Donington Dress

This is a top-down dress (or tunic) with a yoke pattern, using 3mm needles, worked backwards and forwards at the beginning then joined in the round. The sleeves are worked in the round with small circular or double pointed needles. The dress/tunic, is meant to be a reasonably loose fit, with short sleeves although because of its construction it is easy to customise by trying on until you are happy with the sleeve length (either short or longer). Two sizes are given for the dress/tunic, a medium size which will comfortably fit sizes 10 – 14 and a large size which will fit sizes 16– 24. The circumference at underarms is 40 inches for the medium size and 52 inches for the large size. As the lower part (around the stomach) is in mosaic stitch, it does have quite a stretch to it and it’s a very ‘forgiving’ pattern! However, depending on your height, you might find that you want to remove some of the mosaic panel repeats to ensure it is a comfortable fit if you are under 5’4”. One of the benefits of top-down knitting is that you can keep trying on the garment to ensure you get a fit that suits YOU rather than doing the generic pattern size(s). 

You will see that I have, at various points, shown decreases or increases that have not been given exact workings. I recommend you to look at Mimi Codd’s Knitulator on line. It is a terrific resource which has been offered to knitters for free. As I always like my patterns to include something that knitters might find useful as a technique or resource, I thoroughly recommend this particular online resource.

The sample shown was knit in Wool is the Answer 4 ply yarn (100 gms = 400 metres, 75% super wash merino and 25% nylon. You will need 4 100 gm skeins of the main colour and one 100 gm skein of CC for the medium size and 5 100 gm skeins of main colour and 1 100gm skein of CC for the larger size. If you wish to put in contrast colours as per the skirt shown on front of pattern, you will need 2 skeins of 20 gm for CC2 and 1 skein of 20gm for CC1.