dissect that...

swatch! Look at the cast-on first. The chain cast-on, double-stranded, alone, can be a tough one to knit over and when you have a somewhat soft yarn like this, expecting it to knit over those picot knots…hum-m-mm. (Tip: if the yarn breaks easily when you yank it between your fingers, it will likely break when there's extra pressure when knitting across the row.) Sometimes it will work but when you’ve invested the time in doing something fancy like this over the whole 200 needles wide who can afford to have the yarn break on the first row? It pays to knit it manually rather than hoping you can fix the broken yarn scenario because the yarn break may not actually release until the 4th or 5th row and then you’ve really invested some time that you can’t get back. Just saying…
20 stitch repeat, right? Place the picot knot away from the end needles, centring the pattern/picot knot at #11 right instead of #1 right and remember to flip (#11 left instead of #1 left) that in the layout of the second piece so it matches better at the side seams. Both sides won’t be perfect on 200 needles wide because you’ll be one stitch short, but it’s not worth making it 9 stitches less wide.
In the swatch, I experimented a bit with that garter stitch ridge – did one as the tuck rib like in Hodgepodge but I thought, over the 20-st repeat, there are less garter stitches to reform across the row than in the 12-st one and if you can’t go the extra mile for something for yourself when will you? I really liked the extra definition that the garter stitch added – maybe just the colour difference makes it show up better? When I was making the second piece/Front, I remembered something!

I had a seed stitch tool - would it work for garter stitch ridges so I could save some pain? I knew I had a standard gauge one somewhere… the jury’s still out on that issue, but it did work!
Back to the swatch, used two different stitch patterns just to see if the width changed greatly with more tucks per row – 2.4 sts to 10 cm as opposed to 2.5 sts on the one with less tucks – not really a factor and the row gauge was the same on both swatches.
P.S. The mid gauge seed stitch tool is great, it’s worth having! Tell Lea-Ann I said hi!
P.P.S. When you have two cones, you don't have to worry about measuring out a certain amount and doubling that over - you can just use 1 strand from each cone! Breakthrough of the century! ;)!!