Two days ago, I blogged about the beautiful cardigan An made for Ava. Today, it is my turn to show my own creation for another blogger’s kid.
Participating in Kids On Tour always involves a certain amount of stress. On top of that, I had one particular fear: that I would have to sew for a boy – something I hadn’t done before. But hey, what would be the odds, right?
Of course, I wasn’t just assigned a boy’s mom to sew for; I was assigned the International Queen of Boy’s Sewing: Sharon from Zonen09 patterns. Oh cr*p. I decided to sew for her youngest, Thor, because he and I share our birthday!
I wanted to use one of Sharon’s patterns, and I also wanted to make a sweater. Sharon doesn’t have a sweater pattern, so I bought the Billie t-shirt pattern instead. And that is where the trouble began. I would have to size up, but how much? I figured out the finished measurements of the sweater, and compared those the one sweater pattern I own, but that is a girl’s pattern. Are boy’s patterns supposed to be wider? And how about the length? A sweater has to be longer than a tee, right? And that applies to the sleeves too, I guess? Or not? By the time I had decided on the size and cut out my patterns, several hours had already gone by.
Then came the next issue: I didn’t want the stunning sweater fabric from Julija’s to be cheapened by a regular ribbing on the hem, sleeves and neckline. So instead, I used the main fabric as ribbing. But it did’t have that much stretch, so I had to make it wider. But how much wider?
In the end, I think things turned out quite alright. But the time I spent on what turned out to be a ‘quite alright’ sweater is simply ridiculous. How much time? Think ‘a lot of time’, and multiply that by three. 😉
Luckily, Sharon said at the exchange party that she really liked the sweater, and that the fabric was exactly something she would buy. Phew, what a relief! But an even better compliment came from Mr. StraightGrain, who said nothing more than: “I want you to make me one exactly like that”. Can you believe that he has NEVER said that before, not about anything I ever made? He just doesn’t realize how smashing he’d look in a Tinny 😉
Well, Thor, I hope you like the sweater! It was a pleasure sewing for a cool boy like you!
Head over to Sharon’s blog to check out pictures of Thor in his new sweater.