Denim Skirts and Other Stuff

Drops Aredhel Jacket

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Thu, 12 May 2022 21:48:00 +0000

I've just finished another jacket!

I had been wearing my hooded Cable yoke sweater a lot so decided to make another hooded jacket. I decided on the lovely Drops Aredhel pattern which I already had in my favourites.

This was a surprisingly quick make, for me anyway. I started at the beginning of January and probably finished it at the end of March. By 8 April 2022, I had sewn on the buttons and was waiting for a chance to photograph it before wearing it.

I used Drops Andes Super Bulky Yarm in twilight blue, a mix of 65% wool, 35% alpaca

I used a 7 mm needle. In the pattern they said to use a larger needle (8mm) for the body and smaller for the garter edging. The pattern for my Cable yoke sweater said the same but I ended up using the smaller needle for everything. I have decided to do the same here and used a 7mm needle throughout.

I converted this to knit in one piece rather than individual pieces. This was relatively easy to do. There are 2 vents at the side and the pattern is knit bottom up. I had to knit the bottom 3 pieces separately up to the top of the vent (around 7 inches) and then join to knit the body in one piece from there.   The edging bands are knitted all at the same time (no picking up stitches to knit the bands after).

The jacket has a nice skirt coat style. The bottom half is stockinette. There are gentle decreases to just above the waist where this is a nice garter stitch pattern. After the waist garter stitch pattern, the upper fronts and back are knit in purl stich. All the edging bands are knit in garter stitch throughout.   The garter stitch pattern at the waist is also repeated just above the sleeve cuffs.

As I was knitting in one piece, I picked up stitches at the armholes and knit the sleeves down (rather than knitting flat as in the pattern).

The hood is wonderful and easy to knit. It has a nice cute shape as well, like a little elf. There is also a nice little pattern at the top centre join as well (you can't really see this on my photos as the pattern is on the top of my head when the hood is up). I used kitchener stitch to join the top of the hood, the first time I have used that method.

This is the first time doing the dropped shoulder style.   I am used to casting on stitches for the under arm (or casting off the under arm stitches or putting them on hold depending which way you are knitting). Anyway, you don't need to do this for dropped shoulders, and I think the pattern had the equivalent of 1 to 2 under arm stitches. I was always wary of the dropped shoulder style thinking it would look baggy and be uncomfortable. This was not the case at all. The dropped shoulder style gives a nice clean look at the front and is not uncomfortable in the least. The sleeves are just the right fit, on the slim side how I like them.

I added a third buttonhole, instead of two as in the pattern. (I don't understand why they only put 2 buttonholes on the pattern).

I found some nice large buttons in my collection which matches this project perfectly.   I was going to use some spare wooden toggles I have but the round buttons give this a nice vintage feel.

I am delighted with the jacket. I think it is one of the best things I have made. Such a simple but lovely pattern.

Happy knitting!

Cable Yoke Jacket

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 19:47:00 +0000

This is the fabulous Cable Yoke Jacket from Kyoko Nakayoshi.

I started this on 8 May 2021 and used Cascade yarn Eco plus in purple colourway 3121. It is a bulky weight yarn. The pattern asked you to knit the yoke in size 6 mm needles and the rest in 5.5 mm. I swatched the yoke in both and I preferred the look of 5.5 mm swatch so I knitted everything in that size needle. I knitted this in the size 14-16. I would normally do an 18 but I read notes from others on Ravelry that said it comes out big so I went a bit smaller, on top of using the smaller needle for the yoke.

This was a departure from my usual little cropped sweater or cardigan. I thought the yoke would be a challenge along with the hood. It was actually very straightforward to knit once you figured out what was going on. The yoke is knit first in a long strip, like a scarf. It had an interesting short row construction. So there were a couple of purl stitches between each of the 3 cable panels and there were short row turns at each of those points. The short rows had the effect of making the top of the yoke shorter than the lower edge. Very interesting construction and this could be used for other projects.

After the yoke you pick up stitches across the long lower edge and then knit down in stockinette, dividing at the sleeves. It was shortly after this point that I decided to do the hood and put the body on hold.

The hood too was an interesting construction. You pick up stitches across the neckline and reduce slightly with decreases and then a couple of inches of ribbing. The back of the hood is knit up after increasing slightly. I did it longer than the pattern said for my size as I wanted my hood to be big and floppy and not snug.

The centre back portion of the hood was 25 stitches with a slipped stitch on either side. The stitiches either side of the 25 stitches are the side stitches. What you do is work 52 stitches (for the size I did) and then turn. You slip the first stitch, work 25 stitches , and then decease a stitch and turn. You then just keep repeating. So you are only working the centre stiches after the first 52 stitches. You keep slipping the first stitch, and the side stitches outisde of the 25 centre stitches are gradually being eroded with the decreases.

You don't have to keep counting the 25 stiches, it is easy to see where you work up to. The turn creates a gap between the 2 stitches. The decrease is worked using the stitches on either side of the gap. I was able to do read while I was doing this. The trouble was I must have missed out a decrease along the way as my side stitches on one side ran out and I still had 2 to work on the other side. I used a couple of german short rows to work back and forth to work the final 2 decreases on the other side.

