An Impulse Purchase

Last week I was in the Garment District. Do I actually need fabric? I did need orange shantung and blue shantung for a tallit that I'm working on. I really didn't need this beautiful wool knit. It is a lovely soft wool blend with some fur content. I can't tell you exactly the fiber content because I bought it at a store where they have no idea what they are selling. The store is housed next door to Paron, in what used to be their half price store.

They had a few bolts of these art deco- ish autumnal prints. I fell in love and bought me a yard for $6.00. I thought I could make myself a cardigan. Do I really need a cardigan?

Something that is my current "trying to learn" plate is set in sleeves. My usual method of learning how to do something is to read a whole lot about it for a couple of years, look at diagrams and then attempt to tackle the task. Last summer I kept reading David Coffin's shirt-making book. I also have a blouse making book from the early 1980's. I keep reading the directions and not really understanding what I was reading. Eventually, I was ready to make a go of it. I was actually successful at my first attempt a few months back. My husband needed a new bath robe and I made him one using his old robe as a pattern.

But just because I am successful once, it really doesn't mean that I actually understand what I'm doing. I cut out the body of the sweater, using a cute sweater my sister had bought for me as a model. That much I'm really comfortable doing.

I then sewed the front to the back. I opened  the sewn together sweater body and copied the shape of the shoulder curve,and armhole opening,  armscye to all you sewing geeks. unfortunately, i didn't pay attention to the direction of the rib, so my sweater sleeves stretch north south rather than east-west around the girth of my arm--not too smart. I didn't have much extra in the fabric department. i also cut the sleeve a bit too narrow.

I sewed up the sides of the sweater with the serger and inserted the sleeves into the arm holes. The fit of the sleeve in the arm hole was perfect.

The neckline is edged with purple plush back elastic. It looks lovely and I also like how it gathers the neck. I decided to edge the hem with maroon velvet ribbon. Clearly I did some stretching as I serged the hem to prepare it for the ribbon. I could pretend that I had planned the wavy edge all along. But I didn't. I think that I actually like it though. I hated it last night when I finished it, today looking at it on the dress making dummy, I like it.

I also added more of the ribbon as a closure. I will probably add some buttons from my stash to hide the stitchin on the ribbon. For those of you with crick on your necks, my computer finally figured out  how to tilt the photo.