Wednesday 8 July 2020

Hot botty 2

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Chill Botty cardi, part 2



Following on from my last blog post....

Cut off lower parts of the side fronts and the back. Cut them all different lengths. I hacked off that left sleeve unevenly, leaving an indent where a long sleeve is yet to be attached. It needs to be straight so I'll fix that by sewing a little patch in there.

This long cardigan will be unlined. Once the bottom sections are cut off we move from
de-constructing to putting it all back together. I'll be adding strips and squares of other fabrics using my quick overlay technique. For this the I use the widest 3 step zigzag stitch on my sewing machine (Janome 6600) which is 7mm. This stitch is commonly used for lingerie making as its a stretch stretch. Its necessary for this project because I'll be combining knits and woven fabrics and the 3 step stitch is going to prevent the stretch fabrics from distorting when sewed. It also facilitates not needing to line the garment as there won't be any seams on the underside.

In the instructions from now on I refer to the 3 step zigzag as 3ZZ

step 1, prepare the shoulders for where the sleeves will eventually be attached - cut 2 strips of  fabric 55cm long by 8cm wide. Centre middle of the strip over the shoulder seams and overlaying the fabrics sew with 3ZZ.




Above you can see where the strips are sewed to the shoulders.

step 2, on the left front I sewed a patch pocket. At the bottom I sewed 2 strips of fabric. All these just had the raw edges overlaid less than 1cm and sewed 3ZZ. On the right front I sewed a little triangle patch and at the bottom a large section I'd cut off another cardigan I'm upcycling. That section is flared wider at the bottom. To get the left and right side fronts matching I sewed a long narrow triangle of fabric to the front edge of the left front so it flares wider and matches the measurements of the other side.




step 3, above is a picture of the back. On the top part I've sewed more purely decorative patches, picked from my scrap bag. The lower part of the back has a long wide strip sewed to it, the full length. The side fronts are hanging lower because I need to add more stuff to the back to equal the same length.

Not counting the time I'm putting into documenting this project, the whole alteration has taken about 1.5 hours.

So at this stage the garment could potentially be a nice little sleeveless vest. To do that it would need a bit more length on the back so the side seams can be sewed up. Then I'd add plackets to the raw edges of the side fronts, so it can button up. The cap sleeves could be bound or hemmed.
Voila! a sweet button up vest.

However, in the next blog, Part 3, I'll show how to make and attach long sleeves.
Part 4 will show how to add about 50cm to the lower part to make it a knee length cardigan.

I intend to use up all the pieces that were cut off the original jumper in this reconstruction process so that 100% of it is upcycled. Because the jumper is polyester/acrylic when I adopted it into my wardrobe I pledged to take responsibility for it for the rest of its life. It needs to be worn at least 100 times or used in another form for at least 20 years before the resources that were invested in its creation can be environmentally justified.





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