I then continued knitting the body to my required length (I could have made it an inch or two longer but never mind). You then do a garter stitch edging around the entire jacket, taking in the hood, front edges and the hem. The two front corners have an interesting mitred edge that I hadn't done before. It didn't occur to me that you would need to increase at each of the corners for the fabric to turn around the corner. The increases used in the pattern were yarnovers which confused me even more as I had only previously used yarnovers in lace to create holes in the fabric. After asking a question on Ravelry the penny dropped that these were increases. Yarnovers that are purled on the other side do not create a hole. Apparently yarnovers produce a stretchier result than an M1 increase which may be why it was used here.

The buttonholes were a bit of a challenge. I used my usual one row buttonhole but it created a hole on the right side of the buttonhole which I had never had before. I thought I must have done them wrong so I ripped back down into the buttonhole (to avoid me undoing 600 stitches plus of garter edging) to re-do the buttonholes. The gap still appeared. I figured that it must be the garter stitch fabric which emphasises the hole. I just carried on and worked the yarn in at the end to close up the gaps. Finally I then completed the sleeves with a garter edges to my desired length.

I love the wooden toggles - so cute! I did my usual trick of re-inforcing the edges with interfacing and lining. I usually just do the centre front button bands but for this one I did all the way around the edging, taking in the hood and the hem. This has provided a nice structure to the jacket. I also plan to do the same on the sleeves at some point, and to add some lining to the sleeves to make it easier to slip on over long sleeved tops. I will do that in longer time though - no rush (if I do it at all - ha ha).

We have had unusually hot weather in the UK in late September so today marked the first time I wore the jacket out. It was a perfect temperature for the jacket. We stopped and took some photos of it when we came back from the supermarket.

I would thoroughly recommend this pattern. Don't be put off by thinking it is complicated. I had this in my Ravelry favourites for years and I decided to bite the bullet and do something different. It has certainly paid off and I will enjoy wearing this jacket.

At the moment I am knitting my partner another sweater but this has been interrupted by me knitting little mini Christmas sweater decorations. This has also introduced me to knitting intarsia in the round which is another thing I have never done before. I think I have just about picked up the technique. I am toying with the idea of knitting an intarsia motif on a sweater for my next project.

Happy knitting and sewing until next time.

Lapped zipper with lining tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 18:31:00 +0000

I originally posted this tutorial on 31 December 2019 but I noticed recently that it was missing from the blog so I am writing it again.

When making my Simplicity 2451 skirt, view C, I decided to tackle a lapped zipper for the first time. As I was lining the skirt I wanted to figure out how to cleanly attach the lining. With a lot of help from Kathleen Fansella's lapped zipper and facing tutorial and Nancy Zieman's lapped zipper tutorial, I managed to figure this out. When creating a sample I made a tutorial. Here is the final sample:

Front view

Back view

Pretty nifty huh? I finished the skirt (in black cord) some time ago and I love it. I am wearing it as we speak as the weather in the UK has turned a bit chilly.

Anyway, the tutorial can be found here on my Dropbox storage. Enjoy!

Berry Marion

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sun, 08 Mar 2015 18:26:00 +0000

I am a bit behind with posting my finished hand knits. I have finished a jumper and a cardigan in 2014 yet to be blogged. Here is my most recently finished hand knit. I started it on 1 January 2015 and finished on 7 March 2015.

This is the Marion cardigan from Untangling Knots. I absolutely love it! There is something about cardigans that makes them extra special. Maybe it's because they are more fiddly to make, with the button bands, buttonholes and the neckline decreases. Maybe it's because you're getting two to three looks for the price of one by wearing it buttoned, unbuttoned, half buttoned etc.

I've always loved the Marion. The cables give a relaxed but dressed feel. This garment marks my first attempt at altering a pattern to suit my measurements. I'm not talking about adding a few rows here and there. I'm talking shoulders, armhole depth, neckline, bust, the lot.

This wasn't meant to be my first project in custom fitting. I wanted to knit the Marion from the pattern but the more I looked at others' projects I could see there was divided opinion. Everyone loves the pattern but the results on fit can differ. For some the shoulders fall down the arms, and the cardigan appears big. For others the fit looks perfect.

I did a few calculations and I felt that Andi had not taken into account the width of the button band around the neck and body when doing the shoulder and waist circumference in her schematic. I did raise this with Andi but she said you have to allow for the cables compressing the fabric. Anyway I decided to bite the bullet and do a total re-write to make the pattern fit my measurements. (As you do … I don't do things by halves when I get going).

It took a bit of extra time as for each section I had to think what the pattern said, work out the proportions, and then convert it to my gauge and measurements. The other benefit of doing this is that you can adapt the pattern to suit your own swatch. Endless swatching on different size needles to try and match the designer's gauge does not appeal to me.

Conclusion

I am delighted with the cardigan and my first foray into custom fitting. I am particularly pleased with the fit at the shoulders and the armholes. I've been listening to podcasts with Amy Herzog talking about her popular Custom Fit software. She has passed on some very useful tips, like the importance of the gauge and getting the fit at the shoulders right based on the high bust measurement.

I don't necessarily agree with everything Amy had to say. For example she advises that seamed hand knits are preferable to seamless because the seams add structure and it is easier to custom fit individual pieces.

I have no problem with lack of structure on any of my hand knits (which have all been seamless). Granted I have only made relatively small cropped sweaters and Amy may be right for larger projects such as men's sweaters or an Aran jacket.

