Balletneck Sweater - sleeve seam

I'm afraid I stalled quite a bit on the balletneck sweater. How to do the lower arm seam on one side is still irritating me, and I didn't even start on the second arm sections until recently. I've decided to just let that portion wait until later. Until then, I've finished the arm sections and put together the long seam that stretches from neck edge to wrist. This will allow me to work on the yoke and finish the short arm seams later.

You can access larger images for more detail in my flickr account.



This first view is of the inside of the garment, showing the seams and joins. I used a slip stitch to do the seams, rather than sewing them. I wanted the extra strength. I also started at the wrist and worked up to the neck edge.

The potential weak spot of this is at the point where the seam transitions from the upper and lower arm sections to where the upper arm panel joins the armhole section of the body panel. This is also where the lower arm section joins to the under arm section. In the photo, this is where the seam begins to curve upwards, and a Y shape forms in the hills and valleys of the pattern. When I did the first sleeve, I saw that there was a bit of a gap, so when I finished the second sleeve, I left a long enough tail in the yarn for fastening off that I could sew it down the seam to the weak point and strengthen it.





Here, I've flipped the whole thing right side out and we are looking at the outside of the garment. The hills and valleys line up quite nicely, and the seam should be pretty much invisible when worn.




A different view of the outside of the garment, with only the seam edge marked. The stitch marker is just for me to keep track of which is the front panel, as the front and back are done exactly the same.

It's not quite as noticeable in this photo, since it only shows the one arm, but the neck edge at this point is HUGE. The stitches all along the neck edge are done in sc instead of hdc, but right now you can't really tell. The first row of the yoke will be done in sc, so all of this will be pulled in to about half the width it currently is. It will be interesting to see the difference. I am currently planning on adding beads to this sc row, too. I'll try it out first and see how it looks, though it'll mean stringing about 100 beads onto the yarn, first.