Rapt contemplation

The pieces of Big Blue are all finally blocked and dry, and I am now considering doing the seaming.



It's a pretty big job. There are five pieces, all knitted flat - two fronts, two sleeves, one back - which means I've got to attach fronts to the back, do side seams, and do sleeve seams. And then there's the collar extensions - those also have to be attached to the back neckline, and then attached to each other at the centre.



There are many, many video resources out there that will teach you how to make a nice seam happen, so I'm quite sure you don't need me to show you what I do, but I would like to take a moment to say that removable stitch markers are your friends. Perhaps obviously, I use them to put the pieces together the way I want them to be as I sew them up. They help me avoid that thing where you get to the end of your seam and one of your pieces still has an extra inch of fabric hanging off the end.

That being said, I've just realized that that second photo has a problem - the way I've pinned the collar extensions together is a bit misleading. The collar will fold over, so if I want the nice invisible side of the seam to show, I'll have to flip the piece over so that my mattress stitch pushes the selvedge stitches to the side that is facing up in the pic - that's the side that will be hidden in the folding over of the collar. If I do the mattress stitch with the pieces laying exactly as they are here, then I'll end up with a line of selvedge stitches showing down the centre of the folded collar when the sweater is being worn - no good.

In other news, I've been thinking about my Oblique cardi conundrum, and I pulled out all the yarn and existing bits and looked at them, and I've decided to push forward. I just keep telling myself that if I got a cardi with blanket style fronts and full length sleeves out of a batch of yarn the same size, I should be able to get a v-necked cardi with 3/4 length sleeves, even if the fronts have a bit of wrap to them.

We'll see if I'm right.

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