Good evening! I hope everyone’s had a good week 
I have the ultra back-to-work feeling after having a week off, which has been very nice. And you can enjoy some of the scenery right here…
Before we went away, I made this cardigan!
It’s Jalie 3248, in a stripy french terry from girlcharlee. I’d never sewn with a Jalie pattern before, though I’ve heard good things about them. I’m also amazed by their range of sizes! There are 27, ranging from toddler to plus size. I saw this cardigan through the momiform makeover hosted by Lauren at Baste & Gather. There’s also a beautiful one made by Lauren herself. The cardigan was covered on day one, and you can see it here (along with about a million other excellent basics!), and immediately I thought it would be a marvellous addition to my wardrobe: nicer than a sweater, and will fit regardless of what my tummy is doing. Excellent! Also it has pockets.
The fabric is probably quite an ill-advised choice. The cardigan is recommended for lighter, drapier fabrics like viscose jersey. Also, the front is all double-layered, so using white and dark stripes might not have been the best idea. Also, most of my maternity-appropriate tops are patterned (I don’t know why because I’m not that keen on patterns. Maybe I feel like I’m getting better value for money if the fabric has a pattern on? Do you ever irritate yourself by being illogical when buying fabric?) so it doesn’t really go with a lot of my tops. But I mainly used it to get rid of it, and to test out the cardigan pattern. It’s a lot thinner than I imagined, and the stripes are horribly off-grain. As in the direction of greatest stretch is probably a good 20 degrees off the stripes. But despite all this I am enjoying this cardigan, and in fact I’m wearing it right now! Is there a proper way to deal with off-grain fabric like this? I went with the direction of the stripes, because it would surely look ridiculous if I went with the grain. But I just don’t know!
Working with a Jalie pattern was certainly different from my usual experience, but I enjoyed it. The instructions are very concise (all on one sheet!) with diagrams on another couple of pages. Now that I’ve made it once I think that’ll be great, because I know how it all fits together and just need a memory jog. But when I made this I definitely did more than my usual amount of unpicking. The construction is genius, but it’s quite strange, and there are various small details that if you miss, it goes wrong. However those details are in the instructions, so once I read it properly it was all fine. Clearly it’s been too long since I heard the READ THE INSTRUCTIONS mantra from school.
Look how clean the insides are though (while ignoring my face)! The fronts are double layered, and the pocket is constructed sort of between the two front pieces and the side seam (don’t worry, Jalie explain it better than that). Even the shoulder seams are fully enclosed. And it was pretty quick to make, even with my silly mistakes and all the stripe-matching. So I’m pretty pleased I plan to make at least one more, in a drapier and more appropriate plain fabric.
In case you’re wondering where on earth we could be, it’s the beautiful North Yorkshire Moors! Though I should add a disclaimer that North Yorkshire is not always so gloriously sunny… We went to the steam rail gala, with a little walk up onto the moors behind Goathland station, where these photos happened. But for every photo of me in this cardigan, there are many, many more like this:
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