I’m all done thinking about bridesmaids dresses for at least 6 months! HALLELUJAH! The wedding was last night and everyone looked great, and I’ll hopefully be able to show you everyone’s finished dresses once the official wedding photos come out. (The reason I say six months is because I’m making my own bridesmaid dress for my friend Jen’s wedding for Thanksgiving 2019 – I already have the fabric and pattern in hand.) Today I wanted to show you these two Linden sweatshirts I made a few months ago!
The first sweatshirt was a project that was close to two years, start-to-finish. I made a test version of the Linden before I made this one, and it honestly wasn’t the greatest thing. I don’t even have it anymore; I ended up passing it along because I never wore it (not even to go camping!). In that test version, I had to cut a new neckband because the fabric I had wasn’t stretchy enough and I didn’t know enough at that point that I should’ve recut it on the bias to try to help matters. Instead, the band was too long and didn’t lay flat and was just REAL BAD. But I forged ahead to my next version anyway.
I got some Liberty of London loop-back fleece from the workroom when I lived in Toronto. It’s normally $80/m, which is waaaayyy out of my budget. But I lusted after Karyn’s version of the Linden so hard, and since Liberty doesn’t sell quickly, I waited and waited and waited until there was a sale that included the Liberty fleece and then I got some. It was still $60/m but you don’t need that much for this pattern, and I got it as a treat.
I bought the fabric two years before I actually finished the sweater. I did start it around that time, but I had the SAME ISSUE with the neckband and lack of fabric stretchiness and of course I had cut one in a longer length and sewn it on and serged it and it stood up at full attention and was so so so bad. And I was so frustrated and mad that the sweater didn’t look how I had hoped that I shelved it and didn’t look at it for two years. I obviously came back to it eventually, because that fabric is waaayyy too precious to just give up completely.
(Confession: 1.5-2 years ago, I was making a hopefully-wearable muslin of the Winslow culottes and I picked a terrible fabric from my stash and was already irritated by the entire thing. And then I sewed the zipper in and my sewing machine got stuck on the same place and sewed like ten stitches in one spot, which also happened to have another part of fabric stuck under it, and it made a pucker that couldn’t be picked out without making a big hole in the fabric. I was so enraged and mad that I just threw the whole thing in the garbage and never looked back. I do want to revisit the Winslows in the future, but I will pick a MUCH different fabric.)
Anyway, two years later I was finally ready to revisit it and finish it. I cut a new neckband from the extra fabric, and I cut it on the bias this time. I unpicked the whole neckband, including the serged edge, which caused the neck edge of the sweater to get a bit distorted and mangled. Then, I attached the new one, stretching it AGGRESSIVELY with a high level of force, and simultaneously easing it together like a sleeve cap, all while using many many many pins. It’s not perfect, and I ended up with a few small tucks that I had to undo and resew, but it’s done! And wearable! And not sitting in a sad forgotten pile of unfinished projects. VICTORY! (Plus, that fabric. All the heart eye emojis.)
After the victorious long-overdue finish of the Liberty Linden, I wanted to reset my feelings about the Linden pattern and used this lovely cotton herringbone fleece from Patch (leftover from an Inari tee dress) to make another one. This fabric was muuuuch stretchier than the Liberty, and I didn’t have to cut the neckband on the bias. I did do the cuffs and bottom band perpendicular to the rest for visual interest, and that turned out well. This whole sew was sooo much quicker and easier than the previous one (I mean, hard to take longer than two years to make a sweatshirt), and I’m back on the Linden train! It’s so cozy and soft, and I see myself wearing it a lot in the fall/winter.
I also widened the neckband. I didn’t remember until after I’d already cut out the rest of the pieces that I wanted the neckline to be a bit higher, so I just widened the neck. I think in future when I return to this pattern, I’ll add a bit of height onto the top of the body and sleeve pieces to give myself a bit higher coverage. I find sometimes my t-shirts peek out the neck of both of these, mostly when they’re crewneck, and I’m not the biggest fan of that look.
Since I finished these, I also made a Toaster sweater (version #1), which will hopefully make it onto the blog in the next little bit. I think the Toaster is maybe a bit more work appropriate for my job as a teacher, whereas the Linden gives me a more casual vibe. What do you think?
