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.