I can't see that altering single pieces is easier than altering a seamless garment. For example, when calculating the waist decrease section of the body on the Marion I used my waist circumference minus the width of the button bands and then inserted the waist decreases at either side of the half way points. When working out the flat portions of the Marion, such as the fronts and back before they are joined in the round, you can work these out individually as Amy does. For example I worked out my shoulder to shoulder measurement for my back and deducted that from 50% of my high bust measurement to get the amount I need to increase widthwise for the armhole shaping.

I can see where she is coming from as you can focus on one piece at a time and this may make the knitting time seem shorter. However I do not like the idea of not being able to try on a garment as you go.

Making a seamed garment must also add to to knitting time because you have to take a few hours at the end to seam it all together. (It would probably be more like a few days for me!) Maybe this extra time is off-set by the fiddly parts of seamless knitting such as picking up the stitches for the sleeves.

Amy is selling the Custom Fit software which I understand works out a flat pattern for your measurements, based on a seamed garment. Having the software work it all out is undoubtedly a benefit. However it is possible to do it yourself with a lot of help from Openoffice spreadsheet calculations and a calculator.

I am now making my second custom made sweater, this time adapting the Chuck pattern to suit me. I am hooked for now. Maybe I am making a rod for my own back with all this extra work but I am enjoying it.

I set out below some further details about the construction of this cardigan.

Yarn

Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, Hollyberry colourway,
100% Peruvian Highland Wool
Worsted weight

Gauge

My blocked gauge on 5.5 mm needle was 8.5 stitches x 11.5 rows (4 x 4 inches). For all my converting I used the 1 inch equivalent of my swatch: 4.25 stitches x 5.75 rows.

Ease

I went with zero ease when converting the sweater to my measurements. If I make this again I would make the arms a bit snugger by having maybe 0.5 inches of negative ease in the upper arms and having it a bit more fitted on my lower arms.

Shoulder Shaping

The Marion pattern appears to only have short row shoulder shaping at the back of the garment and not the fronts. I changed the short row shaping to have it on both. I also changed the shoulder shaping to the method in my Obladi sweater pattern (by Lyrical Knits – yet to be blogged). This leaves a nice back neck edge slope as well as a shoulder slope.

When working out my shoulder stitches I added 1 stitch on each side to allow for the fact that they will be lost in the armhole and neckband seams when picking up stitches later. My shoulder slope was one inch, so the cardigan is one inch higher at the neck edge of the shoulder than at the arm edge. If I were to do the pattern again I would do the front portion of the shoulder shaping in reverse stocking stitch to match the reverse stocking stitch in the cable pattern.

Cable pattern

They are not enjoyable to knit. They pull in where the cable twists appear. I did notice on the pattern that you increase by 4 stitches on the front shoulders so this seems to accommodate for the pulling in you get. The cardigan cables look a bit of a mess when it is a work in progress but bear with it. Once the button bands are knitted and you get that extra width the cables then pop out. They come into their own once they are blocked.

How I did the conversion to my measurements

I started off by taking all my key measurements:

Waist
Full bust
High bust (or just under the arm pits)
Armhole depth (from shoulder to high bust level) (from end of shoulder)
Armhole depth (from the neck edge of the shoulder to the high bust level)
Shoulder to full bust
Full bust to waist
Shoulder to waist - front and back.
Shoulder width

After working out my stitch and row gauge per inch, I went through Andi’s pattern for the section I was about to work on. I did not work it all out from start to end in one go. That would have been too boring but also it is better to do it in sections to check you are on track and to try it on as you go.

Using Andi's stitch and row gauge, and her schematic, I tried to work out the proportions. For example I worked out that her button band was about 1.3 inches wide. I tried to work out where her neckline shaping started and so on. I then adapted these proportions to my measurements.

The decreases for the neckline were tricky to work out. I used an on-line knitting decrease calendar to help me in places. I then worked out the decreases for the bust to the waist, worked out how many under arm stitches to cast on and so on.

Sleeves

I had had a lot of help from these sources:

By Gum By Golly (Tasha) - tutorial on drafting your own knitted set in sleeve.

Paula Ward - You Tube Videos on designing your own knitted sweater, in particular the Sleeve Cap videos in two parts.

Barbara G Walker - Knitting from the Top - seamless set in sleeve instructions.

There were some great tips on all three sources and I have used something from each one. For example:

Barbara G Walker

You measure your upper arm to determine the amount of stitches you need for your sleeve circumference. To determine the rate at which you pick up you need to count the number of rows on your armholes from the main body. (This is after subtracting the number of under arm stitches you cast on because you always pick those up at the rate of 1 stitch for every one cast on.) This gave me a rate of picking up 1 stitch for every other row on the armhole. It could have been two for every three, four for every five and so on.

Paula Ward

She instructed you NOT to leave a gap in the pick up rate of more than two stitches. This will leave a gap in the armhole. Even if this means you are picking up too many, don’t worry, you can reduce down later. For example do not pick up two and skip two stitches. Instead you can pick up two and skip one stitch.

By Gum By Golly

I finished my short row shaping for the sleeve cap at the point that I started my armhole shaping. On Barbara Walker’s method you continued this until the under arm stitches. I went with By Gum By Golly’s method as I thought this would produce a snugger fit.

