Elevating Eleanor Cardigan!

The 5 out of 4 Patterns Eleanor Cardigan is one of my FAVORITE go-to pieces for fall. It’s warm and dresses up an outfit all at the same time. If you haven’t made your own I highly recommend picking one of them up. That’s right, we have three options to choose from!

Women’s Eleanor Cardigan

Kids’ Eleanor Cardigan

Eleanor Cardigan Bundle

Recently, Jessica posted a hack for her Eleanor where she covered the exposed seams with strips of fabric and I just about lost my mind – that little peek of extra color and flare took the Eleanor to a whole new level of awesomeness.

Also I am kind of lazy and this COMPLETELY hides the fact that I rarely change my serger thread.

I had to try it – and lucky for YOU, I took pictures of the process so now YOU can make your Eleanor even more awesome too!

Here’s how you do it.

1. Decide what seams you want to dress up. For mine, I did the inside of the band, the back neck, and the hood seams. You absolutely COULD do the side seams too but I decided they probably wouldn’t show much anyway!

2. Cut 1″ strips of fabric that are long enough to cover each of your seams. This will vary depending on the options you choose and the size you are making. Err on the side of too long rather than too short -you can always trim off excess later!

The fabric you choose for your 1″ strips can be anything you like that coordinates well and is a similar stretch content to your main fabric. For mine, I used a sweater knit from Water Tower Textiles for the sweater and used some YSS scraps from Zenith and Quasar for the binding!

Let’s start assembling

3. Assemble the cardigan as instructed in the tutorial – but for each seam you want to cover, add in one of your 1″ strips, face down. For example, the first seam I came to that I wanted to cover was my center hood seam. I matched the hood pieces right sides together as directed in the pattern, and then laid my strip of fabric face DOWN along the edge that will be sewn.

4. Sew the seam as directed in the tutorial, catching all three layers of fabric.

5. Flip your pieces so that the fabric strip is face down and the serged or sewn seam is face UP. Apply wash away wonder tape to the serged seam as shown.

6. Carefully wrap the 1″ strip around the seam and stick it to the wash away wonder tape so the seam is wrapped. Don’t worry if this looks kind of messy! It’s going to be hidden – this just ensures that the binding is wrapped tight around the seam.

7. Fold your seam so that it’s lying flat, with the messy side hidden. Using a sewing machine, carefully stitch down the binding so the seam is hidden.

Repeat these steps for every seam you want to cover! The process is exactly the same.

Lastly, For the bottom of the long band pieces, simply trim the binding an inch or so longer than the seam and fold it back underneath and stitch it down.

That’s it! Go show off your gorgeous new Eleanor Cardigan!

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