/Top-Down Reversible Shirt
Originally uploaded by The Stitchin Sheep.

Here we have the ever-popular Bottom-Up/Top-Down Reversible Shirt. Haven't ever heard of it? Why, it's all the rage in the celebrity knitting circles. Really, never heard of it? Well, I guess you just don't know the right knitters.

Okay, the truth is that this is probably a never-heard-of construction for a shirt, though I'm not sure I've really invented anything new here (it would certainly only work with certain stitch patterns, at least). As its name implies, it's a bottom-up shirt, but it's also, as its name implies, a top-down shirt. How? Well, I started out knitting one side of the body from the bottom up. I got to the shoulder on one side, and I opted not to cast off. Instead, I decided to keep knitting over to the other side (anything to avoid a bit of seaming later on!). It also adds a bit of interest to the construction of an otherwise very easy design. I'm actually really enjoying making it this way.

If you look very closely, you'll see that I've done a bit of what I believe in the US is called seed stitch around the collar (the book I learned on is a British one, and in it, it's called moss stitch). I will be doing this stitch on the arms, which will be short-sleeved, as well as picking up the stitches along the bottom of the shirt to do it there too. I was about half-way up the body before I decided it would be nice to add some visual interest to this project, which explains I didn't originally knit the seed/moss stitch on the bottom of the shirt in the first place. I'll have to count how many stitches there are down there to see if it would be possible to do it in the round or not. We'll see.

Anyway, I love how this shirt is turning out. Aside from the fun construction I decided on, it looks great when I put it up against me to "try it on". I can't wait till it's done, and I'm so happy I put aside the striped alpaca sweater to do this one. I'll be getting lots of wear out of this during the summer.