slouchy hat

One of the purposes of fall is to wear hats. Soft, warm, textured hats that makes your cheeks feel even rosier. And if you make the hat yourself, and the yarn is lovely and delicate, and the color is perfect, and the leafy lace pattern is the most enjoyable pattern you’ve knit in a long time, well – that’s a fall hat.

The yarn came from a sweater I took apart last winter. It really was a thin yarn, so I ended up knitting with it double, so the hat wouldn’t end up too thin or fall apart if you looked at it the wrong way. The lace pattern is from last winters Vogue knitting magazine, originally on a cardigan.

To use the pattern on the hat, I first figured out about how many stitches I needed for the circumference of the hat (I think about 150 – found out by trial and error, knitting the ribbing). Then, knowing how many stitches the repeat of the lace pattern was (10 stitches), I got 15 repeats of the pattern, and exactly 150 stitches. I might have increased or decreased after the ribbing was done – I don’t remember. But! It’s not hard to apply repeat patterns from other types of garments to a hat. The best thing is that the yarn-weight doesn’t matter; you’ve already figured out how many stitches you need to get the right size hat, and so the number of repeats will just be what it is. Decreasing towards the crown was the hardest part – especially with a lace pattern to consider. I made it all up as I went, but it was the only time I wished I had instructions to refer to.

Not quite fall yet in this picture – I finished it during the summer, before sending it off to Berlin.

Knitting this, it was lovely to feel something else than stockinette under my fingers, just yummy textured softness. There is more left of this yarn, so don’t be surprised to see something similar to the hat in the future! This particular one is already at its new home in Berlin, where fall has begun, and the hat is in use. Just like it was meant to.

http://indigorchid.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/yarnfest/

meeting fall in mustard-colored shorts

I love fall. And I love mustard (in color; not so much in condiment).  I’ve posted before on my love of different colors, and I guess a mustard post is overdue now. When it swept into my color-favorites a couple of years ago, I had no idea it would stick around for this long. In fact, it’s becoming somewhat of a staple. I’ve never been terribly comfortable in yellows before, but this muted and richer, more subtle version is just right. I think that is a trend in all my colors: while my yellow-green and turquoise still surround me, they have become more toned down, especially the turquoise that tends to go more towards sea-foam and teals.

So, shorts! They have taken an embarrassingly long time to finish. I bought the fabric as a remnant piece a couple of summers ago, at Z Fabrics in Portland, Maine (oh, such a lovely little store, with beautiful, handpicked and quality things in stock. This was where I first saw oliver + s sewing patterns. They are beyond adorable.)

The pattern is, let’s say, loosely based on Ruby from Burdastyle. I’ve omitted the loose belt, the back pocket, and the cuffs from the original pattern. I also shortened the length, both at the waist and the hem. Those are all personal preferences and fit-alterations, so the shorts still pretty much looks like the original design.

The fabric is the softest corduroy in the loveliest shade of mustard yellow. I used this article a lot as a reference while sewing with this fabric, especially making sure I cut the pieces out correctly. Corduroy has nap that goes in one direction, so it looks different depending on if the nap is going up or down. When it goes down, it’s a little shinier, going up, the fabric looks darker. Therefore, it’s really important to cut out all the pieces in just one direction – unless, of course, that’s an effect you’re going for!

I love the little welt-pocket in the front – it was my first one!

I made the buttonholes at my school, where there is a dedicated button-hole-machine. It’s pretty nifty and automatic, so after the first button-hole is made, it will automatically make the rest the same exact size! They certainly did turn out much better than I think I would have managed with my very manual Bernina.

As much as I like wearing shorts in cooler weather, I think this pair will get lots of wear. And with the grey days ahead, it’s nice to bring some cheeriness into them!

woolies

I made some wooly things for Christmas last year, gifted to family-members. And then I forgot to take pictures of them. This summer I finally got around to snapping some pictures, and it was a little strange getting the wool stuff out during the lovely warm season. But now it’s starting to feel like the right the time to get into woollenness again, with the leaves changing and summer definitely being over.

I posted about spinning yarn back here, and this is the yarn that resulted. After having spun the white yarn (which has some color-variations due to using fleece from several different sources), I spun the dark brown yarn. It was bought pre-washed I believe, intended for felting, and that’s supposedly not a very good thing for spinning. I found the brown fleece surprisingly easy to work with though, and it ended up more even than the white, and also the the first, yarn I spun. (Which might be the biggest reason it’s slightly more wonky than my second try!)

I did also get around to using that dark brown wool the way it was intended. About the same time last summer, I decided that the boy and I should make felted slippers for the grandparents. I’ve felted several times before, quite a long time ago, but I convinced myself that 1. I remembered how to do it, and 2. It couldn’t really be that hard, could it?

