After I caught a cold I made the Marmalade Stevie Jacket because it was a comfort sew. One week later I still had the cold so figured it was a good time to tackle some mending (the husband’s stuff will get incorporated into the mending summary post, but bro get’s his own post) and modification of some of my existing makes so that I’ll actually wear them 🙃

My Fitzoy Nin-gojira and hacked Simpson Solitiba hoodies were fairly early makes when I properly got back into sewing. But I’m apparently no longer in my hoodie phase. During this project I actually had a hard think about why. Is it because I’m old? The actual answer is because I’ve decided that I like to leave my (rather long) hair down and in recent years I have invested in a lot of claw clips and hair pins so that I don’t have to wear my hair in a ponytail. But that means my long hair and hoods don’t play nice. Hence these two never getting any wear.

For the Nin-gojira hoodie I didn’t have any spare fabric (used it in the Miela Bomber Jacket) so I had to salvage what I could from the hood. I was planning on using 85% of neckline length but I didn’t have quite enough so it was more like 80%. Got some good use out of the Stitch Buzz curve rulers in this project. I also decided to try stabilising the neckband with stretch interfacing, something I wanted to test after my T-shirt Investigation. To be honest it was a bit of a battle fitting the interfacing, shorter neckband to the neckline but it worked and it seems fine. I did kind of want to replace the ribbing of the cuffs and hem as well, but that would be too much work trying to piece together something from the hood remnants. Besides, I don’t think the quality of the fabric will mean this lasts very long (the ribbing already feels pretty meh) and the puff HTV I failed to apply is peeling off in places too, so not worth the effort. And because I was lazy I also used the ‘finishing’ method I identified during the T-shirt Investigation as well. To be honest, changing the overlocker threads would probably take the same amount of time, but this is the ‘safer’ method because every time I change overlocker threads there is a risk that something will go wrong and I’ll end up troubleshooting instead of sewing…

I did have leftover fabric for the Solitiba hoodie which made things a bit easier.

The third modification I made was to my Maple Balloon Sweater. I originally used the main fabric for the neckband but it was too thick/lofty and made it feel kind of constricting. So I removed that ages ago and bought matching ribbing and even lost track of where this project was for a bit haha (no incentive to fix this while it the weather was warm). I block fused the stretch interfacing to the ribbing and recut my neckband pieces. I didn’t have enough Seraflex so just used the closest Rasant colour, and it ended up being a pretty good match. I used the same cheat finishing method to neaten the edges as well, couldn’t be bothered doing the neat (encased seam allowances) method.

As expected, I ran into some issues trying to sew buttonholes onto the ribbing. Well during the whole process, I had issues with the Rasant shredding, but really wasn’t in the frame of mind to do proper problem-solving so just rethreaded it each time it happened and continued on. But I couldn’t really do this with the buttonhole because it it frays partway that buttonhole is essentially done for. First I looked up the manual buttonhole option in my sewing machine manual. Uh, there isn’t one? Really? But I did learn that I can change the buttonhole width and the spacing of the zig zag haha. As well as figured out what all those other buttonhole options actually are (had no idea stretch fabrics required a different type of buttonhole stitch). So I tested sewing at medium speed (no go). I tested with washable stabiliser (no go). In the end I sewed them all with the washable stabiliser at slow speed. It skipped a stitch every now and then but otherwise I’d say it was a success. It was so damn slow though I ended up looking up Babylock overlockers while it was doing it’s thing haha.

Since I don’t trust the buttonhole chisel on knits I just used the seam ripper to open them up. And remembered to position the buttons at the top of the buttonhole.

So yay! Three more tops for me to wear! The hoodie-to-sweaters are good because I’m pretty much just wearing my Ochre Simpson Sweatshirt, Mustard Fenix Sweatshirt and RTW Cinnamoroll/Unicorn sweater in rotation (with the Ochre Toaster Sweater for the really cold days). Now I can save the yellow ones for WFH days and wear the nerd ones on the weekend LOL.

Also…with all the T-shirt making, planned activewear makes, planned sweaters, fixing my husband’s cycling gear, fixing my brother’s knitwear….I’m using my overlocker a lot more often. Or rather, could be using my overlocker a lot more often (like for all three of these projects if I could be assed changing the threads) or could be tackling these projects a lot faster (things get pushed back until I can get a bunch of projects that use the same colour thread to minimise thread changing). So really I should invest in something that air threads. But I also don’t really see the point in just getting a new overlocker, if I’m going to replace my machine might as well get something that does coverstitch too. Since my husband got his 40th birthday present in advance (a very expensive bike) he is more than happy for me to get mine (sewing machine of course, not bike) early (a lot earlier haha) too. It does benefit him after all, I’m saving him (us) hundreds of dollars since he doesn’t need to replace his cycling gear for what I consider (because I can sew) minor reasons. So Babylock Gloria in my near future???

Categories: Sewing

hikaru