Long Time Coming

Today I present to you Hemlock the second.  This one was made with a very thin and stretchy jersey marked only as "spandex knit" with 60% stretch (from Girl Charlee, no longer available).  I started it well over a month ago and had the dickens of a time getting it cut out.  Then when I went to my coverstitch machine to do my hemming (before seaming) everything went to hell in a handbasket.  I'd do a sample, which would look great.  Then I'd try out the hem and it would bunch and pucker into a horrible mess.  I'd pick it all out and try again - I went through this process three times before giving up and throwing the top aside in disgust.

But when Lisa posted her recent Hemlock the other day, I got inspired to dig it back out and finish it.  I'd realized in the intervening time period that my coverstitch problem was due to having one needle on a double thickness and one needle on a single thickness of fabric.  I'd already pressed my seam allowances back 3/8" with fusible web, so I decided to do the hems closer to the edge so that both needles were going through 2 layers of fabric.  It took me until the fourth and final hem to get something that looked good, but I just wanted to finish the top and get on with things, so I didn't undo.

sleeve hem - too close to the edge

front hem - better

For this Hemlock, I narrowed the sleeve at the cuff.  Since it's been so long since I cut out this top, I don't remember exactly how much I narrowed it, but I think I took off about 5/8" on each side and tapered the side seam up to where it starts to curve out for the underarm.  Now the sleeves will stay up if I push them up.

The fabric is a taupe background printed with a black lace pattern:

with a funky necklace I ended up not wearing

I like the fake flocked lace edges in the print

Hubby really liked this one, and I wore it yesterday for a day of visiting a guitar shop and then dinner at a friend's house.  I took the above pictures in the morning, thinking I'd get pictures of me wearing it later in the day.  By the time I remembered, it was after dinner and a couple drinks; Hubby was totally cracking me up as he snapped a couple shots:

But at least you can see how the narrower sleeve fits!  And don't ask me how I did it, but somehow the stripes on the sleeves match those on the body when my arms are down!  A fluke!

Our friend has two beautiful Siamese cats who I thoroughly enjoyed playing with.  Here's LC:

She's very shy and reserved.

And here's Oliver, who decided he really liked my Infinity Scarf:

Awwww!  Snuggle kitty!

That's going to be it for sewing for me for a bit.  I'm going to go visit my mom for a week (Yay!) so I'll just be taking some knitting along.  And chances are she and I will be having so much fun together, I won't even be doing much of that!