About a million years ago (okay, maybe not – about 18 years ago) I did a Knit-Wit course.  Any of you other Australians remember or do these?  It was a terrific course to learn how to sew knit fabrics effectively.  I still have all the notes and the early-90s patterns.  Lots of shoulder pads.  The knit fabrics were beautiful quality, stable knits.  I made a number of lovely garments.  Well, a few weeks ago I tried to sew a knit that contained plenty of lycra – knits and fibres have evolved considerably over the past 20 years.

I started off trying to make another patternless skirt, but cut the waist hole far too big.  Never mind, I’ll just turn it into a sleeveless top.  I pulled out a New Look pattern, cut out the front and back pieces of the top, looked hard at them then thought I’d better compare them to a sleeveless top I already owned that was a good fit.  Oh my goodness – the differences were astounding!  The pattern had much deeper armholes, much longer torso, lower neckline, narrower body – completely not my shape, even though the size was appropriate according to the pattern guidelines.  So rather than use the pattern I traced around my top and made my own pattern from that. 

All good so far – pattern drafted, front and back cut out, all sewn together on the overlocker, fits well.  Just time to finish off the bottom hem and neck and armhole edges.  I don’t have a coverstitch machine – so why not use the twin needle?

That’s why.  Those hems look awful.  I’m going to cut them off and make a binding strip from the same fabric.  And I’m going to do a lot more playing around with scraps to work out what sort of edge finishes work best with these super-stretchy fabrics with high lycra content – especially when sewing around curves.

I knew there was a reason I like to sew wovens.