Which should I sew; the version with a shawl collar or hood? 

The fabric made my choice for sewing Jalie’s shawl collar or hood pullover, 2911.  A single-knit from a discount bin, it’s been aging nicely in MY bin, just waiting to be sewn into something GREAT!  It’s a dark forest green with a glittery thread running through it. Not a “hoodie” fabric.

For the most part it was an easy sew, but my fabric choice made it tricky.  A single knit rolls!  The cut edges roll to the wrong side when cut on the grain, and roll to the right side when cut across the grain.  It’s very soft and stretches easily.  My hands apparently are rough and they snagged and dragged this soft knit.  Grrrrrrr.  

Hand lotion, tissue paper, double-sided basting tape and Heat n Bond Featherlite all contributed to success.  I like the way this pullover fits me.  According to my measurements I would wear a size “X” but I like a bit more ease in my tops so I made size “Y”.

Hand lotion constantly.  I use Glysomed brand as the glycerin in it smooths my skin.  

Tissue paper slipped underneath the collar layers before basting them together.  Most of it tore away, the rest is in between the stitching and will dissolve and wash away.  I hope. Ha ha.

Double sided basting tape was used at the beginning of EVERY serged seam.  Just an inch or so did the trick.  I use a wash-away variety, so no worries there. And I serged the shoulder seams and the back neck seams of the shawl collar pieces.  After using my sewing machine to insert the collar, I did serge around the seam to finish it.  Then the sleeves were inserted, again with the serger, before the side seams were serged.

My hems were stabilized and basted with strips of the Heat n Bond Featherlite.  If you follow me at all, you’ve seen me use this often.  I fuse the strips to the wrong side, then fuse the hems up before I cover-stitch them.  The featherlite Heat n Bond is very soft, in fact you can’t even feel that it’s in the hem. It keeps it’s fluidity and stretch, and doesn’t gum up the needles.  A twin needle would give a very similar look.

Shawl collar or hood?  Next time I’ll make the hooded version.

In the meantime:

I’ll soon be teaching another Zoom class for Stitch by Stitch Kingston, this time featuring Jalie’s Laurent 4131. I wrote about that pattern first, here.

And a Beginning Quilting class for our quilt Guild, and my own Scrap Happy class on the last Sunday of January, “Scrappy Borders”, as well as sewing a sample of Maxime for a guest blog post on Fabricville’s site.

If you’d like info on any of those events, please email me at yvettechilcott@yahoo.ca