Sweater Continued -- Making the front & back

Front of Sweater

So I was given one pattern piece for the front and the back. I found it very funny that (starting at the bottom) the sleeve was wider than the sweater.  Again I had to go with a trial and error type pattern design (that I'm designing to create the sweater she drew).  So every so often I had to take the stitches off of the needles and place it (stretch it out) over the paper pattern to make sure it fit.  Then I did some more equations and problem solving to use the right stitches, increases, decreases, etc.  Starting at the bottom it was pretty square shaped for awhile, until I started getting towards the armholes and neckline.  One side needed to be decreased for the armhole minimally, while the other side had to have dramatic work, because the neckline is a swoop/half cowl.   So I decreased drastically repeatedly on one side and then stop and continue for awhile to make it up to the one shoulder. Luckily I wrote it all down as I went (in my version of pattern writing, since Ive never done one).  And because the back of the sweater is identical, all i had to do was the reverse.  But unlike the sleeves were I could copy the pattern I wrote identically, I had to reverse the pattern I wrote for the back because it was opposite.  Boy was that fun, but I figured it out. Go me! I do rock if I say so myself.

waistband

Eventually the designer had time to meet with me.  And I brought all the pieces with me (2 sleeves w/cuffs and front and back).  She fell in love immediatly.  That gave me a great feeling (I know my knitting is great, but i completely designed this, and somebody else truely adored it).  I brought up the fact that maybe we could add a waistband (like the cuffs).  And she loved the idea.  That brought up a bit of a dilemma because unlike the sleeves, the front and back had an odd number of stitches at the base.  There were 15.  Well you cant make a ribbing with an uneven number.  So as I picked up the stitches at the base of the sweater, I kinda had to pick up (create) an extra stitch.  But once I figured it out and made sure that I picked up the stitches on the right side (so you couldnt see them) it went quickly and I had JUST enough yarn. 

I did come across one dilemma while adding the waistband.  When you castoff (finish your knitting/get to last row) the method used, is tight and doesnt allow for any stretch.  Well, if I expected a model to get this roomy chunky sweater over her bust, I would need some give.  I finally came up with the solution.  Even though I used size 17 needles on the ribbed waistband, when I got to the last row to castoff, I used a size 50 needle (the ones I used for the main sweater).  So it wasnt as tight. Yah me.

Close-up of ribbed waisteband