Two frills or not two frills

That is the question.

So in my last post I said that I had finished one out of four frills for the bottom of Butterfly. And according to the directions this is correct. They have an inner frill and an outer frill on the dress version (just a single frill on the cami version). The only difference is that their inner frill is made of a different color of KSH. If you look at their pic of Butterfly the frill doesn’t really look like it’s two layers. But if you look closely you can see that it is indeed doubled.

My question is that if I am going to knit a double frill on the bottom of the dress but in the same dark shade of blue will the design on the frill get lost?

I give you Exhibit A.

This is the frill by itself (unblocked). You can clearly see the design in it.

I give you Exhibit B.

This is the frill doubled (again unblocked). Is the design lost?

Would blocking it make a big difference in being able to discern the design in the double frill? Actually, it just may…

I give you Exhibit C. Go here and see Eunny’s Butterfly (scroll down the page). If you look closely at her blocking pictures (especially the close-up one of the frill area that was posted on Aug. 31, 2005) you will see that she did the double frill as the pattern indicated. The only way I could tell was that I could see the doubled waste yarn segments on the end. Looking at her final dress, I think it looks very good and the way she blocked the frills, you can hardly tell that they are doubled.

I give you Exhibit D. Go here and see Veronique’s Butterfly. She did not do the double frill at the bottom and I think hers looks great as well! The frill design is very clear.

I have flip flopped so many times over this whole frill thing. On the one hand, just doing one frill means less frill knitting and more dress action! On the other hand, I think the double frill will add a bit of weight to the bottom of the dress and after seeing Eunny’s Butterfly it seems that I could block the frills so that the design is still apparent.

Right now I’m leaning towards doing the double frill at the bottom like the pattern says (does that make me a masochist?).

Any thoughts?