Once again it's time for the Pattern Review Sewing Bee. This year they have moved it to January February so it's been a good 16 months since the last one. Just enough time to get over the angst of the last one!
The Bee began on Jan 12th and at 9am I was eagerly awaiting the announcement of the first round - and as usual with these contest my first thought when I read the brief was Noooooo! I hate the colour Coral.
But then I read on in the second paragraph it said" Before you start hunting down coral fabric for your cardi, stop for a minute and think of what feeling it invokes in you when you first look at that color or read its description." OK ...I can do this....so what do I think of when I hear Living Coral - for me it's definitely the Great Barrier Reef in Norther Queensland. We went there a couple of times as I was growing up. The first time I was just able to snorkel on the reef and that was a really cool experience but then the second and third times I was able to go down on a scuba dive and that was a truly fantastic experience. I loved being down under the water seeing all the fish and the coral....but I also remember thinking that it wasn't actually as vibrant as I had imagined from seeing photos. The deeper you dive down the less light there is and the more muted the colours become. It's still fantastic, but not as bright. So when I think of a reef I think not only of the bright colours that you normally associate with coral, but also more muted grey blues.
Now to the fabric stash to see what I had....Not a lot - in fact I didn't have a lot of knit fabrics in a cardigan weight at all. A couple of knit fleeces but that was it. Ok to the fabric store it is....Unfortunately I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for there either. I tried a number of different stores in order of likelihood they would have something. Once I hit the last store still having found nothing I knew that I had to but something here or I'd get nothing!
I was really hoping for something in a blue grey colourway to match the water colour at depth but they really didn't have anything. They had a couple of fabrics in the actual coral colour but they weren't that inspiring, but then right at the back of a bunch of rolls standing up I say a knit fabric that was listed as Neoprene......that scuba diving suit material. It was in a dull grey colour but something about the idea of using a neoprene fabric for a coral challenge just seemed right to me.
I took a closer look at the fabric and realised that it's not actually a really neoprene fabric. Neoprene is a rubber material that is coated on one or both side with a knit fabric. This was technically a scuba knit fabric, two layers of knit fabric with the back side a very fine knit that resembles the hand of the real neoprene. Perfect that way there is no question about whether it is really a knit material or not.
So I now had my main material, but it was a bit boring really. I needed something to brighten it up a bit. I took another look at the sweater knit fabrics and noticed one that was a boucle type material - white with stripes of pink, purple and orange through it - from a distance it really did read coral - even the texture seemed about right so I decided to go with that with the plan of using it in one of the panels of the cardigan.
Once I got home with my fabric it was time to come up with a final design. I had the idea in my head that I would colour block the coral on the front.
But when I put the two actual fabrics together I had a feeling that it just wasn't going to work.
So I came up with the idea of making the entire cardigan out of the grey and then using the coral colour to make actual coral appliques to go over the top.
As far as patterns go I decided to try and create a cardigan based on my basic raglan knit T shirt pattern. This pattern has side seams that angle from just behind the arm hole forward which creates a really nice swing to the Tshirt. But I knew I couldn't use the pattern as is - it's a bit tight through the shoulders even for a Tshirt.
I had just made myself a moulage using Suzy Furriers craftsy courses so I started with that made it into a raglan sleeve then used the basic shape of my knit pattern to get the shape I wanted from the armhole down. I also used some sizing off my Burda bomber jacket pattern especially to make sure my arm hole and sleeve were wide enough to go over other clothes.
I wanted this to be a long cardigan but the requirements for the Bee specified that the cardigan had to be between hip and knee length so I kept it to knee length. I cut my pattern down the front and added front button bands extending into the neckband. Once I had my pattern figured out I made a muslin out of old upholstery material. I had to do quite a bit of tweaking to the raglan seams before I could get them sitting OK and something about the sleeves didn't work - I tried to add an elbow dart into the sleeve and I think something went wrong as the sleeve never did sit right.
After playing with my muslin for a day or two I finally had to say close enough and start with the real thing. It went together quite easily - Well except for the serging of the seams around the pocket. My serger did not like trying to go through three layers of this thick scuba material. I finally managed to get it to work by trimming away most of the inside seam allowance, but it still didn't end up pretty. Still I managed to get the front and neck bands on neatly with nice topstitching so most of the inside looks pretty good.
I pinned my buttons in place once the coat was constructed and was less than enthused. By buttoning this coat up it ended up making it look really frumpy. I tried many different button scenerios and finally come up with the idea of putting two buttons opposite each other over the bust and linking them together with a piece of elastic - a basic frog. This looked much better.
Now I just needed embellishments. I st down at the computer and started researching images of staghorn coral. I started trying to copy some imaged but soon gave up and just started free hand drawing in stalks of coral. and This is how I went about cutting out the coral too. Just cut it all free hand and pinned it in place where ever it felt like it would go best.. I quite like the way the coral grew on my coat. I put a pocket of coral over each pocket in the front and then a big out cropping at the lower edge of the back extending up to just above halfway.
Each piece of coral was hand stitched on which was really painful - especially as this fabric frayed like crazy but I finally got it all stitched on, all the stray threads trimmed off and put on my coat.....
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| Coral Pinned in place ready to be hand stitched. |
It still wasn't there. It was the dull grey colour that was bothering me. I needed to be blue. That's when I remembered a pack of fabric spray paints that I've had sitting in my laundry room for quite some time. I went and checked them and yep there were two cans of different coloured blues in there. I did a couple of tests of what the paint looked like on the grey fabric (there is still blue spray paint on my kitchen table) and decided to go for it. But...I didn't want to get the paint on my coral...what could I do. Why didn't I think of this before I stitched all the coral on?
Oh well I have to do something I grabbed an old bathrobe and started cutting up strips of coral to go over my real coral. It took forever to pin all the pieces in place and even then I didn't get everything covered perfectly, but it was good enough so I took my cardigan outside very gently and started spraying. I didn't have much paint, just two small cans but I got an Ok coverage. It was a bit patchy, but I figured it's just like the patched of light filtering down through the ocean to light up the coral!
This is much better. I'd like to do more blue, maybe one day I'll be inspired to cover up all my coral again and repaint it, but for now we just have some dappled light.
Then came a couple of days of waiting - and reading about other coral cardigans before I could find out.. Did I get through? stay tuned!
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