Sewing as Therapy: A Burda Style Cardigan

Some may be thinking, "does she really have anything wrong with her, because she sews so much?"   Well the answer is that sewing is good mental and physical therapy for me.    Sewing has always been a stress reliever, especially with the high stress jobs/projects I had before I retired.   So every day that I can,  my husband gets me up to the sewing room and I do the best I can, repeating the motions I've done for so long.   Today's project was Burda Style 7349, a cardigan jacket.

I saw this cotton "Tulum" knit cardigan in the Peruvian Connection's spring catalog ($159) that inspired me to try this pattern.   There are many variations of cardigans like this by Eileen Fisher and others.    I wanted to play with the dots and stripes again so I cut this out yesterday afternoon.   Styles like this enable lots of creativity and still look stylish.   This afternoon I sewed it up.    Here are some photos and there are more on the Burda Style Patterns Flickr Set.   I may pull out some ribbed knit from the stash and make another.

The pattern calls for you to cut 4 of the front top pieces and self face, but I eliminated that.   It also calls for a bias band to finish the back.    To stabilize around the neck so I used 3/8" fusible bias tape at the neck and about 9" down the front.    I also cut bias knit strips, pressed them in half and sandwiched the entire neckline between them for both a design element and to further stabilize.    I used Steam-a-Seam on both the front and back of the bias for that, and left the edges of the trim and the bottom raw.   This needs shoulder pads to look nice.   The sleeves are blind hemmed.