No - this cardigan has nothing to do with a gold ring. Precious comes from the fabric being used. There is always a lot of talk in sewing circles around precious fabric - what is it - when do you use it. For me - this fabric meets the requirements for precious in more than one way.
First - it was bought whilst on holidays (vacation). I purchased it last July when I was back in Australia so plenty of good memories to go with it.
Second - the purchase comes with extra special memories - in this case it was the last time that I went shopping with my Mum. I needed to go to the RTA and that meant a trip to the big mall - Miranda Fair. I asked Mum to come with me thinking we could have some time after our errands to browse. Amazingly, I was in and out of the RTA within 10 minutes - Its a miracle. So of course we headed next door to Lincraft. Now I haven't had much success with finding good fabric in Lincraft for many many many years but as if I'm going to pass up the opportunity of browsing fabric of any kind. So Mum and I went in and wandered around. And amazingly I found a fantastic fabric. Its a stretchy velour fabric that feels super soft and squishy - I find a lot of time the velours feel great from the outside, but the inside tends to be scratchy or cold - not this one though - it was super soft inside and out. And it came in this beautiful flower/leaf print fabric. It's not really my usual colour palate - more red and yellow and navy - none of which feature heavily in my wardrobe, but I knew I wanted it anyway. Mind you it was not cheap - nothing ever is in Lincraft - so I only got 2 meters rather than the 3 I would normally buy if I didn't know what I wanted to make out of it.
Third - it was expensive. Precious fabric doesn't have to be expensive, but I do find that most of my expensive fabrics are precious - does that make sense! It means I don't just want to cut into it for any old project.
Fourth - it sat in my stash for over a year until I finally figured out what it was going to become.
When I first bought the fabric I was thinking winter dress - maybe a kielo? maybe magnolia? but really how often do I wear winter dresses? - I hate wearing leggings which really limits the amount of dresses I can wear when it's cold. I thought about just making a simple shirt, but then I usually just cover most of my shirts with jumpers/sweaters so you never see them. And so the fabric just sat there - waiting. Until finally I had an epiphany. Obviously it needs to be a cardigan - a long cardigan. That would then mean its a focal point when worn and it will get worn lots, plus it'll brighten up those cold winter days - win all around.
So I finally had a plan for my precious fabric - but what pattern to use? I have a couple of cardigan patterns but none of them were quite what I was looking for so it was back to the drafting board for me. I started with McCalls 7478 - a 50s style swing coat pattern and through many modifications to the muslin turned out looking nothing like that pattern. I've done a full write up of the pattern and modifications on my post about the muslin.
Once I had my pattern sorted, it was time to cut out my real fabric. I was terrified that I wasn't going to have enough fabric. I don't think that the fabric has a nap - but with a velour fabric I wasn't going to take any chances and cut any of the pieces upside down which means each of the 4 main pattern pieces had to fit side by side on my fabric (It wasn't long enough to get more than 1 piece out of the length). Thankfully it was super wide fabric so I just lined the bottom flared edges of the pattern pieces up side by side - I had to take just a smidge of the flare out of the back princess seams to get them all to fit but I don't think that was much of a problem.
To get enough fabric to cut the center front pieces a second time as a facing I did have to add a seam in about 3/4 of the way down the panel.
I basted my fabric together and tried it on and loved it - but there was a little niggle at the back of my mind as to whether it would be warm enough as it was. The problem was that the day after I cut it out and basted it together we got a second wave of summer - the temperature shot up again and cardigans were not necessary. I knew that if I made a decision then I'd probably say yes it's warm enough, but then when the weather turned cold again I'd never wear it. So I decided to set it aside until the weather turned again and I could try it out in the cold and make a decision.
I went on and sewed another couple of garments and the weather remained warm - it wasn't till over a month later that I felt like I could finally make the decision - and after trying it on again I decided yep - I really did want some extra warmth.
Now what fabric to use as lining. I started off with the sleeves as that is where I feel the cold the most. I knew exactly what fabric I wanted to cut the sleeve lining out of. The remnants of the really thick cuddle fleece that I used for this sweater - probably the warmest snuggliest sweater I own.
I already had the center front section cut out of the main fabric as the facing so I just needed fabric for the side front, side back and center back pattern pieces. I scoured my stash for any other fabrics with a similar stretch and drape and was really only able to find one fabric with enough yardage - a brushed sweater knit that was grey on the back side and light blue with flowers printed on the front. But I really didn't want to waste that fabric on a lining! Plus it really didn't match.
Then I had a thought - I still had a small piece of my main fabric left over - was there enough to at least get the side fronts cut out too? I found that If I were to cut the pieces on the cross grain - yes I did. Thankfully the fabric has 4 way stretch so that wouldn't cause any issues and I didn't have to worry about the nap since it would be on the inside. That meant that I only needed a small amount of fabric for the back pieces and I had a small piece of purple stretchy sweater fleece fabric in my remnants pile that would do the job. Now we were getting somewhere!
The last step before the final construction was pockets - I had just enough scraps of fabric left to cut out my pockets which I then lined with a stable navy knit from my scraps drawer.
Construction was straight forward - I put together the main body sewing each seam on the machine and then finishing it on the serger. I then put the entire lining together in exactly the same way. I knew I had to do something different to the muslin with regards to the interfacing so this time I cut the interfacing to only sit around the neckband and extend out to the front dart. I did this on both the main pieces and the lining for extra support. I then added a strip of interfacing down the center front of the lining pieces to provide the support required for the buttons.
I sewed the lining and the main cardigan together up the front edges and around the neckline and then bagged the lower hem edge and top stitched around the front edges. To attach the sleeve lining to the main body I hand stitched the thick lining material directly to the cuff seam.
I spent quite a bit of time with my button box trying to decide what to use in the way of colsures - I realised that I didn't want to overlap the front edges of this cardigan so that eliminated normal buttons and button holes. I thought about adding ties at the bust line, but didn't like that. In the end I decided on using some small black velvet buttons and lining up three buttons on each side of the coat and using thin black elastic to link the buttons together.
I love my new cardigan - it's super snuggly, to the point where some days its too warm - though I'm sure that wont last long.
There is only one thing that I would change if I were to make this pattern again and that is to remove, or at least lower, the notch in the collar.
When I applied the interfacing to the neck band pieces I didn't bother cutting out the notch and when I basted the lining in and tried on my half finished cardigan I really loved the way collar sat. Once the notch was added back in (unfortunately I had already cut the main fabric with the notch so I had to add it) the neckline, whilst having more visual interest doesn't sit a nicely as it could.
This turned out great and it looks really nice on you! I can see why you fell for the fabric too. Great job!
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