Ottobre 06/2011-34 & 01/2009-23

Both of these patterns are reruns, but I ran into some trouble I thought I'd share.

I made this outfit for Logan as a Christmas gift. The top is Ottobre 06/2011-34, which I made here, and the pants are Ottobre 01/2009-23, which I have made 10 times in various sizes. Needless to say, we like this pattern. For this iteration, I used a poly velour from Fabric Mart for the shirt as well as to line the pants. He has a velour raglan top made for him by his Oma that he wears all the time, but which is showing it's age. I used sueded cotton twill from Fabric.com for the pants outer.

Oma's version has a cool zombie embroidered on it, but since I don't have an embroidery machine, I picked up two Cars patches from Joann and stitched them on. Cute, huh? This was not where I had trouble though. The trouble came when I attached the neckband. This velour has less stretch than the rib knit I used the last time I made this top, so I made the neckband a smidge longer to compensate. It would have been fine, except that this velour curled like no jersey I have ever seen, and when I tried to stretch it to stitch it to the neckline, it curled away from the serger and out of range of the needles. Add to that that my serger has been misbehaving lately and you have a recipe for disaster. Three different neckbands, four broken needles, some basting and a bit of swearing later, it actually looks pretty good. What I learned was that if you have a jersey that curls like a mad fiend, basting the edges together with a zigzag stitch before you serge will tame the curlies. Word to the wise. The cuffs look much better. I basted them.

The pants have some decorative twill tape at the back pocket openings. Mom brought this home from Expo a couple of years ago and I have been awaiting the "perfect" project. I'm not sure this is perfect, but it was about to become To Good To Use, and we can't have that. I think it's a cute touch and it coordinates nicely with the top.