Finishing my sweater with FABRIC

The sweaters in this book "Knit,Swirl" by Sandra McIver were all the rage last year and I got interested in making one when my favorite yarn shop Colonial Yarn Shop offered a class in making one.

Though all the sweaters are somewhat different they are all made by starting with a gigantic circle which is knit round and round for what seemed like thousands of rows.  When the huge circle is complete the sleeves and back are knitted right into it. 

  Here is the sweater I made in the class. It can be worn 2 ways,with a smaller collar and longer back.

 or "upside down" with a large collar and shorter length (which I actually liked better)

I enjoyed wearing it so much that I decided to make one in Fall colors, sort of like this:

Well, I had forgotten just how much knitting goes into this sweater and by the time I got the circle done I put it away for a "rest period"  and forgot about it til this week when I vowed to finish all my "in progress" knitting sweaters without much knitting.

I decided to SEW the body of the sweater to go inside the circle, using a simple rectangle folded to make the sleeves.    I auditioned several fabrics from my stash and here's the wool fabric I decided on, some left-over felted wool from another project. It did seem to match one of the sweater stripes better than is shown
in the picture.

Since I wanted the body and sleeves to be loose and flowy I used the folded rectangle method for it, sewing the edges together a little way for sleeves, and sewed the complete outside to the inner circle of the knitted piece.  I later serged the seam to look better.

I'll have to say I'm quite pleased with the results. In fact I may end up wearing it more than if it were all knitted!   Here are some views:

Closed with my favorite Shawl pin, a knitting needle!

collar can be worn as hoodThis actually feels better than the knitted version!