Oct 21, 2014

The Wardrobe Project 10/21/14

I have some recent finishes to share.  I will attempt to get more photos of the wardrobe project taken regularly, so that I can participate in Me Made Mondays.

Last week, I finished up my Antler Cardigan.  My knitting buddy Julie, of Knitting at Large, gave me this lovely yarn for my birthday back in March. It is Berroco Vintage, an acrylic/wool blend.  I knew as soon as she gave me the yarn that I wanted to make a round yoke sweater with it.  I needed to make many adjustments to the pattern to adapt it to fit me- I basically just recalculated all of the numbers for the sweater below the armpits, including the sleeves, to fit me, based on my swatch.  Then I needed to figure out how to transition to get the numbers to match up to the pattern to knit the yoke.  I also had to add repeats of the cable to make the yoke deep enough for me.  At the end, I knit the back neck shaping from Hiro to make the sweater sit better on my back neck area.

Bear with me, I am not good at arranging for photo shoots, but I do what I can!

Back view:

The grey knit pants were also made by me.  They are a heavy cotton jersey knit, and I drafted the pattern myself from an article in a special edition issue of Threads about fitting.

I have been on the lookout since I started back sewing, for patterns that are closer to fitting me as drafted, to avoid this Frankenpattern exercise for fitting:

This is just one sleeve!  I have been known to use an entire roll of Scotch tape for one garment! (Winter coat, I am looking at you!)

You can imagine my thrill, then, when I tried Lekala patterns.  This company offers a ton of patterns on their website, and you can get them custom made to your own measurements!  I made this cute white blouse with Lekala pattern 5114 from white cotton shirting I bought at JoAnns.  For this blouse I made the pattern mostly as drafted. I mistakenly neglected to enter the information that I have big arms, so I needed to add some to the width of the sleeves, but I am hoping to correct for that on future purchases. I was short on fabric so I left the cuff off of the sleeves, but I am not a big fan of cuffs anyway.  I also drafted a facing for the back neckline.  I love love love this blouse!


I am getting ready to make another version in some lovely cotton lawn I bought in a floral print.  I made a few adjustments for the next version- cutting off the big point on the collar, adding a couple of inches to the overall length of the blouse, and adding a little more ease at the bottom to try to prevent strain on the buttons when I sit.

I highly recommend Lekala patterns, with a few caveats. First, some may be put off because it comes as a PDF file that you have to put together.  I used glue stick for this, and honestly it was way easier than all of the taping I have to do to make a regular pattern fit me.  Since I plan to make this more than once, I traced the pattern pieces onto tracing paper for ease of storage, and threw the originals in the recycling bin.

Second, the instructions for Lekala patterns are notoriously bad.  This makes the unsuitable for beginners. I had to find instructions for putting in the collar on the internet. That was not a problem though, because I am a fairly experienced seamstress, I really just needed a reminder on how to do it.

3 comments:

Shawn said...

As someone who is also "Hard to fit" in regular patterns I have fallen in LOVE with the Lekela pattern company. I love your blouse, it turned out great!

And your sweater is beautiful! I know how to knit but don't have the patients for it so I deeply admire the time and work you put into this - plus purple is my favorite color.

UrbanRecyclist Micki S said...

I have yet to try Lekala although I've been very curious, and I have in fact downloaded a free pattern from them to test. I'll have to try mine soon. Both your blouse and the cardigan are beautiful!

me, Mavis said...

WOW, Mag! I clicked on the post ready to be amazed by the sweater (which I am), but was also blown away by the lovely drape of the blouse. Well done!