Pink sweater finished - and do I like it?

The pink sweater is finished. It was already on monday last week but due to a very busy schedule, both day and evening, I haven't been able to sit down and write this post. Now it's sunday and I slept in until 11.30u (boy, did I need that extra hours of sleep!) and now I can finally put this new addition in the blogosphere for everyone else to see.

First a picture:

I am very, very happy with the outcome. When I finish something I usually put it on a hanger where I can see it and I have to say that last week, everytime I passed it, I had feelings of sheer joy. Why such a casual, not really thát interesting piece of clothing can get me over the moon like this, has me puzzled.
Well, let's start with a list of points why I dó like it, maybe then it becomes clear:

1. The fabric. It's fleece, it's soft, it's warm, it has a light stretch, it's comfortable.

2. The colour. It's a pastel pink and it's the perfect colour to match the creamy softness of the fleece. Makes me think of strawberry-icecream.

3. The fit. (If you are an avid muslin-maker, please don't read any further and skip to number 4 immédiately. This is a warning). 
A sweater is of course not the most challenging thing to make when it comes to fitting. I don't make muslins (yet). So I just measure myself, I measure the pattern and where any alterations are needed, I try to fix that by adding or removing width, length, etc. With this pattern I changed the length and created a bit of a waist (the original sideseams were straight). That's all I changed and I have to say that the fit is just so right!

4. The way all the patternlines and topstitching on the left and right side of the zipper matched beautifully.

5. Finishing it my way. I normally follow instructions religiously. If I had done that this time, I would have hemmed the sleeves and the body in the normal way. But they were quite wide and my fear with this kind of fabric, especially for the seam of the body, is that it's going to stretch while wearing. And I HATE that. The bought sweater I own has elastic finishing and I knew right away that I wanted that for this sweater too. It's 2cm (4/5 inches) wide elastic. I chose to let the seam of the body end below my but (oohh...first time I use this word) and chose the length of the elastic so that it would be fitting, minus a few cm. When I wear it now it doesn't look like a lot of fabric drawn together. You can't almost see that there is any elastic involved. Nice one! With the sleeves of course you can tell but that's no problem at all.
The sleeves:

6. The new door that has opened for me. Up until now the things I sewed were always clothes for work, parties etc. All the other casual stuff was bought. I never gave it any thought really. It's just one of those things that get stuck in your system and you don't feel the need to change that. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I thought that making casual clothes wasn't that fulfilling because they're not..well..pretty, or something. Was-I-Wrong-Or-What? Glad I found out!

7. A new TNT. Maybe not an endless-one but I definitely will make this one again.

Was there something I didn't like?
Yes!

I think a lot of bastingthread is left behind in the fabric. I could cut the stitches where I could see them, but if I tried to pull them out, some of them just wouldn't move. And that is in an area where no sewingmachine-stitching is involved. It looks like the fabric is eating it. At those places I had to cut away the thread as close to the fabric as I could. Still have no explanation for that.  

Another thing is: When I put the zipper in and topstitched it, it looked great on the outside but on the inside I discovered that the right side of the zipper (left in the picture) wasn't fastened by the stitches in a solid way. At some places it's just holding on by a few threads. I think it will survive but when you open the zipper completely you can see the difference between left and right very well. The zipper however will never be opened completely when I wear it so it's a hidden problem. A good lesson for the next one tough.

Here you can see the problem. Both sides are topstitched on the right side, only one inner-side shows the stitching.
 

Next up is a post about my red pencilskirt. I already have everything cut out so now it's a matter of getting behind that machine. For what's left of it: you all have a great weekend!

Gr.
Lilian