lightning tee

The Madeira Vandyke Lace stitch pattern immediately caught my interest as soon as I saw it in the wonderfully useful Up, Down, All-Around Stitch Dictionary by Wendy Bernard. No doubt because it looks a lot like lightning bolts to me, which brings to mind those unpredictable thunder and lightning storms that occur frequently around this time of year. Perfect for a summer tee. This was knitted from the bottom up, in the round up to the underarms. Then the front and back were knitted flat and joined together with a three needle bind-off. 1x1 ribbing was used for the bottom hem, neck and arm openings. Waist shaping was not necessary due to the nature of the stitch pattern. I knitted this with about 3 inches of positive ease, out of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, an 80% cotton/20% merino blend. The color is a vibrant blue which is so hard to capture in photos but is one of my favorite shades of blue. It would be very easy and fun to adapt this basic tee formula for other stitch patterns in the book. All that is needed is a good gauge swatch and a little basic math. I really ♡  how this turned out. ⚡⚡⚡