FO: White Quartz Cropped Cardi

Voila! The perfect summer sweater. This is modified from the Smoky Quartz Tunic Pattern in Interweave Crochet Fall 2006. I already made a longer, cap-sleeved fitted sweater version as the Black Quartz Tunic. Materials: Lion Babysoft, 1 ball cream; 4.5mm crochet hook.

After fussing with different lengths, waistbands, etc. (click here for longer version), I decided to keep it short and sweet. The bottom edge is bordered with a row of linked double crochet–which gathered the bottom edge a bit, but without any puckering. Two rows of single crochet along the inside edges one row along the neckline add stabilization.

Other modifications: For most of the top, I alternated 6dc clusters with 2dc-ch2-2dc shells (click here for stitch detail). That made the increases kind of tricky, but I just faked it. I’m particularly proud of how I handled the armpits in the sleeves. When separating the body from the sleeves (this is a top-down raglan pattern), the original pattern calls for you to add one extra shell stitch (2dc – ch2 – 2dc) at each armpit. That also adds one shell stitch for the sleeves.

To prevent a gaping hole on either side, I added two v-stitches (dc-ch1-dc) on each side of the new shell stitch, 4 v-stitches total . The next row, for each v-stitch pair: 2 dc in first v-stitch, ch1, 2dc in next v-stitch. The row after that: a normal shell in each ch-1 space. It worked perfectly: no bunching, and no gaping holes in the lace pattern either.