I can’t believe I still haven’t finished Frappe.

I finished knitting the collar and kinda stalled. I have been horrendously busy, so when I’ve had time to knit, I’m too tired to work out a fiddely-diddley construction job! I have learnt from bitter experience not to attempt sewing up when tired – sleeves can end up protruding from chest cavities like an erupting alien!

So what’s fiddley on the lovely, easy Frappe? I’ll show you…

This is one side of the collar – the knitting is straight forward, increasing from 2 stitches left on a safety pin when you do the front. There is some decreasing at the back of the neck on the collar so I left the stitches on the holder and thought I’d do that once I’d seen how it sewed up a little – better than making it too long or too short then trying to squish it to fit! The only thing to beware of is not to twist and strain those two stitches when you’re whipping up the collar.

These two here…

I was faced with sewing the collar, “without stretching” according to the pattern, onto the body.
It lay on my dining room table for three days with me wondering how it fitted together and what stitch to use to sew it.

I noticed that these two bits kinda fitted so I stuck a pin in there and the rest sort of followed on…

I also cheated a bit 😳
I was in London and popped into Liberty’s, so see if they had any “to die for” end of sale yarn (because I really need yarn – NOT!).

They had a completed Frappe on display I investigated the collar fully and stole all the techniques for attaching it. Basically, slip stitch up the sides until the back of the neck and mattress stitch across the back of the neck with the seam facing away from your neck (under the collar).

The slip stitch worked really well, just picking up the bumps at the end of the rows like this…

I think I made quite a neat job, once I finally sat down and sewed it!

Right side of collar, wrong side of jacket…

Wrong side of collar, right side of jacket…

And this is how far it has got today…I have a sleeve!

In case you’re wondering what I did on those few days I was too tired to sew my brain was occupied, pondering the collar?

I picked up some easy knitting. I accidentally did rather a lot of Glace!