Sunday, April 17, 2011

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.

9 comments:

  1. Beautiful work as usual.
    Hope your iv therapy this week helps.
    Dotty

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  2. I really like this stripes/dots combo, Terri. Good for you for keeping at what you love while you work out this GBS.
    Keeping my fingers crossed for your IV therapy this week.

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  3. Beautiful cardigan. I love the stripes and dots combo.

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  4. This cardigan would look good with the Bianca shown in the previous post. I'll bet you did that delibertly.

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  5. Whoa! You made an amazing cardigan! Love, love this one the way it is pieced. Good luck on your therapy and IV treatments. I'm so sorry to hear about all that and sending good thoughts your way. Uh...you sew for your sisters???? Will you adopt me?

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  6. So pretty! I love the way you mix materials, it's quite a gift. I'm sending good thoughts your way for a quick recovery.

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  7. Such a lovely cardi! I would never have envisioned yours from a look at the pattern envelope. You done good.

    All the best with your treatment. Makes my stupid double-whammy of viruses look like I'm just whining at nothing. ;)

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  8. I love the cardigan. (I'm way behind on blog reading!) Nice neutral colors!
    Marcia

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  9. I pulled this pattern out of my collection when I saw you interpretations! They are lovely and you have inspired me to make a striped version.

    I'll be thinking of you and I hope that you find some sort of resolution for your medical problems. It must be terrible.

    Rose in SV

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