Finn Cardigan

This baby cardigan from La Maison Victor turned out a big success. I went for size 62, and as recommended, a sweat fabric for the outside and a jersey lining (leftovers from this dress). With La Maison Victor, I really appreciate them giving size specific fabric amounts ( especially paired with Stoff and Stil where you can order fabric amounts in 10 cm steps). I bought the recommended 60 cm of the sweat fabric- and I have enough left over for a second cardigan- despite having my first go at pattern matching. I didn’t change anything about the pattern apart from button placement- my top buttons were completely off, so I just improvised the placement on the finished cardigan.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

While I liked the instructions in general, I found they lacked proper information regarding the snap button installment. You usually interface fabric where you want to place metal snap closures (or buttonholes), but the instructions didn’t say so. Well, I went along with the instructions, thinking it might be ok because there are two layers of fabric. Turns out that’s not enough. When I installed my first metal snap on scrap fabric, I wasn’t very happy with the button “eating” the fabric- it just looked distorted. Additionally, the buttons very really hard to pull apart again, and I feared prolonged use of the cardigan would eventually make the fabric rip in places. Since I didn’t interface the fabric normal buttonholes and buttons were out of the question as well. In the end I settled for plastic snaps, which worked totally fine on my scrap pieces. I just hope the plastic holds up to laundering.

Since I didn’t have any jersey bias binding on hand, I decided I could make my own from scraps. VERY BAD IDEA. My scraps weren’t big enough to allow me to cut the binding on the bias. Turns out, jersey, cut on cross grain on is extremely prone to rolling up and seems to be immune to being handled with a tape maker. So, I was in for some painstaikingly slow binding making by ironing each fold in by hand. In the end though, it was worth the effort, since I could use scraps and didn’t have to buy anything.