Gray Fleece Linden

This past Fall Lauren surprised me and bought me a copy of the Linden sweatshirt just as a fun, random present. We quickly went fabric shopping with this pattern in mind. I picked up two fabrics specifically for the Linden pattern, one of them being this black and white (essentially gray) fleece. I had a few unfinished projects collecting dust on my shelves that I needed to complete before starting anything new. This took me a few months to accomplish, but as soon as I could, I cut right into this fleece, super excited to try my hand at the ever-popular Linden!

I actually cut my fabric out months ago, but it wasn't until recently when I became excited about sewing again. May was approaching and I really wanted to participate in Me Made May this year. Also, Lauren was eager to sew, which made me want to as well. Lauren had made a Linden before and kept telling me how easy and quick of a project it was. I doubted her a bit, but I still had high hopes of finishing it in a relatively short amount of time. After reading through the instructions and sewing the first two seams, I realized how correct Lauren was. She wasn't exaggerating when she said how quickly this sweatshirt basically sews itself up. After the first couple of seams, I essentially had a wearable top. Although I still had a decent amount of work to do, this really boosted my confidence and encouraged me to stick with this project.

I had all of the cuffs and bindings added to my bodice piece within a week of stop-and-go sewing. In actuality, the whole process only took me a few hours. However, my Linden sat uncompleted with the seams unfinished for two weeks because I was unsure exactly how I wanted to do this. In a perfect world I would own a serger and this wouldn't be a problem. In a semi-perfect world I would've used a larger seam allowance to either top stitch the seams down, or zig-zag them together for a more finished look. Needless to say, I don't live in either of those worlds. In reality, my sleeve cuffs, neck and bottom bindings aren't perfect. I was trying to adhere to a 1/4 inch seam allowance for my first time using this binding technique. At times this went very smoothly, but in more areas than not, I was a little shaky. In the end I decided to call this first Linden my very-wearable muslin. I just cut down the seam allowances to the shortest one so that they would be even throughout the garment. Since there wasn't much fabric left to work with at this point, I didn't finish the edges. I'm hoping the fabric won't fray (it shouldn't, it's fleece), but even if it does I know I'll still wear this piece a lot.

I sewed up a size 4 without any alterations, and this size fits me perfectly. There's plenty of ease to make this a comfortable, casual top to wear. Yet the Linden is still fitted just enough to make it appear more stylish than a normal sweatshirt, without losing any of that comfort.

Unfortunately I didn't finish my Linden until the end of Spring, so I don't expect to get much use out of it till later in the year. Hopefully by that time though, I'll have sewn up a slew of other Lindens and my closest will just be one huge Linden party!