Party in my Cardy

I am in love. I want to live in this cardigan forever and have all its cardigan babies. I purchased this fabric from Joann's a couple months ago with no project in mind. Before I even sewed one seam, I went back and bought another yard because I loved it so much. I should have purchased the whole bolt. I had to buy 8 yards of navy polyester for another project in the works and I asked them to leave it on the bolt for me. You have no idea how excited I was to walk out of the store with a nearly full bolt of fabric, and I'm not even keeping the end product of that. I think John is afraid to walk into my sewing room these days. It looks like I'm about to open my own fabric shop. I digress.......

I know, this striped stretch jersey doesn't seem like it would provoke such strong feelings. Maybe you don't know me very well. The only reason I didn't purchase even more yardage of it on yet another return trip to Joann's was because it was on sale (only 30%) so I couldn't use my better coupon. When I bought it the first and second times, I got it for half off and it ended up costing only $6/yard. Seeing that price in print resulted in me kicking myself just now for not buying even more. Gosh, I digress again.......

Sewing with stretch fabric frightened me a bit. I did it before with a dress but I wasn't too pleased with my result. You are supposed to use a ballpoint needle, which I have. But, let me tell you something, ballpoint needles and universal needles look identical. IDENTICAL! I couldn't remember what kind was on my machine and I had a vague memory of possibly putting a universal back in with the ballpoints. Why would I do this? So, I threaded a new needle that I presumed was ballpoint, switched my stitch to a stretch zigzag and set out to sew.

Patternless, I had a concept of what I wanted this cardigan to be and went with it. I was inspired by this post on Elle Apparel. Using a stretch jersey cardigan that I own and love. I cut out a pretty loose pattern with some variations to the cut and length. Cutting into this fabric made me nervous. Going patternless also makes me nervous. Sewing this cardigan was giving me the sweats and I hadn't even put my foot on the pedal. I wanted this to come out beautifully and I did not want to ruin my fabric to an unsalvageable (not a real word) state.

                  Sorry this picture isn't pretty, also yes, the one side needs to be shortened in the front. :|

Luckily, it all turned out fine. I could not love it more! The length is amazing and I made the sleeves extra long. That's the best part. Nothing worse than too short sleeves. I'm going to wear it every single day. And now I'll be on a hunt for a similar fabric in other colors.