Funnel neck shirt pattern

This top started with a trip down memory lane.  I was looking through my blog looking at old makes and came across this jumper from March 2017.  I really love the funnel neck on this and all the shaping around the back yoke but unfortunately this no longer fits me and has been handed on.

I decided I'd like to have another crack at this pattern, but this time just make it a basic sweater without the asymmetrical opening. I thought it might be fun to add a snap opening like this cowl neck shirt just to get it over my head.

So I reprinted the funnel neck pattern pieces that I needed from the Burda jacket,  and cut them out of some scrap fleece that I had lying around to try it out.   I then used my standard sweater pattern Simplicity 5133 to finish off the lower half, basted it all together and tried it on.

Now I remember why the original jumper didn't get worn much!  The funnel neck feels like it's choking me at the front.  After a bit of pondering on this issue, I realised that most of my fitting issues these days are around my neck/shoulder/arm scythe area.    I have that good old hunch back going these days which  affects the fit of the fit of everything in this region.   I did some work on this issue this summer with my gathered neck top  but I decided that it was about time that I created a new custom sloper as my original sloper fits my dummy beautifully, but does not always work on me.

Since I was trying for something specifically fitted to me I decided to forgo the normal sloper drafting methods where you measure your neckline, divide by 6, add 1/4" for the back and 3/8" for the front to get the width of your front and back neck, then use that number + 1/8" for the front neck rise and 1/3 of the length + 1/8" for the back neck rise..........it's all just a bit random.

What I did this time is take a washable marker and draw directly on my body all the lines you need to create a basic sloper.  I marked my centerline, my neckline, my bust point, my waistline, my shoulder seam, my arm scythe, my side seam etc. all right on my body.  I was then able to measure all those lines and transfer all those markings to a piece of paper to create a sloper.

Once I had something pretty close to what I thought was right I grabbed some scrap upholstery fabric I had lying around and transferred all my lines onto that - cut it with a lot of excess room around each seam, sewed up each of the seams and tried it on.  I was then able to finesse all the darts, shoulder seams etc to line up exactly where I wanted them. To get the bust and waist shaping I decided to keep the side seams vertical and  do all the shaping via an under bust dart and an arm hole dart.   For the back I ended up adding two darts to the back neckline to get it to fit nicely over my hunch back.

When I had all the seams fitted to my expectations I went ahead and carefully cut along each seam line (including all darts) leaving me with a no ease, no seam allowance pattern which I transferred back to my paper and I now have a good moulage.  

I drafted a sleeve to fit the resulting arm scythe and then cut and sewed a full moulage, with sleeve that I then fitted over my dress form and padded out.  You can definitely see, now that the moulage is on my dress form, how much difference there is between me and the dummies neck angle/placement.  My neck angles a lot further forward than hers. (You can see the previous moulage sticking out from underneath at the front - and the back neckline is coming way up the back of the neck on the dummy)

Now that I had a good moulage I could get to work drafting a new pattern for a funnel necked sweater.

I took my basic sloper and added ease and seam allowance. Since this was going to be a sweater,  I just ignored all the underbust shaping and  rotated the armhole dart around to the side seam.

Next - add in the design features - The original design that I was working off had a seam across the bust that the funnel shaping stopped at but that's not a design feature that I'm overly fond of. Whilst trying to figure out where on the bust to put the seam I decided that I actually just wanted to eliminate it.  Instead I redrew the front feature seams so that there were two each side - one ending in the arm scythe and one ending in the side seam.  I then rotated the bust dart that comes from the arm scythe again into a French dart matching the angle of the dart with the angle of the funnel seam.   

For the back pieces I split the dart on the back neckline into two and incorporated the seam lines into the two new darts.  I cut a muslin of the funnel seamed neckline pieces and sewed it together.  I then cut a straight band and sewed it around the neckline - I didn't add any extra seam allowance to the neckline seam which in effect moved the neck seam out 1/2".  I drew an extension of the funnel seams up onto the neckband, then cut everything apart again along the funnel seams to give pattern pieces for the full funnel neck.

And now I finally had a pattern.  I had a piece of fleece material in my stash that I had been wanting to make up and decided to use if for this project - it's probably not the best choice as it's such a wild print that the seam lines get totally lost, but it's a good test.