Knitting the Body

I changed to a 4.5 mm needle to knit the waist ribbing. After doing 8 rows of ribbing as per the pattern I kept the waistline stitches on a holder until after I had finished the sleeves. This made it easier to lengthen later after the sleeves if I wanted to. I ended up doing 13 rows of ribbing to match the ribbing on the sleeves.

Short rows

For all my short rows I use the German short row method. You need to adapt the pattern slightly to do it. I use two videos which explain how to do them and how to to adjust a wrap and turn short row pattern direction to German short rows (see here and here).

Bust short row shaping

I added some short row shaping at the bust. It sounds fancy but I just added a few more rows in the front portions only to accommodate the bust. I only added two rows in case it looked odd. Next time I may be a bit more fearless in adding more short rows. The cardigan when worn is slightly shorter at the front than the back.

Bind offs

I used the 2 x 2 sewn bind off to bind off the ribbing at the arms and the waist using this video this video.

Buttonholes

I used the horizontal buttonhole method to do the buttonholes (see link). I also used this excellent video for the horizontal buttonhole method. I like the tip to use the purl cable cast on when working the buttonholes.

My buttonholes were 3 stitches wide and my actual buttons 18 mm. I used this buttonhole calculator which worked out my buttonhole spacing.

When planning the spacing for my buttonholes I had the top button at the full bust point. I have noticed on finished objects for this pattern that this top button seems to be high. Mine also come out high despite trying to be careful. It may be better to allow for the top button to be slightly lower than the full bust point. The cardigan looks fine with 4 buttons closed though.

Button Bands

I did 11 rows of the button band in a smaller needle, 4.5 mm needle. (The pattern has 8 rows on a 5 mm needle.)

I used button band tips from Gail in her knitalong posts for the Miette. I picked up a whopping 205 stitches using a pick up rate of picking up 3 stitches for every 4 rows. (To put this in perspective, the medium size on the pattern has you pick up 182 stitches and I believe my cardigan may have ended up more cropped than the pattern.) I then decreased 1 stitch at the neck in the first row so my ribbing pattern would work. I changed the ribbing pattern so that on the right side there were 3 knit stitches at the very bottom of each side of the bands. In the pattern the bands end on both sides with 2 purl stitches.

I also twisted the first row of the button band. I did an ordinary bind in pattern off for the button bands.

I have re-inforced both sides of the button bands with lining and interfacing strips. I used the sewing machine to add buttonholes and I sewed on the buttons using the machine. I also did these bands on my Agatha and I explain how I did it in this post.

I hope to be back soon with some of my other finished knitted projects.

Agatha

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 22:32:00 +0000

The Agatha was my second sweater and my first Andi Satterland pattern. Her patterns were a major factor for me in deciding to take up knitting. I used to watch from the sidelines as lovely sweaters were being made while resigning myself to a future of lame ready to wear. Now I can join in the cropped cardi and floaty dress combo whenever I want. I'm so easily pleased!

Anywhere here are some photos. It was super hot today so the cardigan was off as soon as the photos were taken.

The details:

Pattern: Agatha by Andi Satterland.

Yarn: Cascade 220, sunflower (2415 colourway).

Needles: 4.5 mm for the body, 4 mm for the cuffs and button bands.

Cast on: 5 April 2014.

Finished: 31 May 2014.

I love the construction of this sweater. After knitting seamless sweaters I am not sure I would want to knit flat and seam (or why anyone would).

I wouldn't say the sweater was hard but you do need to keep your wits about you. I had read that people had to rip back because they lost track of their rows on the lace panels. My method of knitting from a pattern so far has been to cut and paste the text from the PDF pattern into a Word document and then to write out all the rows. So for example if the pattern says, repeat the previous 2 rows 8 times, I would write them out that number of times (sometimes with increases or whatever). This takes extra time but I don't mind because it means as soon as I complete a row I write “done” next to it on my document. For the Agatha this meant writing out all the lace panel rows I needed in a particular row into each row on my Word document. There was no flipping back and forth to separate charts for me. I wanted everything I needed for the row in one place. I wasn't about to rely on a post-it note to keep my place in the charts, particularly since there were 7 lace charts to follow when knitting the joined body.

I was surprised the pattern didn't call for stitch markers at each lace panel. I had stitch markers around all my lace panels. I just use scraps of yarn tied into small circles for my place markers. I can't stand trying to knit with those plastic stitch markers.

The Agatha is mainly straightforward between the lace panels, with relatively mindless ribbing and the odd increase / decrease here and there. When I reached the stitch markers I would pay more attention to following the lace pattern. I would also regularly count the stitches between my lace panel markers. Sometimes the counts were off, usually because I was missing a yarn over. This is easy to add in when I next come to it by just lifting the yarn between the stitches. I soon learned to “read” the lace stitches which was really helpful when trying to see where I had gone wrong in dropping a stitch. For example the ssk's and k2 and k3 tog's are easy to recognise. It's important to learn how to do this as you cannot keep undoing your work every time you miss a stitch. You at least have to try and work it out and rip out only if all else fails and you can't bear to continue knowing there's an error there. As I said, with me it was mostly leaving off the yarnovers so no major problems fixing.

The lovely thing about knitting a popular pattern is reading the notes of those who have made the pattern. Here are some of the tips I used.

From Johanna at Making It Well. I followed her link for a stretchy sewn bind off. She linked to this video. I also found this 2007 blog tutorial which seems to be the same. I now use this bind off all the time. I follow the blog tutorial now rather than watching the video.

