Button Cowl Shirt

 First up I just want to say that I love this shirt so much, the fabric, the fit, the design everything.

The idea for this shirt probably had its conception in the blog post from Cashmerette on doing a patchwork sweater hack.  I loved the way they had used a patchwork of leftovers to make a stunning new garment.  I've done this before - my Birthday Isolation sweater  was the latest - and I loved the finished product - so I figured I'd try it again.  I had a rummage through the set of drawers I have of offcuts - All those pieces of fabric that I have that are left over at the end of a project - they are not quite big enough for another project, but not small enough to throw out and found all my sweater knit type materials.  Then I played around with combinations of different fabrics to see what went together.

 I found this zebra print with blue highlights - left over from my Keilo dress.  Also this blue with black geometric designs sweater knit that I used for leggings.  I thought that these would go nicely together, but needed something else to make it cohesive - plus I needed more fabric so I pulled out a left over piece of black knit fabric as well.  This fabric is not a sweater knit, but the weight was about right to go with the other two pieces.  I have no idea what I used the rest of this material on - but it's all gone now.

Now that I had three coordinating fabrics I had to figure out how to put them together.  I sat down with some coloured pencils and my croquis to try and figure it out.  During this time This post from Shwin & Shwin popped up in my bloglovin' feed.  It's a tutorial for a button cowl neck that can be applied to really any raglan pattern.  It looked very similar to the Cashmerette Tobin sweater that I've been wanting to make ever since the pattern was released. I decided I would give it a go.  What I really like about his design is the angle on that collar.  I decided to play that up and place my different fabrics on a diagonal.

Since this design uses a raglan sleeve pattern I started with  my basic raglan sleeve T shirt pattern that I used most recently here.    I traced the pattern pieces out again, this time removing the fold and creating full pattern pieces for front and back.  I then did a little modification to straighten up the side seams a bit -  I removed 1" of the width of the pattern on each side at the back and moved it to the front pattern piece. I also turned it back into a crew neck rather than a V neck   Once I had my pattern drawn up I started sketching in some diagonals - I settled on rectangles 6.5" wide x 9" long and drew them onto my pattern.  I was originally just going to cut the rectangles and make the fabric then cut the pattern pieces out of the fabric, but when I went back and looked at my offcuts I realised I didn't have enough fabric to do that.  So instead I drew in my lines on my pattern and cut the pattern up.  This meant there were a bunch of smaller pattern pieces that I could squish in .

I tried to keep the grain of the fabric going the right direction for each piece - and for the zebra print and black fabrics that was fine, but I really only had small scraps of the blue and black and it took some real finagling to get all my pieces cut out and I had to totally ignore the grain.  In the end I had to resort to cutting my sleeve piece in half and piecing it back together to get them all cut out - oh well a few more seams isn't going to hurt this project.

Once I had all my little pieces cut out I started putting them all together.  Each seam was basted on the sewing machine then finished on the serger.  I made the front, back and sleeves and basted the shirt together and then it was time to figure out the collar.  

I measured my neckline 24.5" and then had to decide how tall I wanted my cowl.  I knew I wanted it pretty big and randomly chose 10".  I then had to find enough fabric to cut out strips of 10" tall fabric.  I didn't worry about keeping them all the same width, just cut them as large as I could.  Again I had to piece together small pieces of the blue/black as most of my scraps were triangles by this stage, but I finally managed to get enough strips to alternate black, patterned, black, patterned, across both the inside and outside of the cowl.  

I sewed all my strips together, added 1.25" strips of interfacing at the front and back edges of  both the inside and outside, then sewed the inside and outside together down both sides and across the top and turned it right side out. 

Next up was the placket.  I was all out of blue and the zebra is a much more drapey fabric, so I decided to use the black fabric for the placket.  based on the tutorial I needed a strip 4" wide for the placket and 2" wide for the facing.  The length was determined based on the longest scrap I could find that was 4" wide - it ended up 4.5" long.

 

The tutorial walked through how to add the facing and placket and I followed that without any issues, same for adding the collar.  I used wonder tape when it came to top stitching the underside of the collar down just to make life a little easier. 

I then added snaps to close the placket - I decided on the plain black snaps and put them 1.5" apart right along the placket and up the edge of the collar.

