Today I’m sharing the Eloisa Sweater from the Building the Pattern Book by Named Clothing.

The patterns in Building the Pattern cater for a maximum hip size of 124cm, so it is not a size-inclusive book.

The Eloisa pattern is for knits and has, as its core feature, a unique curved front yoke. It is offered in the following variations: sweater, tunic, mermaid skirted dress and circle skirt dress.

Here, I am making the Eloisa up as a sweater, without any modifications from the original pattern. My version of the Eloisa sweater is a size 7.

The main printed fabric you see here is sweat shirting/french terry by Atelier Brunette. This one is “Neroli off-white”. It has also been supplemented by some organic basic brushed sweat and organic 2×1 rib from Meter Meter, which were leftovers from when I sewed up the Mile End Sweatshirt and Plateau joggers from Closet Core Patterns.

Using Building the Pattern

This is now the third pattern I have sewn from Named Clothing’s Building the Pattern. The other two are the Luova Tunic and the Kuulas bomber.

I do have to say that there are a couple of things I find a little bit perplexing about using the book.

My main concern is that the book does not include line drawings of the front and back views of each of the variations of the patterns. In addition, while it includes plenty of (beautiful) photographs of the garments being worn, it hasn’t ensured that it includes both the back and front view of every variation.

This lack of line drawings and comprehensive photos got me into some trouble with this Eloisa Sweater.

When I started sewing this, there were two things that I didn’t quite realise from the available photos. The first was that the front and back of the garment have a quite high-low effect. The other is that the back of the sweater does not include a ribbed hem.

I had thought I was making a sweater which had a traditional ribbed hem all the way around, with the back and front being the same length. The photos in the book don’t give you enough information to realise otherwise.

I then ended up extremely befuddled for a while when I started tracing out my pattern pieces and seeing that the back seemed much longer and I spend ages wondering whether they had made an error on the bottom ribbing piece and accidentally marked it “cut 1” instead of “cut 2”. I just spent quite a bit of time looking at the pattern pieces thinking “umm, is that really the cut line for the sweater version”.

Transparent line drawings for each variation would have saved me much perplexity!

I also think that I may have preferred this garment with a more traditional sweater finish at the back, but, I ended up so confused by exactly what it was that I was making that I decided to just use the pattern as drafted, since I didn’t trust myself to understand it enough to hack it! If I had had a clearer picture at the outset, I would have probably modified my Eloisa sweater.

The other word of warning I would offer, is that you need to look at the fabric requirement charts very closely in Building the Pattern. It does clearly state in the narrative right above the fabric requirements, that you need to add together the fabric requirements of various different parts of your chosen variation.

Which is perfectly straightforward when you’re relaxed and taking your time for a leisurely reading.

When, however, you have only 5 minutes before your next zoom meeting to complete your purchase and you just quickly grab the chart to glance it…

Well I’m sure you can imagine what I managed to do.

I remember at the time thinking, wow, this is amazing, how do they get an entire sweater out of just 85cm. But, no, even that thought wasn’t enough to alert me to my own idiocy.

So I purchased enough fabric to make the bodice of the Eloisa Sweater, but I forgot to add the necessary fabric for the sleeves.

So, just like this Eloisa sweater itself, this particular piece of confusion was entirely me-made.

Necessity being the mother of all invention, I then raided my stash for the leftover sweat shirting and ribbing I had from when I sewed up the Montreal Collection, eternally grateful for the fact that I had deliberately decided to stick to similar tones to that last project because I had wanted to be able to wear this sweater with my Plateau joggers.

In the end, I’m calling this one a serendipitous mistake because I love the way the colour blocking ends up looking. I think that it really accentuates the lovely curved front yoke, as well as making the front hem a pretty accent.

The plain sweat shirting is a tad heavier in weight than the Atelier Brunette printed sweat shirting/french terry, which isn’t ideal when mixing fabrics, but it’s not enough of a difference that it’s too noticeable.

My Eloisa Sweater

For the most part, I’m pretty happy with this Eloisa sweater.

From the front view, I have to say that it is just what I had hoped for. I love the shape created by the front yoke. It has a nice over-sized vibe like I wanted.

It’s just the right amount of cosy goodness.

It also came together really easily. Once I had gotten over my confusion over the pattern pieces, I didn’t even look at the instructions once and this project came together in just a few hours.

Even faster as I decided to forego overlocking.

Because, after months of using nothing but white overlocker thread, I finally re-threaded my machine to navy this weekend.

And then couldn’t handle the thought of re-threading it with white again!

I guess I’ll be sewing navy for the next few months!!

As for the back view, I’m still not convinced if I like the lack of a cuffed hem and I may go back in and change it. For now, gonna wear it for a while like this and see where my lounging takes me.

If you want to see more of my sewing adventures, you can find me on Instagram here.