Getting cosy with a Talvikki
Talvikki; a very old Finnish name given to girls born in winter. Perfect for this oversized turtleneck. Don’t you just love how the sisters of Named have named their patterns?
I actually own a few of the Named patterns across their collections, but the Talvikki Sweater will be the first Named pattern that I have made. I’ve heard amazing things from the sewing community and I’m really excited to be sewing this pattern. The Talvikki Sweater is an oversized turtleneck with darts on the neckline, dropped shoulders and deep vents at the sides. The clean lines of simplicity and interesting little details such as the neck darts, deep side vents and mitred corners caught my eye. With the current British weather being what it is, I think that this would be ideal for the winter. They recommend a medium-weight to heavy stretch fabric with at least 30 % stretch, for example sweatshirt jersey, cable knit, knit fleece or a boiled wool.
I used Fabric Galore’s navy polyester sweatshirt, which is fleeced backed for that super cosy feel. The photo doesn’t quite do the fabric justice. In the light the right side of the fabric, non fleece side, has these wonderful hints of lighter blue fibres, from the fleece that has come through. Even though Talvikki is an oversized top, I decided to cut out UK size 8/10 because I don’t like turtlenecks that are tight in the neck area and I wasn’t sure what percentage the fabric had in terms of stretch. I was quite surprised that when I cut my pieces out it only took 1.3m rather than the suggested amount of 1.5m. That meant that, if everything went well, I could be looking at two Talvikki Sweaters or even another garment out of the original 3m I had purchased.
To start off with, I needed to make my neck darts but due to the thickness of my fabric I was struggling to put tailor tacks in. Instead I cut my paper pattern for the darts and drew it on the back of my fabric, lining them up with the notches that I had previously marked. In the image above I’m not sure if you can tell that, in the back, two of my darts have misaligned and are much closer to each other.
The instructions use an overlocker for most of the seams, but for me personally I find it easier to stitch a seam first before finishing it to make sure that I’ve got no holes. I did find that without stitching my stay tape first, both layers and the tape moved around quite a bit, making it difficult to know whether I had caught all the raw edges of my shoulder seam.
The jumper was a really easy and quick sew up, the only difficulty that I did encounter was finishing my neckline with the facing. I’m not sure whether it was due to the misalignment of some of my darts, or whether that part had become a little bit more stretchy than anticipated, but I had ended up with more fabric than I intended to have. It turned out that the facing caused a restriction on the stretch of the neckline and I was unable to put my head through my finished sweater. I’m not sure if it was due to the interfacing or that the facing piece was too small for my neckline. I measured the neckline of my garment, added 1’ onto my facing pattern piece and omitted interfacing to fix my tight neckline problem. I then followed the instructions and hand stitched the facing to the shoulder seams and darts, preventing it from coming out.
What I really like about this pattern and company is that the instructions are written for all levels of sewers and the images accompanying the text are simple; they don’t complicate the instructions. My favourite part of this pattern was obviously the neck darts, but also the split side seams and the mitred corners at the hem.
I have to say that I am happy with my finished Talvikki; it is super cosy even though the weather looks like it is getting warmer. However, after wearing it a few times I’m not quite a fan of the material. Due to it being 100% polyester it is rough on the skin and has caused difficulties in pressing it, which has meant that the finished lines aren’t as crisp as I would prefer. I would definitely make this sweater again but in a different fabric, add cuffs to the sleeves as they are too short when I stretch out my arms and extend the length just to make it more comfortable. I think I will be using the rest of the fabric to make a long cardigan, maybe a Blackwood, as it definitely holds its own shape which would be more useful to me in a cardigan.
