80's Starburst Sweatshirt /Jacket thang
Hi Friends!
How are you all doing?? Here in the great state of NY in the US, it is freeezzzzing. Like literally we have entered the portion of the winter where all precipitation freezes, as you can see in these pictures with the frozen Hudson River as my backdrop. I am 100% certain that that affected my fabric choices this month when participating in the Mood Sewing Network.
I went straight to the terry's and sweathshirting. I checked out the coating as well, and then I found this amazing stretch fleece-backed cotton. Immediately a Friday Pattern Company Arlo popped into my head and then it was just a matter of figuring out what color combination I was going to make. I have procreate downloaded onto my tablet and that's usually my first go to, when I need to work out the options. And this is what I came up with:
You can see my digital coloring skills are inferior to my sewing skills, lol. I really had a hard time going back and forth between different combinations of grey and a color. Grey and white? Grey and pink? Grey and yellowy/orange? So I went to the hubs with my predicament somewhat leaning towards grey and yellow/orange and he was like... that's the same color combo you make everything in. ... and while that is a bit of an exaggeration, the sentiment is pretty spot on. I really like these those two colors, separately and together. Knowing I wanted to make the Arlo, I was feeling a bit drawn to the color combo on the envelope of the pattern as well.... it just looked so 80's, and as a child of the 80's, you can't beat that nostalgia. So I did a mock up of the [what I will call] yellow [from henceforth] and pink and was like... yea, maybe this is the direction that I need to lean into, then I dove into the rib selection at Mood, and found this amazing grey and white striped ribknit and the choirs sang. That was the combo right there....so I showed it to the hubs again and he was like, "why don't you do pink and white"... erm, ... what? Pink and white had nothing on pink and yellow, and now that I had heard what I really didn't want, so I knew what I really did want. Thanks for the input Hubs! Later after I posted my youtube unboxing, one of my friends started referring to it as the 'starburst' jacket, and I think that's a pretty good reference for it as well TBH, lol.
Anyways, once that was done, I was ready to dive into my project. The whole thing came together pretty fast as knit projects do, but I will say that I opted to add all the topstitching the pattern suggested, and and that was a bit of a doosey at times, and not entirely perfect all the way around. Because the fabric is so nice and plush, having the seam allowances only under one side of my walking foot, made it hard for it to really grips the fabric evenly at times. Not the end of the world, but certainly a little challenging. To combat this, I put scraps of fabric under the opposing side of my walking foot, and that generally fixed the problem. To note, I was would still take luscious thick sweatshirting over thin sweatshirting any day, so I'll count this as a good problem to have. Also I could have just skipped the top stitching if I really wanted to.
Happy sewing friends!
Kten
I went straight to the terry's and sweathshirting. I checked out the coating as well, and then I found this amazing stretch fleece-backed cotton. Immediately a Friday Pattern Company Arlo popped into my head and then it was just a matter of figuring out what color combination I was going to make. I have procreate downloaded onto my tablet and that's usually my first go to, when I need to work out the options. And this is what I came up with:
You can see my digital coloring skills are inferior to my sewing skills, lol. I really had a hard time going back and forth between different combinations of grey and a color. Grey and white? Grey and pink? Grey and yellowy/orange? So I went to the hubs with my predicament somewhat leaning towards grey and yellow/orange and he was like... that's the same color combo you make everything in. ... and while that is a bit of an exaggeration, the sentiment is pretty spot on. I really like these those two colors, separately and together. Knowing I wanted to make the Arlo, I was feeling a bit drawn to the color combo on the envelope of the pattern as well.... it just looked so 80's, and as a child of the 80's, you can't beat that nostalgia. So I did a mock up of the [what I will call] yellow [from henceforth] and pink and was like... yea, maybe this is the direction that I need to lean into, then I dove into the rib selection at Mood, and found this amazing grey and white striped ribknit and the choirs sang. That was the combo right there....so I showed it to the hubs again and he was like, "why don't you do pink and white"... erm, ... what? Pink and white had nothing on pink and yellow, and now that I had heard what I really didn't want, so I knew what I really did want. Thanks for the input Hubs! Later after I posted my youtube unboxing, one of my friends started referring to it as the 'starburst' jacket, and I think that's a pretty good reference for it as well TBH, lol.