From Gail at Today's Agenda there are lots of useful tips on her Miette knit along posts. I used her tips for the button bands. Firstly I knit them with a smaller needle. I also twisted the first row of stitches after the pick up row (ie by knitting and purling the picked up stitches through the back loop). Lastly I picked up at the rate of 2 stitches for every 3 without worrying about how many the pattern said. Funnily enough I ended up with the same amount as required by the pattern.

I followed Lladybird's lead and re-inforced both button bands. When I did my Agatha Lladybird had not yet written up her tutorial for doing this so I kind of winged it. I couldn't find any suitable ribbon so I used sew in interfacing the size of my button bands, less about an eight of an inch all the way around so it wouldn't peek onto the right side. (You can also use iron-on interfacing). I then used a lining fabric in my stash and cut it 1 cm bigger than my interfacing strip all around. I then ironed over the 1 cm hem on all sides and then stitched the strip to the button side of my button band with tiny stitches. With my button hole side I pinned the interfacing strip to my button band and then marked where I needed to sew the buttonholes. I then machined button holes on the interfaced strip. If there is one tip I can give here, it is to make the machine buttonhole slightly bigger that the buttonhole on your cardigan. This is because when I came to attaching the strip to my cardigan and matching up, it wasn't completely accurate on some and I had to cut into the bar tack of the button hole to enable my button to fit in. I also started to hand stitch my machined buttonholes to my cardigan buttonholes but this didn't work out so I left them loose. I noticed that Lladybird's tutorial also leaves them loose.

One thing I changed in the pattern was the buttonholes. The pattern calls for eyelet buttonholes. I was concerned they wouldn't be very strong. After a lot of reading up and watching tutorials I settled on using the one-row horizontal buttonhole using this tutorial on how to do a variety of buttonholes. I also followed this You Tube tutorial which has a good tip for using the purl cable cast on instead of the knit cable cast on for this type of buttonhole.

Gail from Today's Agenda also linked to this brilliant buttonhole calculator which I used to calculate the spacing in my buttonholes.

I made the button band wider. I did about 9 rows instead of 5. I also did 9 buttons instead of 7.

I did the medium size which has an inch of positive ease in the bust. The cardigan is slightly more slouchy than intended but I'm not too worried about that. I will embrace the Andi Satterland negative ease a bit more in a future project. Inexplicably the pattern came out longer than the schemeatic even though my gauge was correct and I followed the pattern.

If I were to make the pattern again with negative ease I would have to make the body smaller and use the same size sleeves / armholes. The sleeves and armholes are nice and snug on the medium so would be too small if I were to knit the small. I will have to learn to modify patterns at some point.

I think that is about all I can say. There is the odd error here and there in the pattern. Some of them are noted in the Ravelry comments on the pattern. Also look at the forum posts on the pattern on Ravelry (a couple of which were started by me when I became stuck on the sleeves, which turned out to be an error in the pattern).

Andi is brilliant in replying to comments. I messaged her a few times on Ravelry. Mostly she replied instantly and I never had to wait more than a day for a reply.

I'm wearing the Agatha with my Rooibos dress which goes really well with it. It's funny that I'm having to think really carefully about future hand sewn clothes to ensure they will also go with my hand knits. I don't have a lot to wear with my Agatha at the moment. I haven't worn leggings for ages but I've discovered the Agatha looks good with leggings and a floaty ready to wear tunic that I have.

I have just finished the Myrna. It is blocking at the moment and I want to re-inforce the button bands again so it may be another couple of weeks until that is finished.

Still no sewing. I tried to join in the Untangling Knots Outfit Along but I had terrible problems with my muslins. I tried the Anna dress and the Ava dress and for both the bodices came out too short. I have therefore left sewing for a bit and will remember to measure before I cut a muslin in future! The Outfit Along has turned into the Myrna Along for me but never mind.

Happy sewing and knitting.

January Cropped Sweater

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 20:22:00 +0000

After finishing my first knitting project following a pattern surely my goal of hand knitted sweater and cardi goodness was a step nearer? I'm pleased to say that it was. I have now even conquered the giddy heights of an Andi Satterland pattern but for now I give you my first hand knitted sweater. Here are the pictures taken today.

I used the January Cropped Sweater pattern from Tara Miller. It's a free pattern and I made the medium. I used the recommended yarn, King Cole Magnum lightweight chunky, 75% acrylic, 25% wool.

I learned so much making this sweater. The pattern unfortunately had loads of errors (with stitch counts being wrong and the like) so I had to re-write the numbers on most of it.

The pattern recommends 8 mm needles for the neckline and body. I used 6.5 mm needles for the neckline (as well as for all the ribbing as the pattern recommends). It's a top down sweater so you start with the neckline. My rookie errors are laughable now. I tried to cast on and knit the neckline on a 21 inch circular needle. Not surprisingly I didn't get very far. After a lot of swearing and frustration I posted a question on Ravelry. The only solution I could think of was buying double pointed needles.

I got a few responses from Ravelry members, such as knitting the neckline flat and seaming it later. A few posts in one lady nonchalantly suggested I look at the travelling loop or magic loop methods. Magic what? Well that lovely lady saved my sanity. A couple of You Tube videos later my project was saved! I am also a magic loop convert and have used the method over double pointed needles for sleeves ever since.

