It was cold here today (-26C when I took the kids to school this morning- brrrrr!) but I stayed warm inside working in my sewing room.
Back in July, I started knitting a cardigan for myself - Rosamund's Cardigan by Andrea Pomerantz from the Fall 2009 issue of Interweave Knits. I finally finished knitting it while we were away for Christmas and today I finished the finishing - refining the shape and sewing on buttons, hooks, and eyes. Now I am happy with it. Before today, I wasn't sure about it.
While I was knitting, I knew that I was going to want the sweater to be longer than what the pattern said. But, I added the length at the very bottom (the sweater is knit from the top down) when I should have added it in between the waist decreases and increases. It resulted in a sweater that had a shape very different from my own.
Ripping out half of the sweater didn't sound appealing to me (remember that it took me six months to knit this!) so today I decided to try steaming it with my iron a bit to shrink out some of the excess ease. It worked really well and I'm really happy with how it turned out.
The buttonhole and button placement seem a little strange to me - too far toward the center. But, I was just following the pattern and my inexperience makes it hard to predict that sort of thing. It doesn't bother me enough to prevent me from wearing it. I put three hook-and-eyes along the opening below the second button. For now, I like the bottom of it to be open a bit, but I might add more later.
Inspired by the sweater and steam success story, I decided to pretreat the wool fabric I have for making a coat using this tutorial from Pam at Off the Cuff. Here the fabric is cooling off, flat and smooth. Nice that the railing is exactly the right length!
I'm taking action with the coat now because it looks like The Preacher and I are going to NYC at the end of March for a church leadership conference. I'll attend one day of the conference with him, but then I'm hoping to get over to the Garment District one of the other days. My goal is to have the coat done by then so I can bring it along and have the buttonholes professionally done. I've been reading and researching the coat making process and am getting pretty excited. It will be a slow process with breaks for other projects, but that's fine with me.
Back in July, I started knitting a cardigan for myself - Rosamund's Cardigan by Andrea Pomerantz from the Fall 2009 issue of Interweave Knits. I finally finished knitting it while we were away for Christmas and today I finished the finishing - refining the shape and sewing on buttons, hooks, and eyes. Now I am happy with it. Before today, I wasn't sure about it.
While I was knitting, I knew that I was going to want the sweater to be longer than what the pattern said. But, I added the length at the very bottom (the sweater is knit from the top down) when I should have added it in between the waist decreases and increases. It resulted in a sweater that had a shape very different from my own.
Ripping out half of the sweater didn't sound appealing to me (remember that it took me six months to knit this!) so today I decided to try steaming it with my iron a bit to shrink out some of the excess ease. It worked really well and I'm really happy with how it turned out.
The buttonhole and button placement seem a little strange to me - too far toward the center. But, I was just following the pattern and my inexperience makes it hard to predict that sort of thing. It doesn't bother me enough to prevent me from wearing it. I put three hook-and-eyes along the opening below the second button. For now, I like the bottom of it to be open a bit, but I might add more later.
Inspired by the sweater and steam success story, I decided to pretreat the wool fabric I have for making a coat using this tutorial from Pam at Off the Cuff. Here the fabric is cooling off, flat and smooth. Nice that the railing is exactly the right length!
I'm taking action with the coat now because it looks like The Preacher and I are going to NYC at the end of March for a church leadership conference. I'll attend one day of the conference with him, but then I'm hoping to get over to the Garment District one of the other days. My goal is to have the coat done by then so I can bring it along and have the buttonholes professionally done. I've been reading and researching the coat making process and am getting pretty excited. It will be a slow process with breaks for other projects, but that's fine with me.
Wow! Your cardigan is very stylish! Six months is a large period, but the results is fantastic!
ReplyDeleteI don't remember that pattern from Interweave. I LOVE how yours came out. I might have to dig that issue out, now. What a great looking cardi.
ReplyDeleteWOW beautiful cardigan. It looks pretty complicated to me ~ You did an awesome job. You will definitely get lots of compliments when wearing it.
ReplyDeleteI love your sweater, beautiful job!
ReplyDeleteSuch a splendid sweater! I love the color and the way the neck and front edge are "braided". I admire beautiful knitting so much. You always choose lovely earthy colors too.
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