Another drape-front cardie

I wanted a quick break from my Burda makes (plus I needed to pre-wash the fabric I wanted to use next), so thought I would make a cardie - I need a few more cardies, as most of my favourites are looking rather tired now. I remembered I already had this pattern drafted from aaaaaages ago, and it only needed minor tweaks.

You may recognise this from the first version I made back in April last year, and wore in Me-Made-May '12. I will confess: I never wore it again... Eek! It was just such an awful fabric, and there were problems with the fit of the shoulders and the sleeves annoyed me. Oh, and I didn't like the length.

The original draft mostly followed Lauriana's tutorial on the BurdaStyle website. For this version, I made the following changes:

• Added 10cm to the length.
• Altered the shape of the lower front so that the drape wasn't so long at CF.
• Narrowed the back at the hips and at the waist.
• Added 1cm each side to the length of the collar at the top edge at CB.
• Shortened the sleeves to three-quarter length.

I used a rayon-poly blend sweater knit from Fabric.com, and this time stabilised both the back neckline and shoulder seams with fusible tape (and an extra line of stitching at the back neckline). This has helped minimise the stretching that caused the first version to fall off my shoulders. I also stabilised the corner on the front pieces between the collar and shoulder to stop it fraying when it was clipped during construction.

I used a 4cm hem on the sleeves, and a 1cm hem around the main body and collar. Both of these were stitched using a three-step zig-zag. The wrong side shows on the drape when worn, so this gives a fairly neat finish. We will not mention the balls-up I made when I was sewing in the label and made a hole at the back neckline. No, we won't.

I'm much happier with this version, it looks like a proper cardie, rather than some weird shiny droopy thing. I think it could still do with a tweak to narrow the shoulders a little, but I know it will be worn lots this winter.