This sweater knitted up really fast, despite all the errors in the pattern and thinking time that went with it. I cast on on 8 March 2014 and it was finished and blocked by 29 March 2014.

I love the sweater and despite the problems with the pattern I think it was a good pattern for a beginner. The bias detail on the sleeves made the project interesting. The bind off for the body recommended Jenny's surprisingly stretch bind off. I love the method. As the name suggests, it really is stretchy, perfect for a sweater. I liked it so much that I used it for the sleeves. I don't think it was a great idea for the sleeves. My wrists are small, the sleeves are a tad big, so I didn't really need a stretchy bind off. It has added an interesting fluted detail to the sleeves. If I were to make the sweater again I would make the arms narrower and use a normal bind off.

My knitting addiction continues. I have just finished a cardigan and I am currently knitting the Myrna from Andi Satterland. The only downside is that my sewing is suffering. I can only sew at the weekends and it has been hard tearing myself away from the knitting.

I hope I can get photos of my second sweater soon.

See you soon.

Broad Street Mittens

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 12:18:00 +0000

Long breaks between blogs is getting to be the norm around here. I'm still living in London during the week and back in Norfolk at the weekends. This means that I can't sew during the week.

Instead of buying patterns during the week and dreaming up what to sew (which I was doing a lot of) I decided to use my time more productively. I finally got around to learning to knit properly. By that I mean I no longer look at written pattern and say:

“What the ….??” after the first few rows of ribbing;
“Why does knitting have to be so damn complicated”.
“Why can't they write the patterns in plain English rather than in stupid codes”

With a lot of help from the internet, my knitting book and Ravelry I now understand the “codes”. Sorry for calling your codes stupid knitting designers. I now know that they're not at all stupid. Once you have taken the time to understand them they are stupidly simple!

My first project reading a pattern was the Broad Street mittens by Janis Cortese. This is a free pattern from Knitty.com and also appears on Ravelry. (I tell a lie – my first knitting project reading a pattern was at aged 11 when clever me somehow managed to knit dolls with hair and everything).

There are a few errors in the pattern and I had a lot of help reading this forum post and this Ravelry finished project post.

I also watched on You Tube, in full, a series of videos about knitting gloves in the round. Although the pattern I used was slightly different, I learned from the video how to knit in the round and how to knit the fingers. I also learned how to pick up the stitches when knitting the fingers, including adding one stitch to join with the next stitch when knitting in the round. One great thing about knitting stocking stitch in the round is that it eliminates the need for purl rows as you are always facing a knit row.

In hindsight it was a challenging pattern to start off with. I would say that if you can get past this pattern you are totally ready to knit a sweater. It's not a great leap to turn a glove upside down and understand how a top-down sweater is knitted. The wrist of the glove is similar to the neck and the thumb of the glove is similar to how a sleeve is knitted. Knitting a sweater is exactly what I'm working on now. I'm nearing the end of the second sleeve and I can't wait to show you.

Anyway here are some pictures of my gloves:

Here are the details.

Wool

2 x 50g balls of Patons Madella, 83% acrylic, 17% wool. (From my stash)

Changes to the pattern / Clarification of pattern instructions / Corrections to the pattern

Swatch / Needle size

I did a swatch with the recommended needle size but the fabric produced came out way to big (it's supposed to be 28 stitches to 4 inches in stocking stitch. I reduced my needles to a 2.75 mm needles, made another swatch and this came out fine.

The pattern didn't tell you to use a smaller needle for the cuff and the ribbing on the mitten cap. On the second glove I used a smaller needle for these sections. I preferred the look of the tighter cuff and ribbing on the second glove.

Thumb Increases

The thumb increase on the Broadstreet mitten is unusual in that the increases only happen on one side of the thumb. This means there is no “increase line” showing at the front of the glove. The “increase line” is on the palm side of the glove, supposedly where it will be seen less.

The pattern uses four double pointed needles, two for the palm and two for the back of the hand. From reading Ravelry and other notes about the pattern there was some confusion about the thumb gusset increase.

For the thumb increase (on the left hand) you need to purl in the same place on the second needle and then do your make one increases after that on the second needle until you have 12 stitches. Therefore on the second needle on every other row:

K 13, purl 1, make 1 (twisted), knit to the end of the row (end of the row being the end of the 4^th needle where the tail end is.

Then on the normal (non-increased) row in between the increase rows it is just knit all the way round the row to the tail end except on the second needle it is:

K13, purl 1, knit to end of needle.

I'm not sure I was doing the twisted make 1 correctly. The You tube video I found just seemed to be the normal make 1, which I used.

Cast on after separating thumb

After finishing the thumb increases you had to knit around to the end of the second needle (ie at stitch 13 and just before the 14 stitches thumb stitches put on a holder) and then cast on 11 stitches. I did this by turning my work the wrong side (so the purl stitches facing me) and adding the using the cable cast on method.

Pinky finger

After knitting up to where the pinky finger starts, the pattern instructions were a bit sparse. Luckily I had already watched the glove knitting videos linked above so I knew what to do. I wrote out the following instructions to fill in the gaps in the pattern instructions at this point:

After putting the 3 middle finger stitches on a holder the pattern tells you to cast on one stitch on the ring finger side. However the tail end side of the work where you are starting from is on the other side, so you have to knit up to this point and then cast on one stitch. I used the cable cast on again.

