Knitting A Dress In The Round - Flaring the Skirt

By now, if you were getting really bored of this project, you could safely call what you've knitted a 'top'; if you wanted to leave it there, I suggest another two evenly-spaced picot rows at the bottom.  Cast off, and fold the last few rows back along the picot holes, making a nice even scalloped edge.  Hem, and follow the instructions on my 'Finishing' post (in the future) to decorate and fit your garment.

If you're not bored, hooray!  We are now going to very gently flare the lace pattern out over your hips and keep going.

N.B. I have realised while writing this that I keep saying 'your' all the time, as though this blog was directed exclusively at knitting women/dress wearers.  Knitting trouser-wearers: if you are with me on this project, please make sure you measure the intended wearer carefully and at all the relevant points - over-bust, under-bust, between busts, waist, hips, and down the middle.  This presumes a certain intimacy with the person concerned.  Good luck!

Flaring the Skirt
You Will Need your stitch-markers back.  Using your gague, work out how many stitches you will need to add to make up the difference between your waist and hip measurement.

My waist =28ins, and hips=31ins, so I need 3 ins of increase.  At 8 stitches to an inch (or thereabouts) that means adding 24 stitches.  I don't intend to do this all in one go, as it will deform the garment.  Instead, the stitches will be added gradually over a series of rows.

Count the number of lace repeats (groups of 9 stitches) you have on one row.  Divide this number by your gague count.  The result will be the number of repeats between stitch-markers, and between bands of increase stitches.

The red triangle surrounds the purled increase stitches in front of the stitch-marker.  

Follow the pattern below for a smooth transition.  Continue knitting the lace in bands with purl-bands between until you reach nearly the length you want.  Then go to Finishing...