Pattern Review: Autumn League Pullover
Like many people, when Alexi of Two of Wands released her Fall 2018 collection with Lion Brand, I instantly fell in love with the Autumn League Pullover (affiliate link). So many people fell in love with it that the kit very quickly sold out. So I asked for it for Christmas, and finished it the following Christmas, well on Boxing Day.
It took a few months to actually get started on it, but right off the bat you get into the most important parts of this sweater – the raglan construction and the ‘V’ detail at the collar. The instructions are very clear so that you can be successful in doing these 2 things.
This is the first time I’ve done a raglan that also required seaming. After you do the raglan increases and split for the sleeves, you work the rest of the garment flat. I know this can be a deterrent for a lot of people, but from what I understand, seaming a garment can help prolong the life of your garment, because it helps it keep the shape that you originally wanted when you first finished it.
The first sweater I made required seaming, and to seam just one side of it took me 6 hours. This experience made me hesitant to seam future garments for awhile, but of course it took me a long time – I was still a newer knitter, it was my first sweater, and my first time doing mattress stitch (which is the BEST!!!!) I don’t think it took anywhere near as long to seam my entire Autumn League Pullover. Not only am I getting faster at seaming, I also now find it quite satisfying, because the mattress stitch is completely invisible.
One of the things that always annoys me about knit sweaters (both hand knit and commercially bought), is the armpits. They stretch out and become hole-y so quickly. And in hand knit sweaters, you can just start with those armpit holes, especially in yoke and raglan constructions. Alexi countered this brilliantly, providing extra stitches to seam together that really make this armpit much more solid than in other sweaters I’ve done. You can see the seam much more in this area, which is fine, but it also allows you to see just how invisible the mattress stitch is leading up to the armpit. Because there are 2 different directions of stitches to seam together I used 2 different techniques: mattress stitch, and a stitch that I’ve only used before when attaching front and back pieces at the shoulder, typically called a horizontal seam. Here’s a tutorial from Purl Soho on how to do this seam (though it’s not the video I learned from, which I can’t find anymore!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGhXqQQZBMs.
The last step in making this sweater is to pick up stitches around the neck to knit the collar. As I’ve probably mentioned before, I still hate picking up stitches for things like this. But I do have to acknowledge the benefit of doing it. I’ve noticed in some pictures that when a raglan or yoke starts with the collar, it can have a tendency to stretch out down the shoulders. By adding the collar later, it, like when you seam the sides of a sweater, will help keep the shape.
This is the first time I’ve used Lion Brand’s Cotton Jeans yarn (affiliate link). I really liked knitting with it, which I can’t always say about cotton yarns. The heathered look of all these yarns is really nice and it is very, very comfortable to wear. It is not nearly as warm as other sweaters. Which is actually really nice because it means you can wear it more often and in more kinds of weather. It is a perfect spring, summer evening, or fall garment. And I have been wearing it A LOT lately!
