Back in April, I was admiring on instagram some fabulous fabric picked up by
Melanie (Miss Piggy Eats) at the Fabric Cave, when she so kindly said that she would send me her leftovers. I couldn't believe my luck. Stripes and in a fabulous bright mustard shade! Melanie had made up a fab
Mandy Tee and fortunately had quite a bit left over. I had it washed and ready to sew within a nano second of receiving it. My idea was to sew up a coco using
this as an inspiration.
But things didn't really go to plan. The grain was all over the place on this fabric so while it felt lovely and the yellow stripe was divine, I struggled to get it on grain and on stripe. Really struggled. I cut the front and back of the Coco out only to find that I had cut it so badly that it was almost unusable. So there the fabric sat. Squished into a bag in the stash cupboard and me feeling guilty that I had so generously been gifted this fabric and I hadn't done anything with it, or worse probably ruining it.
I bought some flower knit the other week at
Addicted to Fabric and thought that maybe I could salvage the fabric combining the two knits into a
Papercut Patterns Undercover Sweater (sans hoodie). I'm all about the designer
Stella Jean at the moment and thought it could work. The idea was generally dissed on
instagram (though I still think it can work) so again the fabric sat.
Fast forward to yesterday, where I finally bought the Undercover pattern (on PDF thank you!) and while waiting for some pumpkin soup to cook stuck the pieces together. Come the first of July, I and all the other staff at my level in my Department are being made 'potentially excess' and we all have to apply for our jobs (aka: a Spill and Fill). The thought of having to look at my CV and write an application, set procrastination into top gear and I pulled out the yellow stripe to see just how much I had left now that I had the pattern taped and cut.
Would you believe that through cutting out the cropped version in XS I was able to fit all the pieces onto the left over fabric (thank you again Mel for your generosity) and cut the sleeves out of the previous Coco front and back.
Re the grain, I didn't even worry about it this time. For my own sanity. It was just too hard and so my focus was to try and match the stripes as best as I could and see how the fabric fell afterwards. This took a lot of angst out of the make.
I have been racking my brain and I think this is the first raglan sweater (or tee) that I have had in a veeeerrry long time. Like ever. I always thought that I looked better with a boat tee or high neck, but actually I don't mind this on me. The cute fabric helps. Ben thinks that the crop is too short but with the right pants I think it is ok, though I might make it a tad longer next time. I love the super long cuffs, especially in this wintery weather. The pattern was lovely to put together and easily came together in a night. The fit is relaxed and the off grain doesn't seem to make a material difference to the drape.
Thanks again Melanie for the fabric! I hope I've done it justice. One thing is for sure it will get a lot of wear!
