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Made by me / My makes

Rib knit mock turtle neck top – inspired by Audrey Hepburn

So here is my beatnik/Audrey Hepburn inspired mock turtle neck sweater. I wanted something with a distinct retro vibe to make it more interesting and less generic compared to a regular black turtle neck.

I also wanted the top to be fitted but not super tight. I love when knitted tops shows some curves so I always taper my patterns at the waist.

The fabric is an organic cotton/wool mix from Danish vendor Stoff & Stil. No itch whatsoever, but a total lint magnet!

I just did a simple turtle neck piece using a rectangle. If I hade shaped it with two slanted seams it would probably have fitted even better.  But I think it works like this too!

I did an new block draft for this top as I wanted to make it tight to accommodate for the unstable rib knit (i.e. the pattern needed to be smaller than the finished top because the fabric would grow). However I forgot to do the forward shoulder alteration so the shoulder seam ended up being a bit far back and too straight.

Seriously I love this turtle neck sweater! Using a fine fabric makes all the difference compared to my old RTW ones that was just some low quality cotton or rayon/lycra jersey.

As you can see the hem is a bit stretched out and wobbly. The fabric is so loose which is why I originally added a self fabric waist rib piece to the hem, Normally this is a good way to tame these kind of fabrics, but the problem was that the waist rib grew as well – this fabric is useless for ribbing! So late at night I cut the waist piece away and had to coverstitch an already stretched out hem, which was a doomed project. Had I coverstitched the hem first thing and followed my own advice on how to stabilize the fabric when hemming knits this issue would have been avoided! So obviously, I still sometimes struggle learning from my own mistakes!

But the hem issue aside, I am very grateful for having this classic garment as part of my new collection of wardrobe staples.

2 Comments

  • Stevie bashford
    March 28, 2017 at 11:08 pm

    Its really lovely Johanna! We all seem to be bad at following our own advice sometimes but hey! They are our clothes after all, The hem looks great to me and loving the style very Beatnik!

    Reply
    • Johanna
      March 30, 2017 at 1:38 pm

      Thank you! Happy to hear I’m not alone in this. Sometimes we just get into the zone and want to finish stuff, and threw caution to the wind 🙂

      Reply

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