Once the fabric came, it was amazing. Nice and thick, soft on both sides, but extra soft on the fleecy-side and a decent amount of stretch in both directions. I literally could not want anything more. The ribknit also did not disappoint. It is so nice and substantial, matching the weight of the sweatshirting well and when I washed it, it got a little bit of soft fluffiness to it. Perfect I tell ya all perfect.
On that note, I pre-washed all my fabric on the harshest settings as I always do (because who knows what will happen to your cloth's if someone else decides to do the laundry- which is something I will neeeever complain about) and there was a little bit of shrinkage. Its hard for me to remember now exactly what the percents where, because I did it in two stages, first 2"x2" swatches to measure how much shrinkage to expect, then I calculated that out of my yardage, laid out my pattern pieces to make sure they would still fit and then threw all the yardage itself into the wash. I want to say there was between 5% and 10%? Probably not helpful sorry. Prewash some swatches people.
On that note, I pre-washed all my fabric on the harshest settings as I always do (because who knows what will happen to your cloth's if someone else decides to do the laundry- which is something I will neeeever complain about) and there was a little bit of shrinkage. Its hard for me to remember now exactly what the percents where, because I did it in two stages, first 2"x2" swatches to measure how much shrinkage to expect, then I calculated that out of my yardage, laid out my pattern pieces to make sure they would still fit and then threw all the yardage itself into the wash. I want to say there was between 5% and 10%? Probably not helpful sorry. Prewash some swatches people.
Anyways, once that was done, I was ready to dive into my project. The whole thing came together pretty fast as knit projects do, but I will say that I opted to add all the topstitching the pattern suggested, and and that was a bit of a doosey at times, and not entirely perfect all the way around. Because the fabric is so nice and plush, having the seam allowances only under one side of my walking foot, made it hard for it to really grips the fabric evenly at times. Not the end of the world, but certainly a little challenging. To combat this, I put scraps of fabric under the opposing side of my walking foot, and that generally fixed the problem. To note, I was would still take luscious thick sweatshirting over thin sweatshirting any day, so I'll count this as a good problem to have. Also I could have just skipped the top stitching if I really wanted to.
Otherwise the pattern came together really nicely, and I didn't find any glaring errors in the drafting which is always nice. I even got the zipper insert right on the first try, that was a real moment of pride for me given all those different seams that need to match on both sides. Fit wise, there are a couple tweaks I would make for next time but nothing egregious that makes me upset with this version.
First off I made the size XS, 22" long and I am 5'2.5", though my shortness is mostly in my legs. I took 2" off the bottom hem, which equates to 1" off the intended pattern length, because my ribbing was actually 2" (1" on the fold") longer than the pattern piece for it. I like the length now, but unfortunately that also means that my pockets are 2" more shallow than intended, so next time I would take that length out of the top pattern pieces and bottom pattern pieces equally. I also increased the collar by 2" (1" on the fold") to make it a little more snuggly ie., perfect for sticking my face in when its cold as evidenced below:
If I could go back I would have added 1" to the sleeve length. They are fine when I have my arms at my sides, but when I start moving around, they feel a little short... probably I could have just made the 24" long sleeve instead of the 22"... which make sense, because why would you crop sleeve lengths? Anyways I digress. Next time I would also make the ribknit waistband a little snugger. This as something I had planned to do, ie. instead of following the pattern piece I was just going to do what felt right, but when it came down to it, I dunno, I thought the pattern piece length looked like it was going to work out well. Now that its all together, I think it could be a little snugger, which is something I can still do, but probably won't, lol... it's really not that bothersome and who knows, it might just be one hot wash away from perfection.
When I was putting everything together, I was going back and forth the whole time whether I should add the same stripy knit to the collar instead of plain pink up top, and I was probably about 95% convinced I was goin to, and then my Hubs came by and told me, if Tim Gun was there he would tell me to edit. Hahahaha. So that time around the Hubs advice won, but honestly I think it could have looked good either way and the ribbing piece was so long there was enough to get it done.
Anyways, those are all my notes and thoughts on this one. Thanks so much for hoping over and reading all about it. Till next time...
Happy sewing friends!
Kten
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