question to the knitters. re: guage and garment size

i'm knitting CORALINE for my grandmother.

i will be making three modifications to the sweater: i'll be adding a button band the full length of the front, i'll be adding pockets, and i'll have the sleeves match the waist hem. ok, all fine and good.

the thing is that i tend to knit a bit loose, so to get the right guage i have to knit with a much smaller needle.

i created a swatch, and it looked and measured just fine. now that i'm knitting, the sweater is too big (i'm about four inches into the sweater). once i block this, it will be huge!

what would you do?
knit the sweater on smaller needles or knit a smaller size of the sweater?

Re: question to the knitters. re: guage and garment size

I would use smaller needles. If you knit a smaller size your "loops" will still be loose and the sweater is less likely to hold the shape of the pattern. The pattern should be configured to be XX number of stitches to the inch and you need to match that number of stitches per inch, no matter what size needles you use to get there.