A friend recently had a second child and I made a baby sweater. I wanted to try a new pattern and use a new technique to challenge myself somewhat. The sweater I chose has a neckline that is finished with a binding, but closes with snaps. This is a closure I had never made before.
The pattern is from Knippie, a Dutch sewing magazine with patterns for children. I made sweater 3b from issue 5 of 2010. I had enough blue fabric left over from another project to make size 74. The child probably won’t fit into this sweater until autumn but I like to give something that they can wear more than once. The orange jersey was left over from an abandoned project that was cut out but never sewn. I really like how this shade of orange pops against the dark blue.
To make my life easier I decided to remove several seam lines that were only decorative in nature. For the back bodice this meant not cutting through the yoke line of the pattern piece. For the front piece it meant I had to tape the front yoke pattern piece to the right side so it became one pattern piece. This is not difficult to do but you have to be careful to line up the correct line of the yoke and front piece.
Construction wise this was not a difficult project. All seams were overlocked and top stitching and hemming was done with my coverstitch machine. Attaching the neckline binding was fiddly and the most challenging part of the sweater. I ended up ignoring the instructions completely. I am still not entirely sure what I was supposed to do but I thought it became an annoyingly bulky affair that didn’t look pretty. Instead I took a single layer of the jersey, stitched it to the right side of the neckline with short extensions at the opening. Folded these edges to the back and stitched in place by hand. Folded the neckline to the inside and again stitched the ends in place by hand. The binding was then topstitched with my coverstitch machine.
The instructions told me to stitch twill tape around the armholes and add applique but I ignored this as well. I like clean and simple.
You can see how I folded the binding to the inside and stitched the ends down by hand. If you look carefully you can also see where I missed part of the binding with the coverstitch machine and remedied this with some handstitches. From the outside you can’t tell.
Wow, you did a beautiful job on that sweater! I’m sure your friend (and her child) are going to love it!
Thank you! I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. 🙂
It looks delightfully functional, and I love the strong colours you’ve used!
Practical could be my middle name. For young kids I like to make very functional clothing. They’re already cute when they wear it anyway. 😉
It looks really good, and I’m glad you felt confident about leaving out unnecessary or too complicated bits – I really can’t see that they would have improved it at all. Lovely, and beautifully finished.
I’m not averse to simplifying my life if I don’t really see a need for a certain seamline. Perhaps if the extra seams were topstitched in contrasting thread it would add something but the way I would have made it probably not. Sometimes less sewing is better.
This is so cute – he’s going to look like a baby member of the Star Ship Enterprise crew 😉
Haha! I love Star Trek. Maybe not exactly the right colours but I see how you got the association!
This is clean, cute and comfortable! A perfect kid creation.
Thank you!
simple and striking, I like this a lot. And less fuss makes it easier to pair with other outfits.
Very true, it will probably work with most standard trouser colours.