Self Drafted Merino Cardigan

For the most part, this blog forms a diary of my clothing makes for my reference.  I tend to use it to look back to see how I made a particular project so that I can recreate those that are the most successful.   I am afraid that I am rather terrible at putting notes on my pattern pieces and often not even all that good at making the  changes required.  For simple shapes I often just cut using my chosen block pattern as the guide.  This is very lazy of me and can often back fire when I really want to make the pattern up again.  This is where my blog comes in as an invaluable tool. 

 I didn't realise it had been 6 years since I had originally made my black dropped shoulder cardigan until I looked up my blog.  This thing is still a staple in my wardrobe and for the most part, looks just as good as the day I made it.  Buying quality merino fabric certainly paid off in longevity.  I don't always want to wear black though and this is where my latest version comes into play.

In late spring, I bought a selection of merino fabrics from New Zealand Merino and Fabrics and had been particularly drawn to their heavier weight merino fabrics because these aren't easy to come by.  I think the colour was stone from memory but they don't seem to have this on their website now.

Because this cardigan is one of my tnt self drafted cardigans now, this was super quick to make up.  I made the bands to the same dimension as my previous black one and interfaced the button band where the buttons and buttonholes were to be attached using some stretch interfacing.  The entire cardigan was pretty much made using my overlocker.  I did hold my breath when I was putting in the buttonholes.  I really didn't even want to think about the potential nightmare of trying to unpick merino.

I am really happy with how this has turned out.  It has been completed for a couple of months now and has been on regular rotation since.  Yes, I know, I am really slow writing this one up and for the record, it isn't just this project that has been a slow burn in the blogging department, there are more, sadly.