Freddy Sweater Part 2: Sleeves & Collar

The Freddy Krueger sweater is coming along nicely.  Having settled on a good way to attach the green stripes, I completed the front and back last time, and connected the two pieces at the shoulder seam.  Before I went any farther, it was time to tackle the collar piece, which I was not looking forward to.

I consulted the following online resources:

1)  A You Tube video tutorial from WhatTheCraft.com

2)  This other blog tutorial

I did some of each, but the general methods were the same.  I didn’t do all the measuring suggested in the second tutorial, but it was nice to hear all the numbers in case I wanted to be exact.

Here are the things I learned about t-shirt collars:

1)  It seems pretty important to stretch the neckband piece as you are sewing it onto the shirt.  Although I admittedly did not try it without stretching the collar piece.

2)  It is not as scary as it seems at first.

3)  The back piece of a shirt or sweater should have a much less rounded neck band line.  The one I created with my pattern for this sweater was more round than I should have made it, but it will do.  Really the neck band on the back of a shirt should be almost straight while the front of the neckline should be nearly circular.  There is a good picture of this in that second resource I listed above.

4)  The video tutorial gave me a nice way to attach the collar without having to stitch the ends together into a circle first.  I appreciated this since I was working with a knit and these tend to stretch a little as you sew.   Its kind of like sewing an elastic casing – you start further ahead than you want to, and end sooner, leaving an opening (generally in the center back where the seam will be).   Then you cute and unfold the neckband pieces and stitch them together.  Looks something like below.  Then you refold the collar and close the opening you left in the stitching.

Here is what my collar looked like when done.  I was pretty happy with it, though I am curious what it will look like on a person, since my collar lines on my pattern were apparently a little bit off.

Next up was the sleeves.  I much prefer the flat method of sleeve sewing to easing, so that is what I did.  I was fairly happy with how this worked in terms of the pattern lines.  I had to do a little pulling and stretching as I pinned, but all in all, this turned out good.

You can see that I attached the sleeve prior to putting on the green stripes.  I wanted to do my best to line up all the sweater stripes.  You’ll see how that went in a moment.  Here is the finished sleeve seam.

In the picture above, you not only see my pretty seam, you can probably also see that I have a problem.  There is pretty much no way for me to line up the top green stripe because it is so very high on the chest piece of the sweater.  When I look at other images of the Freddy sweater, I notice that most frequently the stripes do not begin until the armpit level where they can be lined up.  Either that or the shoulder seams of the sweater are longer so that the sleeve is almost perpendicular as it falls of the shoulder, making the stripes easier to match up.  #*@$&%!!

I also realized that even if I had been able to attach a stripe on the sleeve to this top stripe on the front and back, I would have needed to place and stitch it on prior to sewing that shoulder seam.  Double $@!%#^&*!

However, I decided to continue anyway.  It would be a lot of trouble to rip the seams on those stripes and who knows what state the fabric would be in after words.  I decided that top strip was just not likely to have a counterpart on the sleeves.

I folded the sleeve in half and pinned the stripes on, beginning by eyeballing the distance from the armpit corner to the stripe on the body and mimicking that distance on the sleeve.

From there I used the lines on my sewing mat to leave just a little more than 2″ spacing between each green stripe as I pinned them down.  After stitching all the stripes down, I had something like this.

Then I rinsed and repeated this process on the other sleeve.  At this point, I have a nearly finished sweater!

I don’t think the lack of a green stripe in that shoulder area will make too much difference, but we will see when Aeris tries this on.  I think I am going to leave the sleeve seams and side seams open for now, or maybe I will baste them shut.  I want her to try it on before I finalize the fit of it.  The only other thing left is to put cuffs on the sleeves and the bottom of the sweater, and they will look similar to the collar when all said and done.