Jersey basics

Just a quick post to show my progress so far on my Autumn Sew-Along. It's a bit slow as I had a flying visit to the UK at the beginning of October (Sussex-London-Reading-Cardiff in six days...), and my sewing room is currently mostly packed away as my mum is staying with us for a couple of weeks whilst her bathroom is being redone, so the slow progress is likely to continue until the end of October. I do plan to do some pattern tracing whilst she's here (and maybe cut fabric), but actual sewing time will be a bit limited. At least with my plan I know exactly what I want to prepare!

First up is another drape-front cardi - my second version of this is one of my favourites, so it made sense to make another. This is made from a super-lightweight rayon sweater knit (possibly a rayon blend), and is really really really soft. I didn't have a matching grey thread handy, so instead of hemming it around the edge and on the sleeves, I used the rolled hem on my serger.

This attempt at a rolled hem turned out way better than previous tries, mainly because I realised my clever lazy trick of just unthreading the left needle rather than removing it actually meant that it interfered with the the action of the loopers, meaning the hem had a row of little thread loops along one side. Doh. The shoulders and back neckline are reinforced with fusible bias tape, plus top-stitching along the back neckline, and the corner points of the collar and front piece are reinforced with small squares of fusible tricot.

The second thing to show is a boxy slightly cropped top. This is a duplicate of one of my favourite RTW tops, and I made it in this blue slub rayon as a trial to test my pattern. It's actually turned out very wearable (although it's changed shape ever so slightly as I hadn't pre-washed the fabric, but I was expecting this to happen). The hem is level, despite it looking wonky in the photos.

I finished the sleeves and hem with a narrow twin needle, and also used this to add the sweatshirt "V" at the front neckline. There's a couple of missed stitches on the V (and my stay-stitching wasn't entirely within the neckline seam allowance) but as it's a casual top and a trial, I'm not terribly fussed. I might try stitching over tissue or tear-away stabiliser next time as a single layer of such lightweight fabric is a bit prone to doing weird things.

So, two items done, neither very exciting, but both extremely useful and already worn several times! I've also made some progress on a couple of knitting projects, but I'll save those for another post when I've taken some photos of them!