       

Then I just needed to finish the sleeves and bottom.  I decided to use a plain black ribbing I have in stash - an easy and neat finish. 

I tried my new shirt/sweater on and instantly loved it....but there was just one minor issue.  With the big cowl/collar my chest and neck were nice and warm, but my arms - not so much.  I always seem to feel the cold most in my arms. So I decided to try and line the sleeves.  I went back to my fabric off cuts drawer and found a fabric that really didn't match with the rest of my stash.  A sweater knit in shades on pink and brown.  I figured that it was going to be hard to make anything else out of that and decided it would make a perfect lining.  I stuck my pattern pieces back together and had just enough fabric to get two sleeves cut out - assuming I could ignore the grainline again - oh well.  To attach them I sewed up the length of the sleeve, then attached it around the cuff,  I sandwiched the cuff between the main sleeve and the lining and sewed it together so that when the lining was turned back the seam was all nicely covered.

 

I pulled the sleeve up the inside and then turned under and hand stitched the raglan seams to the seam allowance of the main shirt.  This makes it really neat inside.

And NOW I had a fantastic shirt.  I love the colours and the placement of the fabrics. I love the cowl. and I love that it's warm and snuggly.

The one and only issue that I have is across the shoulders at the back.  It seems to be just a smidge too snug across the shoulders - you can see some drag lines in the photo below.  I think that it's got to do with the seam line at the top of the sleeve.  The seam reduces the amount of stretch in the fabric around the arm and it's just a touch too tight.

I'm pretty sure the rest of the wrinkles are just from contorting my arm around to point the remote at the camera - always a problem I have with back photos.

Now onto my next patchwork shirt - I have another three fabrics that will work together, but the sketch I've come up with is awfully 80's looking. I may have to rethink my fabric placement.

CrisscrossSho!odie

I really enjoy the contests on the Pattern Review Website - I like that it give me an incentive to sew, and also a push to sew better (sometimes I get  bit lazy with finishes etc - this reminds me to think about things like that) and to try new things.

Anyway I checked the contests a couple of weeks ago and saw  that there was a "Warm and Cosy" contest coming up.  This sounded like something right up my alley - I'm always up for warm and cosy - especially at this time of year. I read through the first post with all the rules etc and the contest manager had added a list of possible patterns that people had come up with and one of them was this pattern - the CrisscrossSHO!odie.  It's from a German pattern company SHO! and something about it really appealed to me.

After a bit of deliberating I decided to go ahead and buy the pattern.  Then I had to wait till the contest started on Oct 1st to start making it.

My original plan was to use a piece of sweater knit fabric I had in stash that is light blue with one side with flowers and grey on the back side - I thought I could make it reversible and that would be really cool, but when I went to lay out the pattern I had no where near enough fabric - that hood is a real fabric hog.  I contemplated contrasting sleeves, but couldn't find a fabric to match so went through the stash again to see what else I could come up with.  I found a piece of teal coloured french terry.   I must have bought a lot of it as I'd already used this fabric to make my Jasper dress, but there was almost enough fabric so I decided to go for it.  

This fabric has very little in the way of stretch, and since I was limited on fabric I decided to use a contrasting black ribbing for the cuffs and the bottom band. 

Now I needed to prep my pattern.  Based on the measurements given with the pattern and comparison with my basic sloper -  I cut the front of my pattern at a size 10 around the hood, shoulders and arm hole, extending the arm hole out to the size 16, then graded front the 16 out to an 18 at the waist/hips.  I had read that it was pretty cropped so I cut the length to the size 16.

For the back pattern piece I did something similar, a 10 arm hole extending out to a 16 under the arm and then grading from 16 to 18 along the side seams.  For the back shoulder I placed my basic sloper over the pattern and found that I really needed to change the shoulder angle and drew in the new shoulder line between the armhole and the neckline - the new shoulder line ended at the size 4 neckline so I followed that around the neck.  Again I cut the length to the size 16.

For the sleeves I cut the curve of the sleeve head to the size 10 extending it out to the size 16 and then used the width of the size 16 all the way down.  I wasn't sure how long I'd need the sleeves so just cut the pattern to the maximum length.

