Its Isa Morgan

Table of Contents

Introduction

I had the privilege of participating in Catwalk for the Cats – a benefit fashion show where the proceeds went toward Comfort and Joy Cat Cafe and Teller County Regional Animal Shelter. This show was organized by the lovely Autumn Olive.

My collection, “Tabbies for Trans Rights,” seeks to highlight transgender identities. Each of my sweaters focused on a different sub-identity under the trans umbrella. The Kitties Instead of Titties sweater represents nonbinary folks and was modeled by a nonbinary person named Callia (they/them).

Buy the Sweater

The sweaters I made will be available for sale after the fashion show!

70% of the proceeds go toward Comfort and Joy Cat Cafe and Teller Regional Animal Shelter.

Check them out in my shop!

The Graph

Below is the graph for the tapestry – download the free PDF here:

I made the design in Canva, then used an app called Pixel Grid to translate this to a graph.

Making the Sweater

Basic Construction

This sweater is a fairly simple construction. The body of the sweater is consistent of 2 panels for the front and back with minimal neck shaping. I worked the sleeves flat then sewed them up the side and attached. I finished off the sweater with ribbing around the neck, cuff, and bottom.

Sizing

The trickiest part about this sweater is getting the sizing right. The Burn the Binary sweater was tricky because it was a large graph I had to make sure would fit on the panel. This one, though, was smaller and seemed to pose less complications.

However, getting the surgery scars to line up correctly was trickier than I anticipated. The design can easily be adjusted by adding or removing rows from the arms, however not having the model in front of me to compare against, I ended up making the arms too long. This caused the scars to land higher than they should have on the torso.

I didn’t have time to redo the chart. I could have added more plain black rows at the above the graph before shaping the neck, but then the sweater would have been too long for the model.

Given the tight turn around for the show, I decided it was not a huge deal for the image to land a bit high – but if I were to do it again, I would shorten the arms more.

Neck

For the neckline, I took the total number of stitches across the panel and divided it by 3 to make the two shoulder sections and the neck. I added 3 rows to the front and 2 rows to the back panel for the neck shaping.

Sleeves

For the sleeves, I opted to use half double crochet instead of the single crochet I used for the panels to add some variety to the texture and to make it a bit less stiff.

Using the models bicep measurements, I determined how many stitches I needed at the top of the sleeve. I then worked flat in a panel, decreasing every other row until I got to the length I needed.

Ribbing

Usually when I do ribbing, I work it directly onto the sweater using single crochet back loop only, slip stitching into the sweater as I go. However, since I wanted my ribbing to have horizontal striping, but sc blo ribbing is worked horizontally, I needed to have 5 working strands yarn. Because of this, I opted to work the ribbing separately and sew it on after so that the 5 strands of yarn wouldn’t get tangled in the sweater as I turned my work.

For the neckline, however, I tried something different on this sweater. Instead of working the ribbing vertically, I worked it horizontally. I worked around the neck hole alternating between waistcoat stitch and single crochet back loop only. This created a faux-ribbing. It’s not stretchy like a traditional ribbing, but I really enjoyed the look of it. I opted not to use this for the sleeves and bottom of the sweater since the stitches would be “upside down” – but I can definitely see myself using this technique in the future.

The Collection

Check out the pattern notes for my Cat Cardigan and Burn the Binary sweater here: