Designing the blomekrans vest

I promised to tell you some more about this vest. 

I had the idea during the Shetland Wool Week. I saw a vest when visiting Shetland Collection Open Studio, with fair isle pattern all over, and a round neckline, that I liked. I decided I had to make patterned vest with a similar neckline. I don't know where the flowers came from, suddenly I just saw them. Here's the first sketch I made in my notebook. 

And here's the finished vest from behind. 

During the Wool Week, I had already bought yarn for two sweaters, and this vest idea came to me just before leaving Shetland, so I had to order most of the yarn online.I had some of the colours already, and it was a lucky match. It's not always easy to match colours from online photos. 

I was struggling to figure out how to do the waist shaping with these big flowers. Suddenly I realized I would have to make decreases and increases between the flowers, and not only in the sides, and I was glad to see that this actually worked. Making the charts for the different sizes was also quite a job. I have not used a technical editor before, but for a multisized garment like this, I saw that that was absolutely necessary. I was happy to have an experienced designer and tech editor help me, Sarah Hatton.

I was also very happy to have two super skilled test knitters, who both have done a lot of fantastic colourwork before, Pinneguri and Jettshin.  Pinneguri actually made two vests! Jettshin turned it into a very colourful short sleeved sweater. I'm planning to make a sweater version myself. But then I have lots of other plans too, so I'm not sure when.