Long cardigan Ottobre and Vogue knit tunic top

I have a long nylon/merino hoodie that I wear frequently around the house,during cooler weather, so when I was working on the winter travel wardrobe, I thought a smarter version of this would be a good idea for layering.

The pattern is Ottobre 05-2011-06, previously made here, but as you can see, this time I made it without a hood, for fabric saving and luggage saving reasons, and self bound and overlapped the neckline, wth an attempt to make the cardigan a little less sporty. The fabric is a wool ribbing, from Fabric.com, purchased quite some time ago, and is quite stretchy. I added about 5cm to each centre front with the idea of an overlap fastening, and due to the stretch this overlap is considerable. 

 

I prefered to fasten it only at the top (inside and out), and am pleased with the brooch effect of the inner button when the cardigan is worn open (silver button) or closed (bronze fastening)

I particularly like the opportunites for fitting given by using a centre back seam in this type of pattern.

Although I was reasonably pleased with the effect of turning in the centre front edges to finish them, this finish is quite bulky. Much against my sewing instincts, I chose to leave the hem and sleeve hem edges raw. They have held up surprisingly well and do not appear to ravel at all.

Underneath is a lengthened version of one of my favourite cowl neck t shirts, Vogue 8634. 

The fabric is a truly gorgeous heavy weight rayon knit from Knitwit, and I was extremely happy with this tunic - until a very kind person did some washing for me and managed to shrink it considerably. My older daughter was a grateful recipient of this worn-once tunic , and fortunately I was able to purchase more of the fabric, but alas, it is still in the flat fold stage. As you might have noticed, I used remanants from the original piece of this fabric for the insert in the Wren dress I posted about yesterday, and I am being very careful not to leave the dress anwhere where someone else is likely to put it in the washing machine for me!

Ottobre 05-2011-6 Jacket

Thank you for your kind comments about the swimming costume. The beautiful swimming hole with waterfalls was quite cool, but truly lovely for swimming. I really enjoyed it - I also used the swimming costume for soaking in the hot swimming pools/spas in towns with Artesian Bores, and so it came in very handy.
My experimentation with nylon backed merino knit not only gave me leggings destined for cold weather running and a 70's style jacket, but considerable left-overs.
It occurred to me at the time that a second,longer jacket, would be more flattering disguising than the  high hip length one, ( previous version was short so that I could run in it), and more suitable for lolling about.
I started with Ottober 05-2011-6, suitably named "Saturday Chilling"



I constructed most of this garment quite quickly, until I decided to add a decorative inner zip tape cover of bias binding to disguise the interfacing I fused to minimize zip application angst, and the weather warmed up considerably.
It sat on Genevieve my dress form until I started packing for our trip outback, and decided that it would be perfect for camping - nights can be cold out there at this time of year. I finished off the hand sewing in the car ;)
I was right about the usefulness of this garment, wearing this garment nearly every evening and early morning whilst we were away, and finding it just the right weight and warmth for Spring out west, but my photographs are not quite up to scratch. (It co-ordinates with my leggings perfectly, but you do not need to see them again - I wore them  mostly as pyjamas)
Here is a dawn shot, at Bangladore National Park (great bird and macropod watching), and an early evening shot (it was getting chilly, don't believe that blue sky) outside Winton.




I prefer the location shots without the jacket.





However, despite its sartorial shortcomings, the jacket is a useful piece, and the pattern was good.
Ottobre garments are all too long on me. The jacket cut out to the pattern finished at the top of my thighs, which is rather widening to my figure. This time I lengthened the jacket by applying a non-gathering contrast band, so that it finishes at mid thigh. (This will also make it a suitable length for wearing over my swimming costume pre and post swim, should I swim in the cooler parts of the day)



I did not have a sufficiently long zip, so have chosen to leave the band unfastened rather than the neck end.

I liked Ottobre's finishing method of the pocket - adding a knit binding.



I thought this not only looked good, but added some much needed stability to the edge by allowing me to use the scraps of the good quality grey merino to support the super stretchy and thin maroon fabric. As I had found it so useful at the pocket, I chose to also finish the neck seam before adding the hood, and to bind the edge of the hood (made single layer in defiance of the instructions) in the same fabric - techniques not included in the pattern.



I used a coverstitch for topstitching, fiddling about with both the chain stitch and a narrow 2 needle stitch, both methods working nicely on this fabric.

My favourite addition, which also led to a term of UFOness as described earlier, is the bias binding covering the zip tape.



Overall, I feel that this jacket is almost at silk purse (well, maybe a knit purse) from sow's ear status in usefulness and general appearance. Unfortunately, the not-so-terrific quality of the maroon nylon backed merino was worth exactly the $8NZ per metre that I paid ( Global Fabrics,Dunedin, January this year) , and is already showing signs of early disintegration.