McCalls Cardigan Jacket

At the Knitting and Stitching Show I picked up this cute jacket pattern for knits and a metre of boiled wool intending to make the sleeveless version with collar.  However, I misread the fabric quantity on the pattern, reading the fabric quantity for the little bolero version rather than the sleeveless collared version, and the collar which is double fabric, takes a fair bit of fabric.  Technically I had insufficient fabric for my chosen view.  BUT as boiled wool doesn't ravel at all  I chose to do a single layer collar,  with decorative stitching on the edge, which  meant I managed, with very careful layout, to get the shorter jacket, with sleeves, from just over one metre of fabric.  I was very pleased since I bought the boìled wool specially for the SWÀP and it just went so perfectly with everything else so I would have been gutted if I couldn't get this jacket out of the fabric. 


In the spirit of adventure, or foolhardiness, I didn't make a muslin.  I did a quick flat measure, a quick pin to the dress form to check things out, and took a dart in the tissue on the centre back waist and the same in the peplum, about three quarters of an inch tapering to nothing, a sort of double ended dart in essence though  spread across two pattern pieces, just to bring the back in a bit to fit my sway back.  Having done this on the tissue, this meant the  pattern pieces had no dart to sew.

Seems to have worked out well.  The jacket sleeves were a bit too snug, but I just let them out, sewing a three eighths seam instead of the five eighths allowed.  Other than those two alterations, this jacket is as it came from the pack.  I made the small size   and was very pleased with the fit and comfort of the end result.  To the extent that I now want one of these jackets in every colour of boiled wool.

I constructed it on the overlocker, only using the sewing machine for the tacking stitches  that I put around the sleeve hem and the collar/outer edge to guide my blanket stitch finish.   For this I used a thick silk thread  in variagated shades of blue, green, and purple but it proved more difficult than I expected to get the stitches looking even.  I tried all sorts, including chalk, disapearing ink pens, and stick on quilters tape. However, the easiest and most accurate method turned out to be the simplest.  A 3.7 stitch length produced  two stitches to the quarter inch exactly.  And I had a quarter inch quilting foot for the machine.  So I sewed in red thread, quarter inch from the edge, then used the stitches as my guide, taking a stitch  with my silk for  every two stitches in red thread and taking out the red thread afterwards.  Seems to have worked rather well.

Overall I'm very pleased with my jacket which is warm, comfortable, smart, but took only a day to make (not counting the hand sewing element which did take a while, though not as long as you might think).   It is a darker colour in real life and the silk thread looks nicer.  But I had to take my photos in artificial light and that washed everything out a bit.