crochet - balletneck sweater; the first sleeve sections.

Note: for larger views, click on the images to go to my flickr account for the "all sizes" option.

I've finally finished the lower sleeve section. Here's how it looks.



In this photo, you are seeing all the wrong (inside) sides of the panels, including the little bit of lower sleeve in view at the neck of the sweater. If you look at the larger images, you can see how well the upper sleeve portion lines up with the hills and valleys of the body panels.



Here, I've just turned the upper sleeve portion over so you can see how the lower sleeve section is joined to the underarm rows. Not as neat a joining as I would have liked, but better than when I tried it the first time. I ended up with big gaps and the rows weren't lining up, so I undid it to the first row and reworked it. For the size I'm making, there are 12 lower sleeve rows to match the 12 underarm rows.


If you look at the larger images, you can see the diagram in the instructions. Here, I've labelled the sides that will be sewn together - A to A and B to B.

The starting row for the lower portion of the sleeve is joined at the underarm of the B side, so the edge that will be sewn is the starting chain. The B side of the upper arm portion is also the starting row, which means that the loose section is the starting chain as well.

If you have looked at the original size of the image, you may have spotted a potential problem.

In the last post I wrote, I mentioned some issues I had with making an invisible joining at the top of the starting row. I redid it to ensure everything lined up. Now that the upper and lower portions are done, I find that the A sides, which are the last rows done in both portions, line up the way they're supposed to. The B sides, however, don't. The hills and valleys of the rows leave me with the same problem I encountered when starting the upper portion at the neck. When I try to line up the B sides, however, it's as if I'm missing a row - or have a row too many. I don't, however. I've got 12 rows of the lower sleeve portion matching the 12 rows of the underarm portion. I have the upper portion right, as it not only appears seamlessly attached to the body panel, it also lines up with the opposite panel and the A side of the lower sleeve portion properly.

I don't know why it's turning out this way. Everything else lines up.

Hopefully, I'll figure it out before I have to sew them together. Now that these are done, I'm sewing together the opposite side seam and will work on the other sleeve. Once that one is done, the sleeve parts will all be sewn up.



Here, I've just positioned the sleeve portions as if they were sewn together and still inside out, turning back the upper sleeve portion to show the right (outside) sides of the sleeve.

update: silly me! Until I started reviewing this post, I completely missed my typo on the labelled image - I wrote sleep instead of sleeve! *L* Oops.