Tag: Sweater

More Grey, Now a Francis

The reason why I’ve not been sewing as much, is that I’ve been knitting. I’ve been knitting a top down raglan sweater from a pattern with cables and a cowl. The weirdest thing is that I didn’t even lose interest for that long. I finished it within the season! One month and a half it took me to knit myself a pullover (more details on ravelry here). I’m so proud! It’s knit fully in the round. It’s actually quite warm also, with contrasting cuffs (seed stitch). I’m a little afraid of washing it, so I hope it doesn’t shrink massively. Here it is:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Back

The ends are all finished with seed stitch, so that’s the cuffs, hem and cowl. My collar is a bit different from the pattern, probably because I didn’t switch to smaller needles. I still like the way it looks though. In contrast to the pattern I attached the bottom edge (not the hem) of the seed stitch band to the neck opening at the front, and partly at the back. The pattern stated to mattress stitch (?) the hem of the seed stitch bit to the neck.

Cuff Collar

Lastly, I chose to do some cables on the front. This was mainly because I’d be bored out of my brain with just knitting stockinette for forever after. I cabled using 4 stitches in all cables, but the centre one was split down the middle to form larger v’s and the side ones are mirrored to each other.

Front

I hope to get a lot of wear out of this sweater. I’m wearing it while writing this and I’m quite warm and toasty, which is wonderful in wintertime.

Winter is Coming!

While you may think from the previous post that my head is still in summer land, it is actually cold over here. I don’t particularly like the cold, so the last time (I think?) I was at the fabric market, I bought a meter of something red, thick and stretchy. I figured I might be able to make a sweater out of it. Well, my size turned out to be a blessing, since I could actually get a long-sleeved sweater out of that 1 meter. If I’d been only a little bit hippier, it would not have fit!

I chose to use my t-shirt pattern and just elongate the arms. Why do it the hard way, right? Then I copied the hood of a sweater I’ve bought and futzed a bit to get the hood to fit in the neck hole. In the end, it all worked out. I had the body of the sweater lying in my room since Monday, but I was a bit scared to attach the (finished) hood. I bit the bullet today and attached it. It worked the first try! Then I wanted to make thumb holed cuffs. So I found myself a tutorial (this one, thanks!). I only had to redo the first one three times. 1st time: I did the second seam the wrong way round because I was too stubborn to read the instructions carefully. 2nd time, it went right but the opening was a bit big, so I ripped it all out and for take 3, I angled the seam and that worked fine! The second one worked in one go! Yay, for learning. Lastly, I attached a bottom band. Red T-shirt Sweater Hoody thing is a reality!

Front and back, naturally.

Front Back

Thumb hole and insides. I only sewed a few bits with my sewing machine (inside of the cuffs and bottom band, ‘topstitching around the hood’ and the pointy bit where the hood attaches), the rest was done with the serger. I only have white or black thread, there was white still in it and I was too lazy to switch, nor did I care about the colour.

Thumbhole Insides

Hopefully I’m now ready for the real winter times! It should be quite warm!