Planning and Design

I was so excited to make this and complete my Melange Grey Sweater collection. And then I started wearing all of them and realised, I actually don’t really like grey? Why did I think I like grey?? I think this might be a hang up from buying ready to wear clothing – colour matching can be tricky so I stuck to monochrome, beige and navy. And now I think I’m bored of all of them.

I wanted to re-make the Cleaveland Sweater since I had identified improvements I could make. So the perfect pattern to be part of my yellow sweater collection (I really do go a bit overboard with colour matching/collections). I do like the melange look with this sweater hence assigning this particular fabric for this project.

Materials

• Pattern
  • Cleaveland Sweater (Applepip Project)
• Fabric
  • European Jogging Sweater Knit – Melange Light Ochre (Wattle Hill Fabrics)
• Thread
  • Seralfex col. 0892

Sustainability Check

👍 Fabric is 95% cotton and 5% elastane so technically biodegradable

👎 Seraflex is 100% polyester. For some reason I assumed it would be the same as Maraflex but very obviously not

Construction

Since I have a lot of yellow knit fabrics, I bought all the yellow Maraflex threads. Most of them weren’t quite a colour match though. Since I also wanted to get the rust and sage-ish colours of Seraflex, I also bought all the yellow in this range too. And the best match to this fabric was in the Seraflex.

Finally, a fleece where it was easy to tell the nap 🤣 However instead the grain was super hard to find…I gave up trying to fold it along the grain line and decided to test out my new Prym chalk wheel to mark out the grainline on one edge and align my pattern pieces against that.

I decided to use the overlocker to gather the sleeve ends. I tested out all the tensions from 6 to 9 and only 9 gathered it enough to kind of match the cuff. I made the mistake of cutting the overlocker thread ends when I joined the sleeve sides though, but I was able to make do by liberating two stitches or so either end and pulling on those. So next time I use this method, make sure to draw the gathering threads out prior to sewing the sleeve together.

Last time I made this sweater, I decided I would conceal the cuff/neckband/hem seams. To do this, I did a line of guide stitching in the Seraflex. It didn’t really stretch as much as I wanted though, so in order to get it to stretch enough, I clipped the stitching at 4 points equally distributed around the cuff and this helped give it more stretch while still having the stitching as a guide for the majority of the edge. Since sewing is more fun when I have more confidence that things aren’t gonna go wrong, I hand-basted all the edgings with water soluble thread. However I had issues catching the folded bottom edge when topstitching from the right side on the cuffs so went back and whip-stitched again with the water soluble thread. I still had issues where there was a lot of bulk due to the joining seams of both the cuff and sleeve. So had to do multiple top-stitching to secure it. I decided to do this instead of unpicking because it’s on the underside and it shouldn’t be too noticeable (also I was tired of unpicking the Seraflex).

I started whip-stitching the neckband too but stopped about 2/3 of the way through because I realised I had much more overlap than I did with the cuffs. Plus due to the much larger opening, I wouldn’t be pulling at the fabrics out of alignment. And as expected, I didn’t have issues with this one.

For the hem I reviewed my previous hand-basting and decided to do another round of hand-basting but from the wrong side so I could ensure that I had enough overlap. My aim was for the stitches to end up ‘in the ditch’ on the right side. I should probably do this for all knits. Not such a big deal with wovens because I can usually press the turn-under quite well and it doesn’t shift so much.

Reflections

I like this colour a lot more than the grey! And I’m happy with the finishings on the inside with almost all the seams secured down with topstitching or hidden. And the fabric is super nice and soft 😊

Seraflex is interesting. It has a very different feel to Maraflex (smoother) and seems a bit thinner. And I already knew this, but definitely stretches less.

A nice easy project to do in conjunction with my Top Down Centre Out pants challenge, so I feel like I’ve actually accomplished something 😝 Plus an upgrade on the previous version~

Things I learnt:

• Another way to align pattern pieces to grain line on knits
• How to use the overlocker to gather the stitches and not lose the ends when assembling the sleeve
• The best way to hand-baste cuffs etc on knits

Categories: Sewing

Tagged as: Yellow Sweater Collection

hikaru