The main thing that I was worrying about was figuring out to to open and close the neckline  - however once I basted all my pieces together I tried it on and was able to get it over my head without any opening. I hadn't realised until this point that this fleece actually had quite a bit of stretch to it - I had assumed that it was non stretch like most fleeces. I decided that I'd just leave the neckline closed, however the stretch created other issues instead.  Mainly, I'd added too much ease to my pattern, so I took that all back out again and also modified my French dart to get better shaping. To finish off the neckline I recut the funnel neck pieces - cutting the front pieces off across the high bust line and sewed that as a facing inside the sweater.  I finished the bottom of the sweater with a 2.5" wide band and the sleeves with a simple turn under and stitch.  I stitched in the ditch along the back yoke seam to keep the neck facing in place, as well as around the top of the shoulder seam.

As I thought - the seaming is lost in the print, but I still love the way this turned out.

I did however want to try making this up in a plain fabric so that hopefully the seaming was more obvious and found a piece of sweater knit in my stash that I had forgotten about.  Its a boring colour - a denim blue, and not the snuggliest, but I thought it'd make a good test.

So after removing all the extra ease from the pattern I made it up again.  This time I skipped the bottom band and just turned the bottom under twice and top stitched, and I just used an 1.5" facing wide strip to finish the neckline, hand stitching it to each of the seams to keep the facing in place.

This shirt should make a good layering piece.  It's nothing exciting but I quite like it - the fit is good and I can wear the funnel neck without choking which is nice.

Sorry for the substandard photos - my good camera is having focusing issues, plus the tripod is broken so I've been taking these photos with my phone propped up on a window sill or whatever else I can find - not ideal but the best I can manage at the moment.

 

 

Year in Review 2020

It's that time of year again - time to review what I sewed this year, what worked and what didn't.

It turns out I made a total of 44 garments this year (well till the start of Dec - I'm not adding in the items I've made since I created this post - they can be counted next year).  This is just one shy of last years total of 45. But the distribution is slightly different this year.

Shirts came in as my number 1 sewn item this year with a total of 12 items sewn - followed by pants  with 7 items.

So lets see what I made.

Shirts:

We have a mixture here of well loved and never worn. 

The button up shirt in the top left corner I love the fit of, but it's just not a style I reach for on a daily basis.  I've worn it a few times but it's not one of my go to's.   The other three tops on the top row however are clear winners, these shirts get worn weekly in the winter.

Second row - the summer shirts.  The first and the last in this row are well worn and well loved.  The red orange got worn on rare occasions just because its really comfortable, but I don't love it. The camisole has never been worn.  A combination of not liking the small straps and only being able to wear it with one bra.

On the third row, the rayon short sleeve shirt is a contender for favourite make of the year.  I love the pattern, the fit and the fabric. The sho! hoodie is OK but the sleeves are very tight so I can't wear it over anything else (hence it's here in the shirts and not in the outerwear) It does get worn occasionally, but it's not a favourite.  The cowl neck shirt however is - this is a great shirt and is in constant rotation. Finally the second Cashmerette Harrison,  made for a purpose and worked great, but highly unlikely to be worn again anytime soon just because there are few occasions on which to wear it.

Pants:

This category has been pretty successful this year.  I've made 4 pairs of long pants and three pairs of shorts all of which get worn regularly.

The grey pants were made for the sewing bee and got worn a few times as is, but I decided I didn't love the cargo pocket.  It's always gaping open.  It would probably be fine if I ironed my pants, but that's a very rare occurrence, so I decided to just remove the big cargo pocket and, to even things out, the pocket on the other leg.  Since I've done that these pants have been great - though the solid waistband means I don't generally wear them for lounging around the house - they are more for outside. On the other hand, the flannel Calders are my go to lounging pants - I love everything about these but they don't generally leave the house. The slim legged black pants and the black Calders are fantastic all around and worn regularly.

The shorts are all based on my latest pattern and are all winners.  The sailor front shorts are a bit annoying with the pockets snapped shut but they still got worn regularly during summer.

Jumpsuits/Dress:

I made 2 jumpsuits and 1 dress this year.  The dress was well worn during summer and the teal jumpsuit has been worn quite a bit.  The red and black jumpsuit less so, but it does still get worn on occasion.

