The Grainline Linden sweatshirt has been in my PDF patterns inbox on my laptop for a good while so I knew that the olive terry sweatshirt fabric would make a fantastic sweatshirt. I purchased a walking foot in January from Weaver Dee in the 25% off sale on sewing machine accessories. In addition I bought some ribbed knit and some stretch needles from Ray Stitch in Islington.... all this preparation for a basic sweatshirt! Seems crazy doesn't it?
With my new walking foot this was lovely to sew. I set my machine to stitch length 3 and stitch width 3 which created a small stretchy zig-zag stitch that worked well for this weight of fabric. The only issues I had with construction was when sewing the cuff and neckline on - ideally I always like to match the seams but to avoid dodgy sewing I offset the cuff and sleeve seam / neckline seams to reduce the bulk of 6 lots of knit fabric going through my machine.
Normally my Bernina would be able to deal with this amount of bulk but since coming back from her service last summer the handwheel / bobbin-winder has been slipping and then cutting off power to the needle (something I will have to look into at a later date). Overall I now feel much more confident tackling knit fabrics!
Well judge for yourself. I am very happy with the final Linden. It is not 100% perfect but I am not going to point out any of the slight mistakes as they are pretty minor.
Here are some close up shots.
Here she is out in the wild today when I visited the fantastic Newport Street Gallery at Vauxhall, South London. It is a free art gallery owned by Damien Hirst to exhibit his vast personal collection of art. The current exhibition is by the painter John Hoyland whose saturated canvases were the perfect backdrop for the Linden! Thanks to my friend Nao who took the photos for me.
Pattern: Grainline Linden = £14.00
Fabric: One metre of olive knit from Girl Charlee UK won in SewBrum raffle = free
Ribbing: 1/2 metre from Ray Stitch = £6.00
Gutterman Thread: Grey from stash
Total: £20.00
