If you go down to the woods today....

Having finished the hoodie this morning I cut out the muslin for Marfy 2248, the cardigan with the huge collar, this afternoon. This was a weird fabric. Its a knit but its hairy like a teddy bear (or a yeti perhaps). Its fabulously soft but very stretchy and it sheds hair worse than my spaniel (and she is currently moulting).

It was truly dreadful stuff to sew up and the sewing room was totally covered in black hairy clumps. Its very lightweight so that fur flew everywhere. I am sure I will continue to find it for days on end in odd places.

I really think the pattern is going to be a winner. I absolutely love the immense collar and the armholes seem large enough to get quite a decent thick sweater under the cardigan. The length seems good on me and I think if this version hadn't had a fit problem, and I hadn't forgotten to set the differential feed on the overlocker (oops, very stretchy, wavy seams) I would have worn it out of the house quite happily. As it is, I will wear this in the house as it amuses me immensely and is in fact lovely and cosy and soft. And the whole thing took me less than two hours to cut and construct.

The only fitting issue I found was that it doesn't lie straight at the front, and gapes very badly over the upper chest. I had to take a large dart out of the tissue running from the collar, almost to the side seam to take out excess in the upper chest area and this seems to make the center fronts and hems lie correctly. As the hairy knit stretched horribly, it was a bit of a guess to work out exactly how much to take in. I am not taking anything out of the collar. The collar has a pleated section and I am just going to make that bit more pleated to make up for the loss of length in the front of the cardigan. I've tissue fit it following the alterations and it looks OK so I am currently cutting a second version from a wool (or possibly wool mix) tweed with a plaid pattern. I'm taking a break from trying to match the plaid at the moment as it wasn't making sense after I'd stared at the fabric for too long.