Cut and Sew Sweater Vogue 8597

Earlier this fall I stormed the fabric store and purchased a bunch of cozy wintery fabrics for the season. 

I'm not a fan of cut and sew sweaters, but this fabric begged me to take it home.  What makes a knit a sweater anyway?  It's the stitches per inch.  And there are diverging theories on what number that is but in general it's about anything less than 9 per inch makes it a sweater.  I might be blasted for that?  Anybody have the true answer?

This fabric is 100% wool and it was purchased at The Mill End Store in Milwaukee, Or for 15.99 per yard.  Yikes! I splurged on this one and it was worth it.

I wanted to make a cowl neck so I bought patter 8597 from Vogue.  I read the pattern reviews that it wasn't as deep as the drawing on the envelope and by the way I always worry when there isn't a photo too.  I altered the neck so it would be a little deeper by slashing and spreading the front as below

Used this technique from Pattern Making for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph Armstrong

Then I squared off the center front.

I realized with the finished product that I should have slashed again further down so that cowl would sag deeper into the front but anyway lesson learned for next time.

The sweater is super long but I also have not hemmed it yet- lazy

This fabric is a little shear so the pretty seam allowances show as a detail
I used a tiny zigzag stitch for the seams and did a double row.  Then I was able to trim very close to the outside row in order to create a finished seam look with out a serger.  When do I splurge for one of those folks?  Before or after the new computer and Vita Mix blender?

This is the back neck, it wraps around from the front which is an interesting detail

This is a better view of the front neck

 I also hand stitched the sleeve hems. This garment is pretty delicate and will certainly need to be dry cleaned.  I wore it tucked into dress pants at work and it was too long.  I just purchased a cute pair of slim pants from J Crew that I probably could make myself but, anyway, I didn't.  This would look better over those.  I guess I should hem the thing.

Ok kids, off to Christmas shop.  The mall opens in one hour.  Next I'll show you to cool sewing history book I got for my birthday!

FBA is like magic........who knew?

I'm sure all of you out there already knew this, but when I appeared on the scene a few months ago, I had no idea what FBA was. So, I looked it up and found out- hey, I need that.   I read this post on Sew Mama Sew and that's when I found out that most patterns are drafted with B CUP!!!!!!!!   Yikes.  Doesn't work for me, a full figured gal, between c and d depending.  Maybe I never noticed since their patterns have so much wearing ease that they swim on me if I follow their prescribed measurements.  What a revelation all around- LITERALLY!

Anyway, I'm making a princess seam dress that's woven and close fitting so, I knew I needed this.  I'll post more photos on it later (if it really turns out), but here is what I did for the FBA.  

I traced my pattern in case I just shredded the original, I wanted to protect it from my JV pattern alterations. Then I drew a line straight down from the bust pointish area, one out to the side seam and one 1/3 into the armhole. 

Then I slashed through all of those and spread.  The directions say to do the amount difference between your high bust and reg bust, but I think that's if you buy a pattern based on your high bust measurement.  I had a size 10 which is way smaller than that but based on all the pattern reviews saying the bust came out huge I sized way down and just went for it.

Spread about 1 1/2" wide which spread the "bust dart".  I taped down the vertical slash and,

then slashed out to the bust point toward the cf edge, closed the side bust dart and pivoted open the bust edge on that tiny hing at the point.  When it was finished, it didn't seam like enough.  But I wanted to try it.  I sewed up a muslin and used 5/8" seams.  First try on it's snug, so I took out side seams to 3/8" each and it fit much much better.

Of course it fits dress form big, but on my bust it fit perfectly EXCEPT that it was sitting too low on my chest.  I knew I'd be tugging it up all night if I didn't add more length.  So I slashed the pattern near the top edge and added 3/8".  I figured I can sew the facing in at 3/8" and keep a little bit more of the length.  Now ask me if I made another muslin.  Nope, just went ahead and cut the fashion fabric.  I'm crossing my fingers that it's an ok adjustment.  eeeek.  Oh, and the other thing I did was to re-draw/smooth out the curve of the side front because it had an awkward 50 cone bust pointy thing happening.  This could cause tragedy too but from the look of the pattern piece it should be ok.  I re-walked the pattern seams and made sure it matched length of the center front piece.  I also shortened the dress quite a bit to above the knee and in doing so I shaved off some of the flare.  Should be ok- famous last words.

You might be wondering why there is a decorative set of faggoting stitches in the center front of this garment.  Well, the answer is that despite what I knew about FBA, I took my scissors and slashed the CF to uhhhh, I'm not sure what I was trying to do.  Maybe see if I could give it a little more width and that would fix the issue, but in the end I just took out the side seam, and had to figure out if it fit, so I used one of my fancy stiches to fanken-stitch the front together.  Worked like a charm, looks weird but who cares.  Alrighty, we'll see if it works out tomorrow or soon......  have a great night