Once the major parts of my Dale sweater were knitted, the next step was to cut the steeks to cardiganize it and provide a place to sew in the sleeves.
First, I assembled the necessary supplies:
I used my swatch to practice sewing on knit fabric and adjust my sewing machine setup.
Then, it was time to sew the first reinforcements on my sweater. I started with the front neck steek, sewing two lines of stitching on each side of the cutting line. Here’s what it looks like on the wrong side – the yellow yarn is used to indicate where I’ll cut.
After cutting the steek, the neckline is now separated, and you can see the curve formed by the decreases on each side of the steek:
Next, I sewed the reinforcements for the center front steek. Here you see the cutting in progress. I put cardboard (an empty cereal box) inside the sweater to prevent accidentally cutting through the back of the sweater.
It’s a cardigan!
Then it was time for chocolate consumption. I also sewed the body and sleeve hems yesterday.
This morning, I sewed and cut the sleeve steeks. Unlike fair isle sweaters, traditional Norwegian sweaters don’t have extra cutting stitches added for the sleeve attachment – the sewing and cutting happens through the patterned stitches.
The aftermath:
This is a great post, Rebecca! I especially like the photo of your assembled supplies. Also, I’m curious about whether you had any problems with your yarn getting sucked down into the bobbin area in your sewing machine as you stitched. The proprietor of our local yarn shop told me that that is her greatest worry about steeking – not the cutting, but the stitching – and we discussed the wisdom of basting some tracing paper to the back side of the sweater to prevent that problem. Or did you stitch with the wrong side of the sweater up? I do admire your persistence in redoing your sleeves to get them to fit just right, but why did you cut off (aaaaaagh!!!) the top of the sleeve before redoing it rather than unravelling it? And call me old fashioned, but I really don’t understand why anyone would choose to “cardiganize” a sweater. If you want a cardigan, why not just knit one?? I guess it’s just a Scandinavian thing. Ann
I agree with Ann on this one – YIKES to cutting anything knitted! I mean, I know why you did it, and I’m not disagreeing with you, but holy cow, I don’t know that I would ever have the moral fortitude necessary to put scissors to anything I’d knitted. I stand in awe.