It wasn’t terribly hard, no, but took quite a lot of effort and time before they were all done, not to mention guidance from my mom, who actually did know and remember how to do this.

We made patterns for the slippers out of linoleum, and then set up shop outside in the yard. Then followed several hours of folding sheets of carded wool around the linoleum shape, careful patting, lots and lots of warm, soapy water, and vigorous rubbing. It smelled really good though – the soap we used has the aroma of fresh pine needles! (I’m sure there are some fresh pine needles in the soap itself too.)

The slippers started out really big, and the more you rub, the more felted they become – which also means the wool gets denser and the whole project shrinks in size. As the slippers got more firm, we could bust out some old-style washing boards, and really get down to business!

To get the color on the outside of the slippers, we put down some lengths of yarn in a random pattern at the very beginning, before covering the linoleum with the brown fleece. Since the slippers get turned inside out about halfway through the process, it was really exciting to see how the design turned out! Wool can be a bit slippery against some floors, so to finish off the slippers, I cut out and hand-stitched on soles, made of sueded leather.

turquoise halterneck-dress

I’m making August the month of dresses with this post – third in a row! (That I made this some summers ago doesn’t matter, does it?)

This was the first dress I made my dear friend Stine, the second being this one. I had promised her a dress for her birthday, and with a school trip to China coming up, it made sense to get my hands on some slinky silk while there – it being the country of silk and all! Picking a color was easy – I had a recent picture of her in mind, wearing a turquoise jacket that worked with her fair complexion perfectly.

Back from the trip to China, I draped most of this dress straight on a dress-form, with Stine’s measurements close by to double-check. I’m pretty sure this was my first attempt at draping, so there were a couple of bumps along the way! I was fortunately able to try the dress on Stine before finishing it completely, and it did need a little adjusting here and there – mostly in the bust-area, where the gathering was a little bulky. I ended up hand-sewing all the hems on the dress, mostly because the silk was hard to control while machine-sewing, but also I just like doing things by hand.

Yes, it’s really low cut in the back. But she’s a dancer! And the best part? She’s worn the dress lots.

green dress (aka going-to-a-wedding dress)

I started this dress a long while back – over a year ago, I believe. It’s been through several transformations in that time! It started when I went fabric-shopping with a friend in the spring last year, and bought some yards of this smooth cotton-blend in a lovely dirtied green, but with no plans for it. A couple of days later, I saw a dress in a magazine, and decided to copy it. The dress in the magazine was made out of an entirely different type of fabric, and I had no patterns even remotely similar that I could use as a starting point. I set to it regardless, with a great amount of enthusiasm… for about three days. With nothing even close to a finished dress, and a lot of frustration over my malfunctioning self-drafted pattern, I put it away for almost a year.

It did turn out to be a dress in the end, and I’m quite pleased with it. This is it’s 4th incarnation.

When I was invited to the wedding of a dear friend and her girlfriend, I immediately thought of my unfinished green dress, and made up my mind to finish it and wear it to the wedding. Because of the sub-par pattern I had made for the bodice, it ended up too wide, and since I had already cut into the fabric (of which there was nothing left by the time all the pieces were cut out – the skirt was two rectangles with the width and length completely determined by what was left when all else had been accounted for), I had to find a way to alter the bodice to fit. I ended up with adding a box-pleat centered on the back piece, and a couple of pleats at the shoulder seam on the front.

At this point I had already sewn in the sleeves, and should only have to add the skirt and be done. Unfortunately, basting the pleated skirt on, the dress was looking pretty frumpy and unflattering, with way too much volume in too many places. I credit the success (or completion – actually, I will credit them both) to my dear boy, who pointed out that a more defined waist would balance out all the volume going on. Going through my stash, I found a leafy-floral print in a lighter green that matched my dress perfectly, and whipped up a fitted, shaped waistband, gathering excess fabric from the front torso under the bust. It was an instant huge improvement, and I even like the poufiness that occurred in the back from the too-long torso. From the side, it reminds me of certain 40’s silhouettes I’ve seen in illustrations and on vintage sewing patterns:

I snuck off for a couple of minutes during the day of festivities and took some snapshots of myself all dressed up.

Some frump remained, however, and after some tucking of the sleeves, hemming and hawing, and more advice from the boy, I took the seam-ripper to the sleeves, and got rid of them. Phew! I felt quite some relief at the decision to take them off, but even more when I saw that I liked the dress much better sleeveless. I added some finishing touches on the inside to cover up all raw edges (lots of handsewing), and it was all ready for the wedding ahead!

Hey boy? You make a really good partner in crime. This dress looks nice because of you.