(30) Days of Sundresses Knit Yoke Dress with Free Pattern

Hey y’all – today I’m sharing a free knitting pattern for this knit yoke dress.

So – we had some difficulties getting these photos. We were vacationing in Puerto Rico, and I brought along some outfits I wanted to make sure to photograph when I had great scenery available to me.

The plan was to photograph this dress on the beach by our hotel. We had spent the day walking around and I was hot and sweaty, but the Coach and the kids were game to take photos, so I smeared on some makeup and we headed for the beach.

Where my lens immediately fogged up.

You see, when you take a camera from an air conditioned room where it has spent the day to a very hot and humid beach, condensation happens. And it takes a while to go away. After waiting for quite while to try to get photos that weren’t awful, we gave up and headed inside to wash off the sweat and sunscreen.

And in our room, the lens unfogged. So in order to get something on camera, I quickly stepped onto our balcony and the Coach started shooting photos – so those are the ones with the railing.

But LUCKILY I threw this dress in the car when we spent a day driving around the island, and right before sunset and beach closing we did manage a couple shots on the path to a very hidden beach we visited. But let me just say- it’s probably a good thing photos don’t transmit smell, ha!

So the moral of this story is: if you’re going to be taking beach pictures, get your camera outside (even if it’s outside in its bag) at least an hour before so it can get acclimated. Or in the case of the second set of photos, let the camera ride in a hot car trunk all day.

I knitted the yoke for this dress out of crochet thread. My original intent was to crochet it, but after crocheting one flower out of the thread I had a hand cramp that wouldn’t go away, so I switched to my needles. Scroll below the next image for the yoke knitting instructions.

The dress was made following the same tutorial that I shared for my Pillowcase Dress. The only difference is that I gathered my fabric before attaching the neckline bias tape pieces. I used short pieces of bias tape to hold the gathers in place, then stitched the knitted yoke to the dress along the front and back neckline.

The fabric is Praline Honey voile by Art Gallery Fabrics.

Knit Yoke Pattern

Note – this is an advanced knitting pattern. If you’re unfamiliar with standard knitting abbreviations or knitting from lace charts, you should probably skip this one for now or be prepared to google a lot – there’s not much knitting help on my site. This is a good list of knitting abbreviations to start with.

Materials:

Size 0 20″ Circular Knitting Needles. I like these Addi Turbo ones (affiliate link)
Cotton Crochet Thread. I used this kind (affiliate link)

Cast on 442 stitches using the long tail cast on method. Place marker and join round.

Scallop Edge Stitch
Round 1: K
Round 2: K2 *K1, slide st back to left hand needle, slide next 8 sts over this st, YO twice, then K this st again, K2. Repeat from * until marker, 202 stitches on needles
Round 3: *K2tog, drop first YO, (K1,P1,K1,P1) all in second YO, K1. Repeat from * to marker.
Round 4: Knit

Check that you have 240 stitches on needles; if not, work increases or decreases as needed in Round 4. To increase knit through the front and back loop of a stitch; to decrease knit 2 together.

Lace Pattern
Follow the lace chart below for the lace pattern; this is knit for 2 inches. I’ve added written instructions to the side of the chart, but note that sometimes around the marker you may have to refer to the chart instead of the written instructions to continue in pattern.

After knitting in pattern for 2 inches end with row 6, then work the final row of lace as follows: YO, (Sl1, K2tog, PSSO), YO, (Sl1, K2tog, PSSO). This will reduce your number of stitches to 160 stitches.

Picot Bind Off
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch. Then bind off as follows:
*BO 3 sts, transfer last stitch back to left needle. (K through stitch, return new stitch to left needle) 4 times, creating a small chain. Repeat from * until all sts are cast off. You will end by binding a chain stitch to the last stitch remaining on the left needle.

Block the yoke so that the scalloped edge is outermost and the picot bound off edge is innermost.