Petticoat Seaming

[atherleisure]

I started seaming up the 1892 knitted petticoat panels today so that I could estimate how many more panels I need to make. The pattern calls for seaming them with single crochet. That's a pain in the neck. I don't crochet, though I own a couple of crochet hooks for picking up dropped stitches. One seam took me half an hour. Then it looked lousy. The only way I could see to do it was to stitch through the edge stitches, but the seam just doesn't open out flat like a whip-stitched seam so it really doesn't disappear into the knitting. So I did the other two seams with a whip stitch, and I like them much better. Now I have to decide whether I'm too lazy to redo the first seam, leaving it as the center back seam, or whether I'll actually redo it. It doesn't look awful.



The double row of eyelets to the left in the picture is a whip-stitched seam. The next one is the middle of a panel. The row on the right is the single crochet seam. I definitely like the whip-stitched one better.

And the answer to how many more panels? I think I'll need two more, but it could be three. I'll finish five and six and see how it looks then. Number five is almost halfway finished, and my short term plans involve a lot of driving so completion may not be so far off after all. Then I'll be in the market for another knitting project.

By the way, has anyone seen a c. 1900 vest pattern? I want to make one like this one at the DAR museum. (You have to click through a slide show to get to the picture on the DAR website so I linked to Pinterest instead.) I'm guessing I'll end up making a sweater with no sleeves, but I was hoping to find a vest pattern.