The pattern didn't tell you to knit two stitches together from the two sections like it did for the thumb cast on stitches. I therefore cast on an extra stitch (so two cast on stitches instead of one) and knit the extra stitch together with the first stitch from the back of the hand pinky.
The pattern didn't tell you to transfer the pinky stitches onto more than one double pointed needle. I found I couldn't knit with just two double pointed needle so I transferred my stitches onto 4 double pointed needles. (With so many needles I felt a bit like Edward Scissorhands at this point).

Middle and ring finger

Instead of picking up 2 stitches from the base of the ring finger (as in the pattern) I picked up 5. I reduced the 5 to 3 on the next round and then the 3 to 2 on the following round. This worked because there are no holes between the fingers. I also cast on an extra stitch on the opposite end of the 2 picked up stitches and then knit this with the first stitch on the needle holding the back of hand stitches. Again this prevents a hole appearing in your work.

Thumb

The pattern said to pick up 12 stitches along the cast on edge (see “Cast on after separating thumb” above). This didn't seem enough to me. As I was concerned there would be gaps I picked up a stitch every couple of stitches and ended up picking up 17. I then knit one round and during this round I reduced the 17 picked up stitches to 12 and the followed the pattern instructions from there.

Mitten shell

I read on Ravelry that people had difficulty with the star decreases on the middle shell. There is a mistake in the pattern and there should be two decreases per needle instead of one.

I wrote out what I needed to knit and decrease on each of the 4 needles and the corrected decrease instructions are as follows:

Starting with 56 stitches in all, on each needle:

Decrease row 1: k5, k2tog. Repeat. (48 stitches) (12 stitches per needle)
Rows 2 to 6: K 5 rounds even.
Decrease row 7: K4, k2tog on each needle. Repeat. (40 stitches) (10 stitches per needle)
Rows 8 to 11: K 4 rounds even.
Decrease row 12: K3, k2tog on each needle. Repeat. (32 stitches) (8 stitches per needle)
Rows 13 to 15: K 3 rounds even.
Decrease row 16: K2, k2tog on each needle. Repeat. (24 stitches) (6 stitches per needle)
Rows 17 to 18: K 2 rounds even.
Decrease row 19: K1, k2tog on each needle. Repeat. (16 stitches) (4 stitches per needle)
Row 20: K 1 round even.
Decrease row 21: K2tog on each needle. Repeat. (8 stitches) (2 stitches per needle)

Row 21A: K 1 round even (my addition)
Row 22: K2tog x 4 (4 stitches)

Row 23: K 2 inches of I-cord on these 4 stitches.

To start the mitten cap, after knitting the ribbing for the mitten cap, you had to pick up 30 stitches across the mitten. The only way I could see to do this was to pick up the second leg of each of the 30 knuckle stitches onto two needles.

Right hand glove instructions

As mentioned above there are no instructions for the right hand. The only differences between the left and the right hand are the thumb increases and thumb decreases.

My notes for the right hand thumb increases are set out below.

For the thumb increase you need to purl in the same place on the thirdneedle and then do your make one increases before that on the third needle until you have 12. Therefore on the third needle on every other row:

Work out where the increases will be on needle 3 by either: noting where you need to purl by looking to see which stitch is purled on the previous row; or counting back from the end of needle 3 the stitches that will be the K 13, purl 1. K up to just before where the purl 1 will be, M1 (twisted), purl, knit to the end of the row (end of the row being the end of the 4^th needle where the tail end is).

Then on the normal (non-increased) row in between the increase rows (as above) it is just knit all the way round the row to the tail end except on the third needle it is:

Work out where the purl will be by either: noting where you need to purl by looking to see which stitch is purled on the previous row; or counting back from the end of needle 3 the stitches that will be the K13, purl 1. K up to where your purl needs to go, purl, K to the end of the row.

My notes for the right hand thumb decreases are set out below.

After finishing the increases you have to knit around to the end of needle 2 (ie K 15) and then cast on 11 stitches onto needle 2. At the start of the third needle, after the 14 stitches are put on a holder, there should be 13 stitches left. With the 11^th added stitch on needle 2 you join it with the first stitch on the third needle to close up the thumb hole.

Loose bind off for the fingers

When the pattern said “bind off loosely” for the fingers, I thought that meant just don't pull it too tight. I used the ordinary bind off for the first glove. After searching the term on You Tube I found that it is a different method of bind off using purl stitch and wrapping the yarn around the needle clockwise instead of anti-clockwise. Unsurprisingly my bind off has come out much better on the second glove.

I-cord

The mitten shell has a length of i-cord at the tip for the button hole. By the time I came to my second glove I had read a tip about knitting the i-cord with a smaller needle to make it tighter. I did this and although it was difficult to knit the first few rows it has definitely came out tighter. I preferred the tighter look on the i-cord for the second glove.

I blocked my gloves and then they were ready to wear. It took me a while to get around to sewing the button on. This step was worthwhile as the mitten shells flap around when they are worn off the hand. How cute is the mitten shell? When worn off the hand they're like cute little beanies!

Overall I am really pleased with my mittens and I have worn them a lot at the weekend. They're really cosy and warm!

Now at the weekends I have to force myself to do some sewing! Hope to be back soon with my finished sweater and an easy sewing project I've finished.

Happy sewing (and knitting)!

