Sweater Weather Sewing with the Made for Mermaids Oaklynn Pattern

I am not sure that I really have a favorite season (gasp!).  I love the colors and cool days of fall. I love gardening and the hopefulness of spring. I love the hot summer days spent by the pool, and I love the cold winter days that require a fire in the fire place and a hot cup of tea.

As a sewist, I can write this same list in terms of what I love to sew in each season! In the fall, one of the many fun items I look forward to sewing is SWEATERS! For today’s post, I want to show you a new sweater sewing pattern I am loving as well as talk about sewing with sweater knit.

The Pattern

The Made for Mermaids Oaklynn is a dolman sleeve top that I was a pattern tester for myself and my daughters. The pattern comes in youth and adult sizing. I made size Pink for myself, a 1 (lengthened) for my 2 year old, a 10 for my almost 10 year old, and a 14 for my almost 12 year old. I did not make any alterations to the pattern.

The Oaklynn has the option of a crew neck, v neck, a crew neck with hood, and a v neck with hood. The pattern has color blocking or solid options for the front, back, and sleeves, as well as a high hip, banded, hip, and curved hem top length. The sleeves also come in 3/4 rolled up, regular length cuffed, or regular length hemmed.

For these two sweethearts I did the cuffed long sleeves in high hip length with a crew neck. I did the same length on my top.

We are all loving this length because it is not quite cropped to where it shows are midsection while our arms are down, but it is just short enough to hit higher at the top of our pants and give the illusion of long legs. My daughter loves that when she lifts her arms up over her head, a little of her stomach does stick out. All-in-all this is my favorite top length at the moment. I think it is really flattering on (especially if you are blessed with shorter legs like me!)

Fabric

The pattern is intended for waffle knit, sweater knit, and other cozy wintry fabrics. I made 5 and found out that this pattern really prefers knits with poor recovery if you are doing a neckband version. If you are doing a hood option, you don’t have to worry about how firm the recovery is on your fabric.

You see, it has a wide neckband, and if you have a sweater knit that has a tight recovery (even if it does meet stretch requirements!), it will stand up and not lay well at all! If you choose fabric that relaxes well, you will be fine. I found most waffle knits meet this criteria!

You are probably wondering why I am talking about this. Well, suffice it to say, I have a beautiful cream sweater at home with a neckband that I had to adjust. Since it didn’t look like the pattern as written, I didn’t take photos of it. I will for another blogpost and just tell you it is an altered Oaklynn. 🙂

I used a double brushed polyester on my youngest daughters top and made her the banded top length. I like the banded length on her because she just gets taller by the day it seams.

My oldest daughter has a very lightweight sweater knit on her top and my middle daughter has all waffle knit on her top. I have learned on my serger that stripes match up pretty well if I let the top fabric feed in slightly ahead of the bottom fabric. In this photo I told my daughter, “Look, I matched up all the stripes!”

My top is the same fabric as my middle daughters, just in a different order.

Sewing with Sweater Knit

Play with scraps before you even start sewing your project. By this I mean, take out all your scraps that are left over from cutting your top out, and sew seams on them to tug on and look at and see if you like them. Ripping stitches on sweater knit is not fun, and most sweater knits need different settings to get the seams to look nice.

Normally, I have to increase my differential feed to keep my seam from getting wavy. I can’t increase it too much, though, or my stitches will not stretch as well as my fabric (which can make them pop!). After sewing, I had to steam the seams A LOT. I still thought my seams were a little wavy in spots, but I was happy overall with how it turned out. If you are doing the color blocked version, I suggest doing your fabric with the poorest recovery on top so that fabric is used on your neckband.

Leave out topstitching your seams. I top stitched my seam that connects my bottom and middle block, and I really don’t like the look so much. I think sweater knit likes to be chunky, and top stitching kind of flattened it out.

I had so much fun getting photos with my daughters!

I think the longest part of this project was picking out fabrics! The second longest part was getting the 2 year old to stick around for the photos.

I think this is a great beginner knit project, and I can’t wait to make another! I want to make one with this V neck option included in the pattern. It is really unique!

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Resources

• Fabric – the sweater knit was from local sources, and the double brushed polyester was from Made Whimsy
• Pattern – Women’s Oaklynn, Youth Oaklynn, and a bundle of the two

Disclosures

I don’t have an affiliate link or receive any compensation if you purchase any of the items mentioned in this blog post. I just wanted to share a fun pattern I tried and loved while giving you some tips for getting started if you wanted to sew one too. I did receive the pattern for free as part of the testing process so I could give the designer feedback about the pattern and show what it looked sewn up. Thanks for reading!

XO