Knit Maternity Top

I discovered again last night that I love to sew clothes. Clothing construction is so much more fun then all the home-dec stuff and craft stuff I've been doing. No long boring seams, no troublesome quilting issues, not rotery cutters and mats, and all the acessories, no projects that take weeks to finish and then have the "homemade" look. Just fun stuff like fitting and pressing, bindings and edgestitching, hemming, and then having an end product that looks like something I could buy in a store. It's so satisfying...

The pattern is McCalls 4880. It calls for woven fabrics, but seemed to work fine with my knit. The knit fabric I used below is a super cheap, thin knit that will probably pill and look horrible after a few washings, but I wanted to experiment with the fit and the look, and it was only $1 per yard. I have some nicer, light blue knit that I plan to use now that I know the pattern fits and works on my pregnany body!

The pattern doesn't actually have gathers across the front like my shirt does....I got the idea from the review of this pattern on Pattern Review. Basically I just added some extra inches to the center front along the fold of the lower piece, and then gathered the excess to fit between the notches when I sewed the lower front to the upper front pieces. The gathers are sort of different and trendy looking...and they certainly show off my tummy! I'm still trying to decide how much I like them.

The only issue I had was with some skipped stitches. I used a ball point needle, but I think it was the wrong size for such a lightweight knit because I didn't have any problems when the material was tripled (like on the binding). Also going slow and using a 2.5 stitch length seemed to help. I wish there were magic answers for all the tension and stitch issues I've been having lately. If anyone has experience sewing with knit fabrics, I'd love to hear any hints and tips!