Trial Balloons: Sew Together: Tweedy Sweatshirt Number One!

I'm back from my month in Key West and after a month away from my sewing room I'll be hopping back in with both feet! Rhonda from "Rhonda's Creative Life" has agreed to do another "Sew Together" with me. While we may not feel all that 'together' most of the time 😝, for the next four weeks we are going to be 'sewing together', and sharing!

Several months ago Rhonda posted a link to the Fall/Winter 18/19 Chanel runway show (her post HERE). It got her thinking about tweed...and zippers. At the same time....in another part of the forest...I was trying out the Merchant and Mills patterns and falling in love with their simple, work clothing aesthetic (see them HERE). The idea of taking humble designs and fabrics and elevating them to haute couture was intriguing...and challenging. Not sure if we will be able to rise to Chanel heights, but we're giving it a go!

So here we are in February with a month of Tweedy Sweatshirts! We decided to use the Francine top from Merchant and Mills as our pattern and see what we could come up with using tweed fabrics.

I have been craving a simpler, leaner wardrobe over the past few years now. Once I get a basic pattern that fits, I want to use it over and over, changing the details and the fabrics, knowing that the basic garment is going to fit me and my wardrobe. The Francine Top is just the kind of garment.

The Francine pattern description is "Fisherman Top and Dress: Brittany Inspired Wardrobe Staple"

(you can read about my 'discovery' of Merchant and Mills HERE and my first go around with Francine HERE)

Apparently, in Brittany (and in Britain) women have much narrower shoulders than an ex-competitive swimmer American has and my first trial of the pattern confirmed this! Not to fear, I have my handy dandy shoulder increasing alteration down pat. (This is also a 'wardrobe staple' in my house!) It involves cutting the arm hole out and moving out and up by 1/2" to 1", depending on how much room I need, and then truing up the shoulder and under arm seams. This increases the shoulder width and raises the shoulder point without changing the size or shape of the armscye. There are other methods of making these changes, but this one has worked well for me so it is the first one I try...and in this case it did the trick.

On Tuesday of this week I was really glad that I had a pattern that was ready to go, knowing that I had promised to post my first Tweedy Sweatshirt of the month on Friday! When I got up I answered my mail, made a pot of tea and headed to the sewing room! OMG! Someone had stolen my sewing machines!!!!! Wait!? Oh yeah, I had completely forgotten that I had taken them to the 'doctor' for a good cleaning and tune up after all the waxed canvas coats I had made at Christmas time! Drat! Off to the sewing machine dealer, not part of the already tight timeline!

With my sewing machines back all clean and shiny I was ready to go...sew. However, an icy storm had descended so whatever I was going to do had to come from my stash. In December I had accompanied my mom to a favorite quilt shop to help pick out a backing for her most recent project. I don't usually find a lot of garment fabric in quilt shops but this trip I bumped into little stacks of wool tweeds that were sold for making penny style rugs and wool embroidery. I picked one up not knowing I would have a use for it so soon. I also had a sweatshirt made of heavy cotton french terry that I had been planning to cut up for a jacket. Perfect! My first tweedy shirt...

I cut the sleeves off the sweatshirt and recut them using my Francine sleeve pattern pieces to reshape the tops, leaving the rest of the sleeve intact. I cut the front and back out of the body of the sweatshirt, again leaving the ribbing intact.

Now for the tweed...The pieces I had were already cut into 5" squares so that's what I used. I arranged them on the front and sewed them down in a diagonal 1 inch square patten....

I had a piece of heavy wool jersey that worked for a collar and a herringbone "tweedy" looking zipper that I thought would be great! (Often the last decision I make in the evening turns out to be less than optimal...the zipper came out to be replaced with a brown one that blended much better with the shirt.)