I laid my finished pattern pieces on my fabric but unfortunately my sleeve pattern was just slightly too big.   I decided to go ahead and just cut the sleeve out to the maximum length I could and then see from there.  It ended up about 2.5" shorter than the shortest length.  I held the sleeve up against my arm and decided that really it was probably long enough - I'd just add an extra wide cuff.

I cut the cuff 7.5" wide so that when it was turned in half and stitched in place it was 3.5" wide.  In the end the sleeve ended up a perfect length - It really does pay to be short sometimes.

I cut the waistband out to the size 18 as shown, but once I basted the whole thing together I just didn't love it.  The waistband was too narrow compared to my cuffs - and the whole hoodie was too long.  I cut 3" off the length of the hoodie (and in the process took the side seams back to a straight size 16), recut the waist band 6.5"wide so that the finished width was 3" and I was much happier.

With the black cuffs and waistband I thought about how I could go about lining the hood in black as well to make it all tie in - That would have meant almost fully lining the front piece so after a bit of thought I decided I may as well just line the entire thing in black and then I could make it reversible as well.  Unfortunately none of my piece of black fabric were big enough to line the entire thing so I ended up using a thin rayon knit for the front and back pieces and a slightly heavier (but still quite light) weight French terry for the sleeves.  So now I have three different shades of black on the inside - I'm not sure just how reversible it is any more, but at least it's definitely warm and cosy.

The final piece to the puzzle was pockets.  The basic pattern does not have pockets, but the instruction booklet has a section at the back with all sorts of variations on the pattern.  It included variations such as sleeveless, cardigan/Jacket, french seamed hood, enlarged waistband, pockets. 

Whilst most of these are quite useful, the pocket instructions are not very expansive. As taken straight from the instruction booklet. 

1. Draw a pattern piece for your seam pockets with preferred size. The blue line shows the side seam of the bodice (back or front)

OK - that's not really all that helpful. So that was a bust, back to the drawing board.  Whilst I could draft a side seam pocket like they suggested I wasn't sure how comfortable that would be - the side seams are pretty far back, it's not always comfortable to put your hand into side seam pockets.

And then a picture turned up in my Facebook feed.  It was the Hemlock Hoodie from Button and Bibs - it has these cool half moon pockets edged in ribbing - I thought they looked really cool and decided that I would try and give them a go.  I thought about trying to do reversible pockets so they could be accessed from both sides, but once I knew I was going to have to use two different fabrics inside I decided against it - So I just added them to the teal side.  

I think I made the cut out just a little bit too big, but otherwise I really like the way these turned out.

The only real issues is that the bottom front of this jumper is now really quite thick. There are 10 layers of fabric in that bottom seam where the pocket bags are secured....

When I went to put the whole thing together I sewed the two layers together around the front edge. To finish the sleeves I sewed both edges of the cuff to the teal fabric, then turned the black lining fabric under and top stitched it in place at the edge of the cuff.

At the bottom of the jacket I basted together all the layers of the front sections main teal fabric, two layers of pocket  - one teal one black and black lining and then overlapped the two sections.  I found if I took the lower corner right to the side seam as specified by the pattern there was quite a bit of pulling around the pockets so I moved the edges in by about 1" - 1.5"on either side. I then sewed one edge of the band around the bottom, turned up the bottom edge then folded the cuff in half and top stitched it in place for a neat finish inside.

Overall I'm quite happy with this jumper, its definitely warm and cosy, it's comfortable and yet slightly different to my usual style.  A great addition to my wardrobe.

Long line cardigan

This cardigan started off it's life as a muslin.  

I have some precious fabric that I'm finally getting around to using (hopefully up next on the blog) but since I ended up pretty much creating a whole new pattern for it I needed something to test it out on before I cut into my good fabric.  

I wanted to use something out of stash for my muslin since I'm not feeling very good about going to the fabric store at the moment since it's in a town with high covid rates and I hate fabric shopping online  and this was the only fabric that was similar in weight and stretch to my good fabric and so I sacrificed it. 

I created my pattern, basted it together, made all sorts of changes, took it apart and recut my pattern to match, then recut the pieces and sewed it all back together a second time just to make sure my pattern was right.  I think I did this three times before I was finally happy with the pattern, and once I was, I threw the muslin in the corner and forgot about it for a while.  

