Striped Sweaterknit Cardigan: Butterick 5697 (OOP)

A Joint Project for a Daughter and her Mom

I purchased this great striped lightweight sweaterknit fabric last summer at Haberman's Fabric in Royal Oak, Michigan while visiting my daughter. The minute she clapped eyes on it she asked for a cardigan. I know my child well, and had purposely purchased enough of the fabric for garments for both of us. We love bright colors popping out of neutrals.

A few months later she came home for a visit and patternstash-dived to come up with this OOP Butterick pattern that I've had for ages (since 1998).

Her plan was to cut and make it in a day, the last day of her visit. She is a beginner sewist and a fearless one. I gave her direction on how to lay out striped fabric in a single layer for pattern cutting and how to ensure that the stripes would match up between the separate pattern pieces when sewn. With those few rules, she took off on her own, and placed the pattern in what I consider to be a marvelous matching of stripes for this unbalanced stripe fabric. Quite good for the very first time, I thought!

When she saw with distress that the front opening pieces (which had to be placed on the crosswise grain to get the stripes to run vertically) could not be mirrored because it would require placing one piece on the wrong side of the fabric, she decided to turn that particular lemon into lemonade. 

She therefore placed  the front opening pieces so that a turquoise color popped on one side which allowed the stripes to match pretty well, colorwise, around the neck area and in the attached pocket areas on each side. She now loves that pop of turquoise. (Me, I'm so old school that I have to say it bothers me a bit.)

 

When she realized the amount of time that it would take to insert the sleeves in order for each stripe to match between the shoulders and sleeves, she decided to jettison the sewing portion of the project off to me. 

She was pleased with her mad stripe-matching pattern-placing skilz and figured I could handle garment assembly and ship the completed cardi to her later. 

Of course I had to add what she laughingly calls "Mom's couture touches" but which seemed pretty straightforward, such as the reinforcing of the front opening/pocket panel with Pam Erny's wonderful Pro-Sheer Elegance Light fusible interfacing. Even though Pam says that Elegance is for wovens, it was perfect for this sweaterknit that only stretched slightly more in the crosswise direction than the very slight amount that Elegance Light fusible does. Plus that front opening piece did not need to stretch. In fact, it was better if it didn't. I often use Pro-Sheer Elegance Light when sewing with ponte knits too.

Anyway, adding that bit of reinforcement gave the front opening pieces the body they needed for this lightweight sweaterknit. 

In addition, I reinforced the shoulder seams with clear elastic. 

I also reinforced the sleeve and lower hem edges with Steam a Seam II Lite before turning them up, fusing them into place, and coverstitching the hems with my Janome 1000CP Cover Pro machine.

My daughter was delighted to receive the cardigan in the mail a few weeks later and loves wearing it. It was a thrill to see her enjoy envisioning a garment and working to make it happen. Plus it was great fun to share the project with her.