Sylvia Sews

The quilted pullover is complete. Well, there is batting fluff just barely visible out of the seam of the collar and a tiny hole showing more batting in the underside of the arm. I will definitely fix that…! In a few days… Right…. RIGHT??? It turned out super warm, cozy, and in my opinion, cute. However, it is currently 70 degrees and sunny and I live in California. Never mind that. I know it will come in handy eventually.  This is one of the first projects where a “vision” actually comes to light, and I’m not totally underwhelmed by the results.

The problematic part of this project was the actual act of sewing.. My household machine struggled with every stitch through the thick layers, every seam painfully made itself heard. If the instructions said “Try to sew this welted pocket without any puckering,” I saw puckering and figured it was a busy enough pattern no one would notice and moved to the next step. The overall motto of this project was “Fuck it.” The sewing was just too painful.

Attempting to serge my seams was equally, if not more horrid. I broke two needles. I rethreaded the serger 3-4 times. I was getting cocky with my new serger prior to this, wondering why people always bitched about threading and generally having to mess with them. “Not me…” I thought to myself..” “I just have a better way with things I suppose…”

Well, the world will always humble you. Honestly, I set myself up for that one, being all high and mighty. So if you look inside my sweater, half of it is serged, half of it has a zig zag stitch to finish seams. Of course those are also completely different colors.

My thought process with kind of fumbling through was this: I am upcycling a homemade thrifted quilt into a sweatshirt. This project’s general vibe is kitschy and homemade on its own- so perfecting things to make the garment more professional would have diminishing returns.

You know how a lot of people these days struggle with perfectionism? That has not been on my radar. I am a HUGE fan of half-assing things when you feel within yourself that trying to do anything more than a half-ass job would mean a zero-ass job. There’s the quote, “Why half ass two things, when you could whole ass one.” My response is, “Well what if I can only half ass ONE thing. Why did you assume I could even manage doing two things.” And then, later on you can reflect on the dumb things you did to speed through the process and ultimately learn something from the experience.

I also heavily base my actions on “The Law of Diminishing Returns” courtesy of my economics education.

Back to the pullover details- I used the Pogonip Pullover pattern from Friday Pattern Co. This was  my first attempt at using a PDF print at home pattern. My review of printing at home is… eh. It’s fast to get a pattern for sure, but taping together pieces of printer paper for an hour just makes me feel silly. Next time, I will try to send the file to a copy shop or something and see how that goes. Otherwise, it’s awesome to have the pattern file to reprint indefinitely.

The pattern itself was cute and easy to follow,  and I learned a new technique- Welted pockets! My only fit adjustment was adding 2.5 inches to each sleeve. I left the body the same length, and I like where it hits as a more cropped style (but not too cropped!) It was refreshing to not mess with fitting too much after sewing a fitted button up shirt.

 This project ranks high in the frustration factor for me, because of the thick quilt aspect and feeling like I’m going to destroy my sewing machine, but now that it’s complete I’m feeling pretty satisfied with it. I’m already starting to be in denial that I was ever that frustrated! Let the record show,  the journey was painful. I will be sewing a thin two layer garment next to cleanse my palate. I didn’t mention it, but the quilt was king sized so I have fabric for about 3 more sweatshirt sized designs! An excellent find by my mom at Goodwill for only 15 bucks!

Hours Logged

Very rough estimates on the hours.. but this was over the course of 5 days. I worked on it primarily in the evenings after the kids went to bed.

-Pattern cutting and taping.. 1.5 hrs

-Fabric cutting/layout: 1.5 hrs

-Sewing and pressing: 4 hrs

-Snaps/hand sewing/elastic: 1.5 hrs