The Marlo Sweater

First Button Project

For this project, I wanted to make a winter top and try a patterned fabric. Enter the Marlo Cardigan pattern from True Bias. It wasn’t too complicated and it would allow me to try my hand at buttons for first time. I saw the fabric at Mood NYC and fell for the tiny pink metallic thread in the fabric. It’s got a little bit of a grandma vibe, but i felt I could handle it. My first challenge was figuring out which direction I wanted the fabric to go on the garment.

Much polling was done. I loved the triangles pointing around my body (3rd photo) but thought i would get into a lot of trouble matching directions with the front and back pieces and the arms, so I went with vertical triangles. The bodice came together pretty quickly and then the next deliberation was matching vs contrasting neck, waist and cuff bands.

The inside of the fabric is shiny and striped and it looked great, but (after additional polling) I ultimately decided to stick with matching because I had contrasting buttons and thought it might just feel like too much. Stretching the neck and waist bands to fit the bodice always feels like a leap of faith, but it happened. There was too much pouffy gathered fabric on the front pieces and so i went back and sewed a second seam a little deeper in right around the point where the front separates into the v neck .

Then we arrived at the big challenge. Mother fucking buttons. I’d never used my machine for this before. I did try a practice on the knit fabric that I was using for the project and it basically created a huge mound of thread. Not ideal. I tried again on some scrap woven fabric; it took awhile to make sure I had done all the steps but I did get a button hole. However, it was weirdly lopsided, with thicker stitches on one side then the other. I called my sewing 911 - my friend Nikki. She confirmed something was definitely f’up and and offered the “sexy” option of hand sewing the buttonholes. I also tried this weird call in-service through singer sewing machine’s website where i paid $5 and waited for “a technician” to get back to me through a secondary website called “justask!”. After a few days, some anonymous sewing machine repair person texted to say i should get a whole new machine.

So plan B, my sexy hand sewn button holes. I ended up on a lot of websites of people who sew vintage clothing using only techniques and tools that were available at the time. Super hardcore. You basically do a slip stitch all around the buttonhole so there are little tiny knots bordering the opening. One good tip I saw was to place a pin at the bottom and top of your measured button hole before you cut it open so you don’t accidentally cut a ginormous button hole and burst into tears. I was sewing on mainly black fabric with black thread, so the truth is I have no idea how my button holes came out, but they are functional. You are supposed to cut the button hole 1/8 inch bigger than the button but I was too scared of cutting too big (see aforementioned guardrails to avoid this terrible tragedy) so these button holes are a little snug. I used this toothpick technique when sewing the actual buttons on, which was fun.

You place a toothpick on your button and then sew over it as you sew the button on the fabric. Then you remove the toothpick and voila you have little wiggle room for your button and you can sew a *shank* which is hard to explain and not a big deal but if feels like a little professional touch that made me feel like a fancy lady tailor. To be honest, the buttons and button holes feel a little off kilter on the finished project, but i think it’s probably one of those things that no one but me notices unless someone is like “I like your cardigan” and then I start giving them detailed tour of all my mistakes and errors.

I would love to make this pattern again. I’m dreaming of a neutral mocha color with contrasting cream for the cuffs and waistbands with matte gold buttons. I’ve also seen it with a slinky thin fabric, which is beautiful too. I might add a little length on the torso and maybe bring the waist in a little? I’ve haven’t tried altering patterns to be perfectly tailored to my body yet, but I really want to be able to do that!

My assistant, Brian