Knit Leiden Tee by Natalie Selles

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

I started knitting myself the Leiden Tee last summer but just got around to finishing it last week! Obviously I love knitting, and warm weather is no excuse for me to put down my needles. According to my notes in Ravelry, I cast on last summer on 21 August 2019. However, I only finished half the top before winter arrived in Toronto and I switched to knitting woolly sweaters. Now summer has returned to Toronto and I finally finished my Leiden Tee!

The Leiden Tee is from Pom Pom Quarterly, Issue 25: Summer 2018, with stripes as the theme. It has a simple shape but has a beautiful, graphic, striped centre panel.

The top calls for Linen Soft by Scheepjes, which is a cotton-linen-acrylic blend DK yarn. I didn’t have that and I’d rather knit with something from my stash. In the end, I used Juniper Moon Farm Zooey, a blend that is 60% cotton and 40% linen. Overall, I used just over three skeins of Spring Green and half a skein of Toasted Coconut as the contrast. This is a lovely, summery yarn. I liked it so much that I used it to knit my Cascata Top last summer! If knitting a design like this, it’s best if you choose two colours whose values are high contrast. And here’s an added bonus: this yarn is also machine washable!

Originally I wanted to knit this tee because of its construction: a seamless, modular top. However, I didn’t realize that this meant it had a ton of ends to weave in! First, you work the striped centre panel from the bottom up. You knit some of the chevrons bottom up, and others sideways. Once the panel is done, you gradually knit the left and right sides onto the panel while shaping the neck and arms.

I used a three-needle bind off to join the front and back at the side seams for the first time. I love the look of the seam and the structure it gives to the top. The hems and necklines are finished with applied i-cord, which also gives structure and looks neat and tidy.

I didn’t want an oversize fit like the model in the photos, so I cast on a size 4 with a bust of 101.5 cm / 40″. I followed the pattern as written apart from adding a garter stripe repeat to both the neckline and the hemline. As my gauge is always loose, I used 2.5 mm needles instead of the suggested 3.5 mm ones.