After finishing my Granny Stripe Cardigan and latest Infinity Scarf, I had quite a number of partial skeins, all in colours I like to wear – grey, teal, purple, faded navy – so I thought I’d crochet myself a striped vest from the leftovers, before seeing what else I might have left.
I’ve been trying to wear more colour in the last couple of years, and although I probably don’t have the courage to wear something this colourful out of the house, but I’ve always liked the practicality of a sleeveless jumper, to keep out the chill in our house while leaving my arms free for work, cooking and so on.
I had no pattern for this, but built it as I went along. I worked it from the bottom up, first making the back and then the front. Then I finished it with ribbing at the hem, arm holes and collar.
I did carefully plan the pattern of stripes beforehand. I weighed all my leftover yarn and worked out the proportions I had available – so I knew I had to use more grey and teal than blue, for example. I didn’t want to use too much of the bright purple, as it’s a bit of a frightening colour for me. I also tried in planning the stripes to not end up with a bright purple stripe lying straight across my b**bs, but in the final garment this hasn’t quite worked…
I experimented with different stitches and combination of stitches, to find one that gave me the appearance I wanted. I was aiming for small, smooth, knit-like stitches and clean lines between colours, but I also wanted a finished fabric with as much drape as possible with crochet. Finally, I wanted a stitch combination that was quick to stitch and easy to unpick since I was shaping this on-the-fly.
I rejected, for example, the waistcoat stitch, which closely mimics knitting, but it makes a very stiff fabric that is hard to unravel.
In the end I returned to my favourite UK: extended double crochet (edc) / US: extended single crochet (esc) which I love to work – it’s something about the rhythm. It makes a relatively unfussy, smooth fabric. It’s great combined with dc / sc on alternate rows, but I didn’t want to calculate the consequences of having rows of different heights. Working every row in edc / esc, and working under rather than into the turning chain at the end of each row, made this a very fast-growing, easy to unpick project, which was what I wanted.
Details are important. I made the back slightly longer than the front of the vest and there are splits at the sides. I also worked lines of raised front-post/back-post stitches along the side seams.
The ribbing includes short rows to create the perfect fit so the collar and arms edges sit flat against the body.
If you’d like to make a similar striped crochet vest yourself, here are some free patterns for crew-necked vests for women to inspire you – its relatively easy to adapt something like this to be striped if you have yarn leftovers to use up.
I’m going to give a quick mention here to the interesting language associated with this garment as I find there are distinct variations generationally, regionally and internationally on the name given to it. My mother would certainly call this a “tank top” which for her was always a warm knitted sleeveless garment worn over a shirt. In the UK “tank top” these days more often means a close-fitting sleeveless t-shirt. I think in the USA, what I have made here would often be called a “vest” (or “sweater vest”), a word also used to mean what we in the UK call a waistcoat. Meanwhile “vest” in the UK mainly means an item of underwear, at least in people my age. Younger people have adopted the American usage of “vest” and shops now use it in this sense. Perhaps the descriptive “sleeveless jumper” is less ambiguous in the UK, although “sleeveless sweater” might be better as in the USA “jumper” can mean a type of dress. “Slipover” is another variation of this type of garment, although perhaps with the connotation of something less fitted. Isn’t language fun!
At the end of this project, I still have more of some of these colours leftover, so I’m going to be making more of my perfected DK Earwarmers. Smaller scraps I will make into granny squares and store like that, rather than as little yarn balls, so my stash is already building itself to a blanket.
For ideas on what to do with your smallest yarn oddments of 10 metres or less, see my blog post.
