Ruffles don’t usually have much to do with my life. I live in a house full of boys and I’ve always been kind of a tomboy myself. Scouting camp-outs and hikes are way more common in my life than a night out. But somehow this fall the idea of a ruffled poncho really grabbed me. It needed to be simple and top-down in construction. The ruffle couldn’t be too fussy. I wanted it worsted weight to knit up quickly. And no cables to detract from the ruffle.
But first I had to learn about ruffles since to my knowledge I’ve only knit one thing (a scarf) with ruffles in my life. Plus I’ve worn zero things with ruffles (except that one knit scarf) since I was old enough to rip off anything frilly my mom put on me (a while before the age of 1 if the stories are accurate). And so began my Ruffle Tests.
Ruffle Test A (a simple increase row of knitting into the front and back of every stitch) was pretty blah, not very interesting and it curled.
Ruffle Test B (using knit and purl ribs for a pleated ruffle) sounded promising. But the effect wasn’t at all what I expected. I still wonder if I did it wrong since the idea intrigues me.
Ruffle Test C (added an additional increase row to Test A) started to get closer to what I wanted. But it curled up on itself terribly so that was a no.
Ruffle Test D (back to the simple increase row from Test A with the addition of garter stitch) did not curl. But again it wasn’t very interesting.
Ruffle Test E (the same two increase rows from Test C with garter stitch) looked about right. In fact, I loved Ruffle Test E! It had enough stitches to be a real ruffle without being fussy plus no curling at all.
Then came the real test of putting the ruffle on the poncho. Knitting it over a small test swatch starting with 20 stitches was easy. Test knitting it over 800+ stitches for a few rows at the bottom of the ruffle was a commitment. And I’ll admit that the bind-off was not for the faint of heart. But I love the finished garment and I’m naming it Fancy (for the ruffle of course). Now it is in test knitting and we need to snap some good pictures of it.
