Freddy Sweater Part 1: Stripes and Machine Woes

I’ve been slowly working on the beginnings of a Freddy Krueger sweater for a friend’s daughter for Halloween.  I’m moving a bit more slowly than I would like, mostly because last week was crazy at work.  However, as of today, I can say most of the stripes have been sewn on, although not according to my original plan.

I was going to use this Tear Easy Lightweight Stabilizer stuff to make sure the two knit fabrics played nicely together.  But as I tested it out, I had a few issues.  First, it ripped a little too much.  In the picture below, you’ll see how it looked to sew the green stripe on the tear easy, and then tear the stabilizer off – this part worked well.  Then you’ll see the extra ripping that occurred – that did not go so well.

I am still glad I bought this stabilizer, and I am sure it will be useful to me on other projects down the road.  There were a couple other things that contributed to me not using the stabilizer.

1) First, I couldn’t see a way to stitch the stabilizer in that would (a) guarantee me no messy edges on the outside of the sweater, and (b) not require me to do extra steps.  I didn’t want to add white to the outside of the sweater in any way, and if I had to attach stabilizer to all the stripes and THEN attach all the stripes to the red fabric, I would be a very miserable seamstress indeed.

2) The stabilizer might restrict the wearer’s ability to put the sweater on.  The advantage of knits is that they are stretchy, and I didn’t want to lose that advantage by adding the stabilizer.

So, I resorted to my handy dandy tissue paper trick.  So far the only bad thing I can say about this is that the inside of the garment looks funny until it is washed (see below).

Let me backup a tiny bit and say that I did some very careful pinning and measuring using my green self-healing cutting mat to make sure that the stripes were evenly spaced and straight!  Although, once I got to the machine, the pins were kind of useless since the green knit stretched a bit naturally as I stitched.  They served as a very useful guide.

I did have some interesting issues with my machine while I was attaching the green stripes using my tissue paper trick.

1)  I was using Stitch 04, my standard zigzag stitch to tack down the edges of the appliqued stripes.  For some reason, my machine was occasionally skipping some of the zigs or zags.

From what I have read online, I might need to try a “stretch” needle, rather than a ball point or normal needle (I was using a ball point here).  Has anyone had a similar issue and know of a good fix?  I hope I don’t need to take my machine in to the shop … No matter what, the needle always moved as if it was doing a zigzag stitch, just sometimes it didn’t.  Very odd.

2)  I had some interesting catches happening every now and then as I sewed.  My project looked like this, immediately after one of them:

These catches were easy for Fred to fix, but they were annoying.  I thought maybe a thread tension issue, but none of the traditional signs were there.

All in all, I have attached stripes to the front and back pieces of the sweater.  I used the first piece I sewed as a guide when I was pinning the stripes on the second piece so that they would line up nicely, like below.

I have read up on good ways to attach a t-shirt like collar, which I think may be one of my next steps.  I am debating how to do the sleeve stripes.  Do I attach them now, before I put the sleeves on and run the risk of non-matching stripes?  Or do I attach the sleeves with a flat method and try to appropriately gauge where the stripes go before I close the sleeve?  I am leaning towards the second option, but please chime in if you have thoughts on this.

I am hoping to get this nearly done in the next week or so, as I have offered to sew an Inuyasha costume for my friend’s other daughter … time’s a ticking! 🙂

Evidence & Overthinking

Look!  I haven’t forgotten all about sewing!  I have evidence: I’ve made progress towards the Freddy Krueger sweater project.

After donning my dress for my role as matron of honor in my sister’s wedding this weekend, I have every intention of getting back to my sewing machine and working on this project.  As soon as I acquire green thread.  For now, I am debating which camera to bring to the wedding – the fit-in-my-pocket variety or my D-SLR?  And some small part of me says both.  I think the small part of me will win, because then I can use the good camera for rehearsal and dinner and getting ready, but I can carry the tiny camera in my pocket for the reception and not fear losing my expensive one.

Yes, these are the things that go on in my mind.  Welcome to “How To Overthink Any Problem And Bring Too Much Stuff Everywhere You Go”.  Perhaps I am ready for children after all … just kidding!

Aside from over-thinking my camera packing situation, I have also been over thinking the best way to make Aeris, my friends’ 10-year-old daughter, an appropriate Freddy Krueger sweater for her Halloween costume.  Her dad, Sean, who works with me at Sparc, is doing the amazing prop and makeup work for her costume.  I theoretically have the easy part 🙂  In case you are like me, who until several weeks ago did not have any idea what Freddy’s sweater looked like, here it is:

I know, not a full view, but the ones Google Image brought up with full body view looked lame, or didn’t have a good mask.  And Sean is very good at the prop work, so inevitably the costume is going to look fantastic, though I may cry a little on the inside when the sweater gets burnt and weathered and dirtied up.

In short, it is a red and green striped get up, with a crew neck collar.

The problem that caused so much over thinking was two fold: (1) I don’t knit, which is probably how the sweater SHOULD be made.  (2)  I could not find fabric with appropriately sized (at least 2″ wide) red and green stripes.

I decided early on to purchase both red and green knit fabric for the sweater.

My first thought was to cut stripes of both colors and stitch them all together.  Then I would cut sweater pieces out of the striped material.  And I would have to line the inside because of the seams.  And I would need to make sure to do a good job ironing those seems because the sweater could look really wonky if the seams bulge or lay funny.

And suddenly I noticed that I had a lot of stipulations for this sweater to turn out nice.  Too many in fact.

So I thought some more on it (more thinking, great plan!).  And I inquired of several sewing buddies’ expertise.  I received some good ideas, two of which I will be using, from different sources – thanks Sally & Amanda!

1)  Instead of piecing the entire thing together, I will use the red fabric as the base pieces of the sweater.  Then the green stripes will be appliqued on to the fabric.  This was Sally’s idea.  I work with super smart people! 🙂

2)  Rather than use Heat N Bond like I did for all the applique work on Project Breyna, I bought some Tear Easy Light Weight Stabilizer.  Amanda recently used this on a fabulous project she did with appliques and recommended it to me.

The best part?  Since I did sooo much applique work on the priestess robes, I know this will be very doable.  And hopefully my machine needles will get less gummed up with the Tear Easy instead of the Heat N Bond.

With that decided and Aeris measured, I set to making a pattern.  Believe it our not I don’t own a plain crew neck sweater pattern, and I didn’t have any luck with the McCall’s stuff that was on sale recently.

Above are the two pattern pieces that I created.  And the stripes that I cut in the green knit fabric.  When I cut the front and back of the red top, I added a little bit of length to the shoulder straps.  The sleeves are likely a little too long for her, but I am going to leave them as is for now and I can hem them or cut them later.  I am a little bit uneasy about the sleeve holes – I know that when you ease sleeves the top of the sleeve is supposed to be larger than the armhole, but I don’t know how well this went from a pattern drafting perspective.

Here are all the pieces cut and arranged all pretty.

Aside from the armhole seams, I am worried about the collar facing and the sleeve cuffs.  Should be an interesting project and my first time sewing anything for a child, so I am sure there will be lots of things to learn!  Woohoo!  Bring on October!