Sewing My Sweaters

The week started off with a bang. I was driving home from church Sunday afternoon when I noticed that it was a bit breezy. The wind was coming out of the east. That is never a good sign. The forecast said nothing about a back door cold front or easterly winds, although later in the evening, the National Weather Service did issue a Winter Weather Advisory that included sustained winds of 25-35 mph with gusts over 40.

The wind began blowing in earnest—from the east—around 2 am. Branches came down and a few of the husband’s concrete blankets ended up out in the driveway. The temperature, when I woke up, was in the teens, and that was without the wind chill. I was in the middle of reconciling the bank statement after breakfast when the lights started flickering furiously and then poof!—the electricity went out.

A few minutes later, the fire department was paged out for a tree on a power line up the road from us. Flathead Electric got a crew out here right away and we had power back within an hour or so.

The Missoula Police Department declared Emergency Travel Only for the city yesterday afternoon because they got hit with snow that fell on top of ice. I don’t think I can remember that ever happening before.

I have a feeling that I’ll be saying “This is unprecendented” a lot this winter.

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Let us pause for a moment and appreciate the irony of a former knitting designer sewing a sweater instead of knitting it.

Now that that is out of the way, we can talk specifics. This is the Patterns for Pirates Cocoon Cardigan, size Large, tunic length with long sleeves. The fit is close to perfect, although if I were to make this again, I might lengthen it a couple of inches. It would be longer if I had used the deeper band option that makes more of a shawl collar, but I was worried about running out of fabric.

The fabric is another chunk from the Walmart Mystery Fabric Rack. The yarn is a rayon/cotton blend or rayon/poly blend, or rayon/poly/cotton blend—all I am sure of is that it has some rayon in it. It’s knit at a fairly loose gauge of about 11 stitches per inch:

I don’t see a lot of sweater knits where I live—surprisingly—and when I do, they’re in muddy earth tones or sad pastels. This is a lovely grass green. (The color in the bottom photo is more accurate.) I was curious to see what working with a sweater knit was like so I would know whether I should seek out these fabrics or avoid them like the plague.

I read a slew of blog posts and tutorials about sewing with sweater knits. Many of them made it sound like sweater knits were hard to sew. I was prepared to say a lot of bad words while working with it. The hardest part was straightening the grain. That seems to be a common problem with this Walmart Mystery Fabric. I am not sure if that is due to how it is packaged or what. After some tugging and coaxing, I was able to get the fabric to lie straight enough for me to cut the pattern pieces, although I cut each on a single layer.

I did have to apply some hand lotion before I started as the fabric wanted to catch on everything. Beyond that, however, it did not try to fray into oblivion or misbehave. I sewed the first couple of seams with stabilizer, but even that wasn’t necessary. I shortened the stitch length to get good looper coverage on the edge. I also bumped up the differential feed to keep the seams from waving. All of those changes were made as a result of prior testing on scrap fabric.

The shoulder seams are stabilized with 1/4” organza ribbon. I bought it in every available color—including emerald green—when it was on sale a few weeks ago at Hobby Lobby. The whole garment went together easily, although after I finished and put it on the dress form, I noticed that the seams in the band are up near the neck instead of at the bottom. Oops. I think what happened was I laid the band out on the table—it had been sewn into a circle—but when I laid the sweater down inside the band to attach it, I must have turned the sweater around the wrong way.

This is why we make muslins from inexpensive fabric. I’m not going to take that band off and fix it.

Will I sew with sweater knits again? I do have some Hacci knit in the stash, so the answer is “yes,” although I won’t likely make a cocoon again. This is not my favorite cardigan style. The pattern would make a good class, provided we can source some sweater knit fabric for students to buy. And if I do teach it as a class, I have a sample already made.

I enjoy projects that teach me new skills.