The Skill Building article is about the mattress stitch seaming technique. The Not Intarsia (Link) sweater in the Winter issue provided plenty of chances to try out the mattress stitch, but I thought the boys deserved sweaters of their own.

I’ve always loved the simple graphic design of nautical flags, and I chose the flag for the letter “O” for this design. I knew I would use Hikoo Sueno for the sweater, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to select the traditional (very bright) colors for this flag. I went for a more muted palette. (If you do want the traditional colors, I suggest Lemon and Cherry Pie.)

The challenge in this design was to determine how often to work the decreases to get the diagonal line I wanted. Working them every RS row would make the sweater too short, and working them every other RS row would make the sweater way too long. After several swatches, I determined the best placement was to work two decrease rows and then a plain row. The practical impact of this rate is that decreases are also worked on the WS. Since I wanted the pieces to slant to the left, that means I would be using ssk and ssp decreases. The Skill Building series has covered both of these techniques.