 | I am lucky enough to have two weeks off over Christmas and New Year's and took the opportunity to get my sewing machine back out. Today is my mom's birthday, she would have been 79 today and I have been thinking about her more than I usually do these past few days. She was an avid sewer and I learned my first sewing skills from her. So, for me sewing will forever be something that makes me reconnect with her in my mind. Rest in peace, Mama. I dedicate this project to you <3 |
Anyways, the last time I went home to see my dad I went through my mom's fabric stash and found this really nice and warm, dark purple wool fabric. I took it with me and finally figured out what to make with it. Since it was only one meter of fabric - a little more than a yard - my options were limited but I managed to create a short sweater.
I used a super simple (pun intended) Simplicity pattern (S8988A), which gives you different options for style (if I had had enough fabric I would probably have added a collar) but I chose the simplest one. I only had to cut two sleeves and two pieces for front and back each. Done!
 | The sweater has a middle seam on both the front and back. The original pattern asks for sewing the right sides together, so that the seam allowance shows on the outer side but I did not like that much, plus I was planning on using my serger instead of my regular sewing machine and it would not have made sense to do it that way in that case. What I realized is that the fabric was pretty flimsy when I used my serger on it, so I added some lightweight interfacing to all of the seams, which was quite a bit of cutting but it made the seams look much better. |
To add some interesting features to the sweater I added a trim to the neckline, as well as some rose shaped ribbon to the sleeves. I used my sewing machine for this, the roses I simply topstitched and for the trim around the neckline I used a twin needle while sewing down the raw edge of the fabric to the inside at the same time.
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I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. What saved me some time at the end was the fact that I did not have to sew any hemlines since I was able to cut the pattern pieces using the selvedge of the fabric, which is barely noticeable on the finished product, even if you look closely. So no finishing of hems required!
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