I have wanted to meet Anne from Partywoods for as long as I've known her blog as I've always admired her creative genius at the sewing machine, so when she posted about her new sewing workshops end of last year I took my chance to participate in her sweater workshop at the Zick Zack sewing supplies shop in Steglitz. (You can find this years workshops here)
With the help of a well fitting sweater we would create a custom pattern to make a whole new sweater ourselves. Making her own patterns is one of Anne's specialities, so I was extremely interested in how it's done!
I picked this slim fitting Batman sweater from the husband, since the sweater was supposed to be his christmas present. All the fabric was bought at the fabric store where the workshop took place.
Okay, let's get started! Here's how we drafted the pattern*:
*Disclaimer: This is not a tutorial! I am just showing you some of the steps so you can get an idea of how the workshop went. All participants get a Handout with the tutorial to take home. If you want to try it yourself the web is full of turorials, for example this one.
We started by folding the sweater in half and outlining it. The front and back piece are basically the same except for the neckhole. We also outlined part of the arm, which will go on a seperate paper later on though.
This is what the front and back patterns looked like withe the arms still attached. Since we were making a raglan sweater, the armpieces were cut from the armpit to about 2/3 of the neckhole.
Then we drafted the arm pattern by putting together the front and back piece and extending it to the right lenght.
And finally we can cut the pattern out of the fabric. I chose two complementary fabrics for the body and arms of the sweater. The body fabric had an animal pattern on it which I carefully placed to be symmetrical before cutting it out. We added a centimeter of seam allowance and since I forgot to wash the fabric before cutting it I had to add a couple of centimeters on the bottom in case it would shrink in the laundry.
Then it was time for the actual sewing!
I didn't take too many pictures of the actual sewing, but as you can tell from the picture we used a zig zag stitch for stretchy fabrics to connect all the pieces and to serge the edges. The trickiest part of sewing everything together were the cuffs of the arm and neckholes, but we all managed it in the end!
Thanks to Anne for taking these photos of me!
And here's the creative genius in action! Anne was so patient with all of us, no matter how "stupid" the questions or mistakes were. I loved getting to know her these three evenings of the workshop, even though I had to "share" her with the other participants ;)
If you're interested in participating yourself you can find all the new workshop dates on Anne's Blog Partywoods right here.
And this is where the workshop took place. Look at all of those awesome fabrics!
Now to the finished Sweater:
I also had a little sneaky surprise photoshoot with the husband. (Can't plan these, because he'll just get grumpy :P)
Look, he actually smiled for some of the pictures! Oh, and of course he couldn't wait until Christmas to see his sweater. Well, I kinda didn't want to wait as well, because I was pretty proud of it! Can't wait to try this to make a sweater for myself.
