Hip to Be Square Sweater

Despite my vow a few weeks ago to make more adventurous designs, I went back to a classic for this one. Why? My wardrobe needed a basic wool sweater to transition into fall. Also, I wanted the challenge of working with a jersey fabric, rolling edges and all.

Hip to Be Square is what resulted. The sweater pattern is my basic pattern block. The jersey fabric is a very lightweight merino jersey with tucks in basic grid formation. I used the reverse side as the public side so the tucks would show. (I haven't decided yet if I'll offer this fabric for sale in the shop yet, as it's very narrow.) The tendency of jersey to roll at the edges turned out not to be a big issue with this fabric. Yeah, the edges rolled a little. But I could handle it.

The original plan was to use a plain jersey binding to enclose the edges, but then I got to experimenting with the binding fabric -- stretching, gathering, trying rolled hems -- before I realized that I'd forgotten to cut out the hem binding!! Since I no longer had enough plain jersey for the hem, I ended up using leftover main fabric, cut parallel to the selvage, for the hem binding. I really like the way this accidental design worked out in the end because of this particular stitch pattern.

Hip to Be Square before blocking, stitch pattern is turned sideways for hem binding.

Not enough new techniques were used in this sweater to do a "Further Notes" post, except to say that I did a little glue basting with Elmer's School Glue (as some quilters do) instead of my ever reliable Collins Fabric Glue Stick. More on this another time.

O!