I made up my pattern with my good fabric - but then I came to a halt - the weather decided to turn warm just when I had to make a decision about whether to line my good cardi or not - and if so with what?  I didn't want to make that decision whilst it was warm though as I was worried that I would err on the side of cool and then regret it later when the weather changed and so I put it aside, waiting for the weather to turn again.  But what could I do in the meantime.  Well I still wanted to test how my stash interfacing worked with my knit fabric, as well as the pockets I had drafted for the cardigan before using it on the good fabric.  Why don't I go back and make a final version of the cardi using my muslin material?   

And so once again I took my pieces all apart and started again.

The length of my muslin pattern pieces was all over the place, some of them had ended up quite a bit shorter than the others somehow so I found the shortest, measured it against the actual pattern and found that it was a good 5.25" shorter than my pattern so I went through and recut all my pieces exactly to pattern, but 5.25" shorter.

I sewed it all together, finishing each seam with the serger.  I was lucky when it came to the front facing - I hadn't cut it out first time through and I really only had scraps left, but I managed to find one scrap big enough to cut out the facing out in two pieces.  I can live with one horizontal seam on the facing piece!  I ironed interfacing onto the wrong side of the facing to provided the necessary stiffness for the front panel and collar.  I was a bit worried about this, but it worked Ok in the end.  I top stitched along the front edge and the along the front princess seam  to hold the facing in place.  I had to go back later however and hand stitch the facing in place as the top stitching just looked terrible.  Thankfully I had topstitched with a 5mm length stitch so it was easy to remove.  Then I sat down in front of the TV and handstitched it down instead.  It's still a little puckered along that seam line, but I can live with it.

The bottom hem was double turned and top stitched and the sleeves were finished with a cuff.

That just left the closure. Should I do snaps as normal? a tie? or buttons?  In the end I decided on two silver star shaped buttons.  But now I had to make buttonholes. 

Now I know its probably more user error than anything else but I've never had much luck with machine button holes.  I made up a scrap of fabric with the same interfacing, nearby seam edges etc to test it......and failed.  The first one was atrocious, the second marginally better but I just wasn't happy with them and so I decided to try bound button holes.  I made 4 practice ones before I was willing to try it on the actual cardigan.

I only had to do two button holes thankfully, unfortunately one of them was over another seam which made it a bit harder, but thankfully they both worked out pretty well.  I had to use a few hand stitches to get one to sit flat, and then I hand stitched the covering at the back down and finally my cardigan is finished and I have to say I love it.

The back of the button holes is not perfect, but I decided I didn't really care too much.

I wanted to go back and talk a bit about the pattern.   This pattern began it's life as McCalls 7478 - view A.

So how did it end up like this?

Waist shaping -  First I removed all darts and just added and extra 1/4"shaping on each  princess seam (I mean why do you need darts if you have princess seams).  

Shoulders and chest - I had to take out a lot of width at the upper chest and upper back at the princess seams thus reducing the length of the shoulder by about 1.5 - 2" as well as doing a rounded back adjustment. 

Sleeves - I also  brought in the  underarm seam at the arm hole about 5/8" - the original pattern is for a coat and I was trying for cardigan so could reduce the armhole a bit.  I also reduced the width of the sleeve to match and lowered the sleeve cap so that there was minimal fitting to do to fit the sleeve in the sleeve hole.  I removed all the sleeve cuff length but then added a separate cuff on top of this so that I get that small poof at the bottom of the sleeve without having to do any slash and spread.

Pockets - I removed the original pockets from the front side pieces and created my own pockets which are a cross between patch pockets and a full width pocket panel.  The pockets are lined in a normal knit fabric, top stitched in place along the top and bottom and then incorporated into the side seam and front princess seams on the sides.

Flare - I took out all the flare on the front pattern piece and the center seam of the front side pattern piece and reduced the flare at the side seams and back seams by many inches to get just the flare I wanted. 

Collar - I was originally planning on keeping the collar as designed (It was why I chose this pattern to start with) but after making all the other changes I didn't like it any more - so I played around with it.  I reduced the width of the collar by half at the back of the neck and tapered it down to the centerline, then added a notch at the collar bone.  I extended the dart at the back neckline down towards the center line at the bust to make the collar more of a stand up collar.

Overall I'm quite happy with the finished cardigan.  The only thing I'm still not 100% on is the interfacing down the front, It seems to result in some puckering - I may need to find another solution.