Knock off cardi and more embroidery

My Janome 350e embroidery machine seems like it hasn't stopped all weekend, firstly I was embroidering my squares for my sampler quilt on Saturday and then I was doing cute little squares for something, yet to be decided for little Alana, or even possibly for Alana and Ella to share when they come to visit.

Today was no exception - I had purchased a fleece for my D Mike and needed to embroider that so I decided on a nice dragonfly design followed by a slogan that means something to IT geeks, but I am sure you could use it in many other instances.

Now in a previous post I had mentioned that I wanted to make a lace cardi .  I have several of the waterfall cardi patterns, but generally they seem to have far too much fabric.  I had purchased a very cheap little cardi, which I guess because of the cheap price, the cardi was not overly generous in fabric, which in some ways I prefer, so I decided to use this as a template to make my own pattern from the cardi.

I turned the cardi inside out, folded it in half and then traced off the back section first - simple.  I took the key points i.e sleeves and neck curves by pinning it around and then marking the paper with some dots and then using my tailor's curve to shape the neck edge and the sleeve

I folded the paper in half and folded one of the sleeves in half and traced the sleeve off on the fold, again pinning around the curves and marking the paper with dots.  I pinned out the front section too and did the same thing.

The pattern had been created without any seam allowances, so I had to remember to cut these out with a 5/8th seam allowance.

Sewing this couldn't be simpler - sew front sections to back - stitch using serger, attach sleeves, then sew up sleeve and side sleeves.

The original had a bias trim fixed to the front and neck edge, so using my continuous bias binding method I made some binding from the fashion fabric and attached that in the same way, and for the bottom hem I used my serger to sew a rolled hem, and here is the end result

I am so pleased with the this- the original black cardi was in a fine light-weight cotton knit - my fabric was slightly heavier but has pretty much come up exactly the same and this will be my wearable muslin.

So my test run has worked out fine, however because I used the lace to make a turtle/polo neck sweater, when I laid my pattern on the lace, I don't quite have enough of to make the cardi completely from lace.

I am not defeated, I can't buy any more of the lace because I had the last of it, so I may use the lace for the front and sleeves and use some plain black for the back and put in a lace insert.  This will now be a project for the weekend.

More later................................

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