New Design: St. Petersburg Coat

From Caron International Yarns:

Color is magical. It can set a mood, brighten a day, send a message. Color plus yarn is even more magical, as demonstrated in Kim Guzman’s stellar St. Petersburg Coat. Just by holding three different colors of merino-blend Country yarn together in the single-crocheted body of this coat, Kim has created a unique fabric that is both sophisticated and fashionable. It’s almost as if Kim created her own “marled” yarn just by combining three coordinating colors. Then for the perfect finishing touch, Kim used just one of the three colors to create the generous shawl collar. It’s magic!

Based on the emails I have received, many of you may have already noticed that I have a new design on the NaturallyCaron website. This design is made using three colors of NaturallyCaron Country, a merino wool blend.

This coat is a wonderful example of what can be done only with single crochet. As difficult as it is to imagine, I used single crochet throughout. The key factor in designing with single crochet is that you can place your hook in different locations of a stitch and get a completely different look.

You can’t see very much of the collar, but it really is my favorite part of this garment. I love the way the texture flows into a pattern, growing with the collar as it grows and extends around the neck.

The body of the coat is made up of three strands of yarn held together. An N hook is used, making this coat stitch up a lot faster than one may think. But, it is quite heavy and thick. For this reason, I intentionally only provided three sizes. There are physics involved in designing a coat like this. Due to its weight, I used physics and algebra to determine how far the coat would “grow” when worn so that I could size the sleeves. I was unwilling to continue my theories into the larger sizes because I was unsure just how far it would grow without stitching it up. Who knew that physics would be so necessary when designing in crochet?

Brianna really likes the coat. But she actually likes it best without sleeves. So, that’s a thought should anyone want an alternate style.