Friday, January 14, 2011

Seaming My Caddy Cardigan

Yesterday I hinted that there'd be lots of pictures coming today.  Well, here they are.  I got my cardigan seamed together yesterday using the mattress stitch (see the link in yesterday's post).  This worked wonderfully.  I stood at my washing machine for about 3+ hours since it was the right height for me to work on.  Wednesday night I made a mad dash to JoAnn's to buy one of these:
It's a fabulous folding Ott Lite that runs on 3 AAA batteries.  It's a must have item -- on sale right now for $9.99!  I used it to shine directly on the pieces as I sewed them together.

I started by washing the pieces of the cardigan in the kitchen sink and then partially dried them in the dryer.  They were HUGE when I washed them so I was worried but the returned to their original sizes -- thank goodness!

I don't exactly have blocking boards (yet!) but I made do with the June Taylor mat and my ironing board.




Once the pieces were dry I began to stitch them together.  Here's the finished shoulder seam:
It's not the sweetest seam ever because the front is in pattern and the back is stockinette.  I can live with it.

I used these handy-dandy hair clips (couldn't find my fancy ones that are actually for putting sweaters together) to line up my sleeves with the body:

They really worked well and made the process much easier.

Here's the finished sleeve to body seam:
Pretty sweet, eh?  Now I'm ready to pick up and knit the neck edge and button bands.  After that I need some buttons and I can wear this cardigan!

2 comments:

harriet said...

Ha! I love that you figured out how to clip the Ott light to your jacket. It sure lights up the scene, doesn't it. Your sweater looks like it's coming together beautifully. Can't wait to see it.

Eddie said...

Beautiful work! I'm looking forward to seeing you model it.