Outer Wear:

                      

The teal vinyl jacket is great in theory, but has never actually been worn. I just don't tend to wear lightweight jackets - I usually find a sweater or cardigan is more comfortable at the temperatures I would need this jacket.   The grey Jasper is great and gets worn a lot.  The teal cardigan has been a surprising hit - it's not the greatest piece of sewing but I did wear it quite a bit in the Autumn.  My favourite however is definitely the Precious cardigan - I think this gets garment of the year for me. 

Activewear: 

Only really one outfit in this category this year and that was from the sewing bee - Sports bra, shirt and leggings.  I really love all the pieces in this set and do wear them on the odd occasion when I exercise.  I did have to do one modification to the shirt, adding the black band to the bottom as shown in the bottom right photo as it was too short otherwise.

Knitting:

Lots of small knitting projects done this year - at least 5 pairs of socks ( the three pairs shown here and there are two more pairs that haven't made it to the blog) and one pair of mittens. In March I started knitting a sweater (bottom right corner). I haven't actually blogged the finished project yet, mainly cause I haven't actually worn it yet!  I also learnt how to do Brioche knitting this year and made the blue and green cowl above, and based on that I actually wrote my first knitting pattern.  I haven't done anything with it yet but here's a sneak peak.

Miscellaneous:

 

I'm still working on the perfect bra pattern - I'm pretty close now - just working on the best shape for the back piece. 

I only made one pair of shoes this year - not going outside much this year so haven't worn my shoes out as fast as I would normally.

The hat that I made didn't really get much use, not because I didn't love it, but because I loved it too much.  Most of this summer was spent in the pool in the backyard.  I wore a hat the entire time, but since I was in the pool and it kept getting wet I didn't want to wear my good hat, so just used a crappy old hat I had.  I'm glad I did as that hat is now destroyed and I still have the good one to wear once we are allowed back in public again!

I made two quilts this year.  The first was a fidget quilt for my Mum which was a definite success, the second a T Shirt quilt.  The front of the quilt is a collage of the front of the kids old T Shirts, the back is the backs of the T shirts with some hand embroidery on 4 of the squares.  There is a layer of fleece between the two and a poly ribbon to finish the edges.  This was only a marginal success.  It's not as warm as I was hoping for, and generally not as snuggly as I had hoped, so it gets used on occasion but it's not a raging success.

The final category in my pie chart is Others:

These are the garments that I made for other people this year.  These are mainly clothes for the kids as I didn't want to go out shopping.

The two jumpsuits I made for L were a hit and were worn quite a bit and the Valhalla red dress she loves.  She's never actually worn the yellow hedgehog shirt, but then she hasn't had the occasion to.  Same with J.  The camouflage jumper gets worn when he gets cold, but the blue and white button up shirt really hasn't been worn at all.

This year has been........interesting....yes that's a good word for it!   I've noticed that there have been a lot of discussions this year about clothing, what we sew and why we sew.  There are some who have lost their sewing inspiration since they have no where to wear new clothes due to Covid, and also a lot of people saying that they aren't wearing most of their clothes or getting dressed up since they are not going out and about in public.  I find this very interesting.  

Upon further introspection I've realised that I've actually been aiming for a quarantine wardrobe since I started sewing about 8 years ago.  My lifestyle is such that I don't need to get dressed up for the office - so I've never really made office wear.  I don't generally go out to parties so don't need party/going out clothes (though I have still made some of these just for the fun of it).  Most days (pre covid) I'd do a school run, go shopping, basic errands and appointments - maybe dinner at a local restaurant, but definitely quite a bit of time spent at home.  So I've always wanted and made clothes that are comfortable enough to wear lounging around the house, but nice enough to look good when I have to go out. 

In fact in the last couple of years I've made it a point to try and sew enough comfortable clothes that I can entirely get rid of those ugly old store bought sweats that I used to wear - and it's just about worked.  I think I need one or two more pairs of comfortable and warm pants for winter but otherwise my wardrobe is in good shape and this has allowed me to continue dressing exactly as I would normally throughout this trying time.

I've noticed however that my husband is definitely in the category of those wearing nothing but ugly sweats all the time now.  Maybe I need to turn my sewing skills to making him some better around the house clothes!

Zig Zag Knitted sweater

 Back in September I wrote an update on my knitting including the sweater that I was in the middle of - Well I finally finished said sweater.  

