With the Jarrah sewalong kicking off this coming week, I thought it would be nice to share one of my favourite Jarrah makes from our pattern development and testing period! As I mentioned during the pattern release, I started working on this pattern out of my own need for warmer clothing, and I have really enjoyed having an entire wardrobe of cute sweaters to wear on cold days. I’m wearing it here with my Ash slim leg jeans with the stepped hem that I made last year, and I really like these two together!
One of the many fun things about pattern development is trying out lots of things to figure out what I want the end pattern to be like. That’s the story of this make! You’ll probably notice that this is a slightly longer version of the View C tie front sweater. During our development I tried making this version a little longer to see if I would still like it – and I do! If you like this longer length it’s honestly so easy to achieve by slashing and spreading the pattern – but of course we’ll show you during the sewalong. For now let me tell you a bit more about this make ;)
For the fabric I used fuzzbuster fleece from Knitwit in the dusty pink colour. I actually bought this sweatshirt fleece to make Bunny and Birdie sweaters a few years ago when I was developing the Mini Briar sweater/tee pattern. I made one for Bunny and very quickly realised I had bought WAY too much fleece. There was so much leftover! Which worked out pretty well when I was working on Jarrah as I could use it to make myself one. This is another one of those times where I feel i have unfortunately validated my own stashing problems…
I really really love this colour. It’s a deeper pink than I would usually wear, and I’ve been enjoying the change. I have a tendency to wear a lot of grey (as you will see in my future Jarrahs!) so it’s nice to break out into a colour.
This fabric is incredibly warm and I wore it so much in winter. There were even some really cold nights I slept in it – i admit it!
One of things I love about Knitwit is that they always stock matching ribbing -you can win my heart with matching ribbing! I used the coordinating ribbing for the cuffs and neckband, and the hem is sewn using a twin needle. I also used the twin needle to topstitch down the neckband seam allowance. I don’t always do this, but my general rule is that if I’ve used topstitching somewhere else on the sweater, I like to do it on the neckband to tie it all together.
My one regret is that my pink thread isn’t a close enough match. Obviously i didn’t care enough to drive to the local fabric store and pick up the correct thread before hemming, so i’m just going to have to live with it!
Regardless of my topstitch thread colour nit picking, I’m so happy with how this sweater turned out. I can’t even tell you how many times I have worn this exact thing to take my kids to school. It’s a serious upgrade on a basic sweatshirt and has elevated that classic sweater/jeans/sneaker combo we all live in during the cold months.
photography by Bronnie Joel
