The Design Process: Buttonbands

Finally! I am nearing the end of my little series. Not that it's a good thing, it's just exciting to finally be able to show you the final project and compare the original idea to the final product. I have to say, I think it's going to be pretty close to the original concept, which is not always the case with these things. I still have not seamed the sides or sewn on the buttons! I need to get on that!

So on to buttonbands!

I don't really use a set number when figuring out how many stitches to pick up. Usually I divide the number of rows by the numbers of stitches to get a ratio, but sometimes I don't. For this project, I decided to go with the ratio of 4 to 5. So out of every 5 sts, I pick up 4 of them.

For this design, I was able to pick up stitches continually from right bottom hem to left bottom hem, which makes things a lot easier! Whenever I hit a change (placket to neck, front neck to back neck) I placed a stitch marker so I can easily count the stitches to fill into the pattern.

Once stitches had been counted, I needed to figure out the placement of the buttonholes before proceeding. I counted up and had 92 sts from left front hem to the beginning of the V neck. So........

First you figure out how many stitches your button will need to pass through and how many buttons total will be used. I need 5 buttons and 5 sts for each button, so that will take up 25 sts (5x5).

I also need a few stitches at the top and bottom of the placket. You can't start buttonholes right at the edge! So I choose 4 for the top and 4 for the bottom.

Now we need to figure out how many stitches are in between each buttonhole. So we take 92 sts - 25 sts = 67 sts - 8 sts = 59 sts. Now we divide that by the number of spaces: 59/4= 14.75. Hmm, not an even number. So we add 2 sts to the top and 1 st to the bottom to make it an even 14.

So we have 6 sts for the bottom, 5 sts for each buttonhole, 14 sts between each and 5 sts on top!

Now that I have that info, I can figure out how many rows I'll need (9). And I decide to use a 1 row buttonhole, so I place it after the 4th row to keep things looking even.

Next up: Pockets? We'll see!