Knitting Russian Fairy Dress

This is a guest blog post from my tester, Kiki Crean, who has documented the making of her Russian Fairy dress, with notes and photos. I hope it will be helpful to you if you are making, or thinking of making one! Kiki made the size 2 years using ‘Springtime’ in Z. Hinchcliff’s held double.

12th April 2020.
My first test knit!
Just knitting first attempt at tension square. Using 2.75 needles flat.

I

21st April

Well I struggled a bit to get gauge (as I always do). In the end I went with the closest and the one which gave a good fabric. That was with size 3mm needles.

I love the hem will a roll on the edge

21st April- The body

Have completed the first bit of dress. I needed to add a few rows as my row gauge was a little out. I should have thought of that earlier and added a few rows in between each decrease but it looks ok.

21st April - Sleeves

I have started a sleeve and although I’m not keen on dpns it’s going well.

21st April- Swatching

I have also done a practice piece for the intarsia which I’ve not done before. I decided to do the flat (back and forth) version. I looked at a few video tutorials on doing intarsia in the round but felt I might get confused. Maybe when I’ve done a bit more intarsia it’ll make more sense to me.

23rd April
Had a marathon sleeve knitting and am ready to attempt the intarsia on the yoke. Due to my printer running low on ink and not showing the colours correctly I knit the wrong colours at the bottom edge! I found the bobbles on the sleeves quite fiddly to do but that was right on the edge and I have not done them before. At the yoke it might be easier.

23rd April - Joining sleeves and body

Joined sleeves and body and prepared 24 lengths of yarn (12 for each of MC and CC). I decided to to do yarn butterflies rather than bobbins.. in my practice piece I made some cardboard bobbin-type things but that was for just a few lengths. Here with 24 lengths I thought it might be a bit cumbersome. I used about 2m50 lengths.

26th April - Intarsia star points
Finished the points. Somehow I ended up with 2 extra stitches at the 3 stitch side of steek but just absorbed them into 2x k2 tog! It was easier to do the bobbles at this stage than on the edge of the sleeves. I did intarsia back and forth. At first just added the new colour in each time but this made the whole thing a bit gappy which I found difficult so I start to just tie a loose knot when I changed colour to stabilise things a bit. After a while I felt more confident and stopped tying the new yarn to the old as it was a bit time-consuming. I found that the bobbles were in a gap and had a tendency to pop through to the back so I did little retaining stitch when I dealt with many loose ends. Another time I might just do the points in normal stranded fashion and catch the floats every 5, 6, 7 stitches, varying the position so the colour doesn’t show through. The yarn actually fluffs up quite a lot after washing so I guess that would probably hide any stitches that peeked through.

After points! Actually not as difficult to manage as it looks

29th April - Short Rows
I did German short rows which I find neater and easier to understand. I found the half way point between back and front by finding the centre point of top of sleeves.

This meant I knit 45 stitches past first marker to first turning point and then knit back 35 stitches to next. Thereafter I knit to the 2nd stitch before each previous turn.

Cutting the steek

Next, I cut the steek. I wonder if there is a way to make the steek wider as 5 stitches is quite narrow which leaves a very narrow facing. I did back stitch one stitch away from where I cut to secure it. I think I rushed this stage a bit. Maybe I should have pressed the facing to flatten it a bit as it was a bit bulky when I sewed the band onto the back.

30th April - Button bands
Cast off. Added button bands. Didn’t quite pick up stitches all the way to the top by mistake. I think this was because the bobble got in the way and I didn’t see the top clearly but I didn’t spot this until I’d finished.But that same very last bobble at the top in neck ribbing hides the gap.

Trying to decide which backing ribbon to use…

1st May- Finishing

Finished weaving in ends - there were quite a lot. Stitched the ribbon band on the cut edge (facing) of steek and grafted underarm stitches.. Slight panic when I couldn’t tighten the stitches up for some unknown reason. The yarn got caught on something. It looked like I had split it at one point and then when I pulled one tiny strand broke so that the strand which was left got bunched up and wouldn’t pull through. So I had to be creative and laboriously tighten one stitch at a time. It looked a bit messy but I reassured myself that it would be ok after washing!

I finally went with this one..

Reverse side of the yoke, with all ends woven in.

Yay, finished. Loved knitting this and I love the result. I can’t wait to see it on my granddaughter Clara.