K4028 strikes again

May 24, 2018 by steelyseamstress 8 Comments

The regular readers of this blog may remember my K4028 disaster from last year. This was a top made from a tan-coloured viscose jersey. I chose a long-sleeved version of View A, which sported a big floppy cowl neck. Sadly, using viscose jersey the cowl proved rather too heavy and the neckline, although I’m not convinced it has grown since I’ve been wearing it, did end up in the sewing process rather on the large size. The top therefore is a smidge too revealing for my liking. The other problem was the fabric, which noticeably pilled at the hip and waist from the moment I first wore it. The whole top is just a big disappointment and I hardly wear it.

A whole year has passed and well, you know how it goes, you just get over these disappointments and I thought it was time to tackle this pattern again. I spotted a striped viscose jersey in my local Fabric Land. It was cheap (£3.99 a metre) and I thought it would be a good choice for having another bash at my nemesis, K4028. I didn’t yet trust my abilities with anything expensive with this pattern. I must say that although Fabric Land do stock very reasonably priced fabric, the quality is good too. I believe that they stock the fabrics at such low cost because they are wholesale prices.

I decided as I was using viscose again that I would just eliminate the cowl. I know, I know, it’s not really in the spirit of the pattern, removing the most distinctive feature from the design. However, I was keen to have a relaxed top which had those Dolman sleeves and I thought that it might indeed be more successful by taking out the most troubling design aspect. After all, if I could get this top right, perhaps I could reintroduce that cowl?

I was still worried about that neckline and made it smaller again than the pattern demanded. I cut out a good 10 centimetres in circumference from the neckline!

The fabric is very floppy and is ribbed so it was quite challenging not to stretch it out when I sewed. Whilst this didn’t seem to be problematic for the main seams and the hems, that neckline still gave me problems. It seemed really tricky preventing it stretching out, but I hoped because I’d reduced the neckline size on the pattern, it would still be a reasonable size.

When I started wearing the top though, the neckline still seemed to be much bigger than I had expected. How could this be happening? At least it was in the limits of decency! Perhaps this problem is less about stretching out the neckline during the sewing process and more due to the Dolman sleeves? With set-in sleeves or even raglan sleeves perhaps the structure around the shoulders keeps the neckline in place more? Does that make sense? Here, it seemed like the weight of the fabric on the sleeves was literally dragging the neckline out. I’ve just noticed in the envelope photo that the woman in the red top is holding her right shoulder up quite high; perhaps this is to stop the neckline sliding down the arm!

 

I’m not going to say this top has been a resounding success, but it is “moving in the right direction”. It certainly looks a lot more wearable than the last one, and certainly doesn’t suffer from pilling, despite using a low-price option from Fabric Land.

 

I think I should have been more wary of using a floppy viscose jersey though. Perhaps I could try either some cotton or bamboo jersey, both of which tend to be less heavy, next time?

The verdict is:

K4028 pattern – 2

Me – 0