I started this project back in March.  I picked up this yarn at the closing down sale at one of my local yarn shops - Dee's Nimble Needles and Yarn.  I was browsing through what she had left and found this beautiful blue with green flecks alpaca yarn. It was classic Elite Inca Alpaca in colour 1146 -  But there were only 3 skeins left of it - not really enough to do anything with.  Then I found 2 skeins of the same yarn in the green colourway (1135),  1 skein of black (1113) and 4 skeins of Classic Elite Inca Marl in colour 1193 - a blue marled colour.  I decided to go ahead and buy them all and see if I could come up with something to make out of them.

I knew I wanted to make a sweater with the yarn so I browsed Ravelry looking for patterns that I could use with 4 or more colours.  Of course I couldn't find what I was looking for, so once again I turned to the drawing board - I decided to create my own pattern.  The first thing to do was knit a swatch to find my gauge, then I used that, and one of my basic sewing patterns to create a basic knitting pattern for a sweater. 

When I knew how many stitches and rows I was working with I then took some graph paper and drew out a pattern using all my different colours.  I decided to use the Marl yarn - which I had the most of as the back ground colour and then drew zig zags in all the other colours.

I wanted to make sure that I didn't have a lot of floats on the back of my work - mainly cause I only just had enough yarn by my calculations - I didn't have any to waste running in floats along the back of the fabric.  I didn't realise until I started knitting the front just how hard a job I had created for myself.  I was working with something like 15 different strands of yarn at any given time.

I created a device with a plastic container and a bunch of pegs to try and keep all my threads from getting tangled together but it wasn't easy.

The next problem occurred when I got about halfway up the front side and I realised that I was not going to have enough of the Marl yarn to finish the sweater.  In order to try and make it work I decided to add some solid sections of other colours to the top half of the sweater.

I decided to knit a strip of blue and then transition to the green at the shoulder with a strip of black in between.

I finished the front, and then the back - I ran out of the Marl colour 2 rows before I had stopped on the front so I just started the blue two rows early.  

But now I had to figure out what to do with the sleeves.  I started working them, two at  a time, from the top down so I could match the green, the black strip and then the blue with the front and the back sections.   

Once I had that done I had to make a decision - try and buy more of the Marl colour or work up the sleeves with the rest of the blue, green and black yarn.  I seared the web for more of the Marl yarn and came up blank.  The only option I had was buying from someone's stash on Ravelry.  I contacted one person but they had already sold theirs and forgot to update their listing, and the second person never got back to me so now I was totally out of options.

Back to plan B  knitting the sleeves in a different colour I came up with a sleeve design using the blue as a back ground and the green and black as accent colours,  threaded a life line through my work so I could easily go back if I had and started knitting.

I got to about 6" from the bottom of the sleeves and ran out of the blue yarn so continued with stripes of the green and black until I ran out of yarn entirely.  At this point I had 2.5" of the sleeve and the neckband and the sweater would be finished.  But I was totally out of yarn.

I basted it all together and tried it on.

Then did some magic on my computer to see what would work best.

Option1, go back to trying to find the Marl to finish the jumper like I had first planned.

Option 2, use black for the neckband and cuffs, Option 3 blue neckband and cuffs and Option 4 green neckband and cuffs.

After seeking input from my knitting group and my Facebook friends I decided to rule out Option 1 - Yeah at least I didn't have to pull out all that sleeve knitting and start again.  As for what colour to use to finish it off - I decided it would come down to what I could buy most easily out the other three.

I went back to Ravely and found someone willing to sell some of the blue and decided to go for it....I was only going to buy two skeins, but she offered me all 5 for only $5 more so I went with that.  Of course I now have 4 skeins left over....matching beanie and gloves?

I knitted up the rest of the sleeve and the cuffs in the new blue yarn, then did a 1 x 1 rib V neckband and finished it off with 6 rows of stockinette which when cast off rolls to form a beautiful edge to the neck.

All I had to do then was to sew it all together and I finally finished my sweater.

It was a long process but I really like the finished result.  There is really only one small detail that I don't love and that is a bit of gathering at the top of the shoulder seam.  I obviously got some of my measurements mixed up and to get the green and black lines to line up on the shoulder I had to do quite a bit of gathering at the very top.  It's not something I've overly worried about, just a small niggle in an otherwise good jumper.