2013 Hits and Misses

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 21:54:00 +0000

I debated about whether to do an end of year review. I haven't made enough to do a list of 5 hits and misses. I've logged eight completed items on the blog this year. I also made two other items but I won't include them as they won't meaning anything if I haven't posted about them.

I really like Gillian's idea with the top 5 lists. We can use this cute little button and change the rules to suit ourselves.

Instead of doing top 5 lists I will talk about the “hits and misses” with what I've made this year. What I like, what I love, what I don't like and what hasn't worked. I enjoyed putting this together and hopefully it will help me to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

If you want to read more about any of the items please follow the links from the Finished Projects tab at the top.

Burda slip dress

The good.

The colour. The white is neutral and versatile.
The fabric. It's soft and lovely to touch.
The fit. I was surprised at how well this fit with little alteration. With my odd shape I was expecting a lingerie item to take longer.
The finish. The “turned-under” vintage seam finish takes a bit more effort but is totally worth it.

The not so good?

The straps. Some form of elasticated strap would be good. When I sit down I can feel them digging in my shoulders.
General thoughts. I've worn my first Darling Ranges dress loads since this was completed. I haven't worn it with anything else though. This is probably because most of my garments are already lined but it's nice to know I have a slip if I need one.

Denim Wiksten Skirt

The good:

The colour and fabric. Denim. No further explanation necessary. I need to make more denim skirts. I have 3 at the moment. Maybe a Beignet or a Ginger?
The fit. This is good but I've always found skirts easier to fit. A bit of adjusting at the side seams is all that is usually needed.
The vintage seam finish. See above.
My additions: pockets, belt loops and longer ties. They make a superior skirt in my opinion. I'm usually alright with leaving pockets off dresses but somehow skirts need pockets in my humbles.

Misses? None that I can think of.

General thoughts. Next to my Royal Blue Minoru jacket this has to be one of this year's most worn garments. I'm wearing it now with my stripy Rendrew top. I added a lining to the skirt which was the basis of my first tutorial. I've just noticed the tutorial now appears as a “popular post” in the side bar. Nice to see a 2013 post there among the mainly 2011 posts. My side bar is a constant reminder of my Peter Pan collar phase.

Light Blue Wiksten Skirt

Hits and misses? Very much the same as the Denim version.
General thoughts. I haven't worn this skirt as much as the denim one. This is mainly because I haven't found anything to wear it with other than the blue jumper that I wore on the photo shoot. I did wear my White Banksia with it a couple of times. As an interlude I would now downgrade my Banksias to misses. They were hits in my 2012 list. The slightest bit of bending over means a whole lot of flashing. Not what you want to worry about when wearing a garment. Purely for that reason I would now consider them fails. Such a pity because I love the tops and so want to wear them in real life.

Royal Blue Minoru Jacket

The Good.

My changes: the length, the fully lined patch pockets, the interlining and inferfacing of the whole jacket for warmth and the storm flaps.
This jacket gets worn every weekend so it must be a hit. I wore this coat to work today as my usual one was at the dry cleaners. One of my lovely colleagues saw it hanging up and asked if I got a new coat for Christmas! She wasn't expecting me to say I'd made it! (Ha ha – that's the first time that's happened to me!).

The not so good?

The colour and fabric. I love the colour but I sometimes wish it was plain black like my first one.
The fabric isn't great but I can't expect miracles with Ikea curtain fabric. The same fabric type worked well with my first Minoru. I think the jacket just needs bedding in more to loosen it up a bit. I did interface and interline the entire jacket so this presently adds to the stiffness.
The sleeves. I've never had a ready to wear coat (or ready to wear anything for that matter) that properly fitted my long arms. Why oh why then did I not make the sleeves longer? Why didn't I notice this at the muslin stage?

French Hat Box Dress

The good.

The colour and fabric. It's lovely and soft. The neutral colour detracts from what could otherwise be considered a garish print (by my “un-garish standards” anyway).
The lining. The same fabric as my slip dress so soft and lovely to wear.
The zipper finish. With this make I perfected my zipper and lining insertion technique.
The rub-off method. Although this was a long and, at times, impossible process, with a lot of winging it, I'm glad I tried it. The method opens up so many possibilities and I definitely want to try it again.

The not so good?

The final muslin fit much better than the finished make. I know the reason for the skirt being bigger (my mistake) but I can't figure out why the bodice ended up larger as I transferred all my adjustments.
General thoughts. Despite my niggle with the fit, this dress is definitely a hit. I also made a version in blue. Both dresses were worn a lot this year.

Red Skater Dress

Hits and misses:

The colour. I love the colour but for me it is more of an evening dress. I wore it to the supermarket once and it felt so bright under the harsh light!
The fabric. Not a great quality but it's lovely and soft so it doesn't bother me.
The fit and style. I love the fit and flare silhouette. There may be more 50s style dresses in my future – a style I haven't yet tried. I'm glad I took the time to get the fit right on this Renfrew modification. Particularly in getting the bodice to stop at my waist. I could have settled for the half hearted dropped waist look of my first muslin but I didn't.
The skirt length. With this particular style, I don't know if it's the stretch fabric, but I prefer the shorter length of my blue skater dress. I've received compliments on the length so this is not a major issue and I still love the dress.

Blue Skater Dress

Cut and paste everything above about the Red Skater Dress, except there are fewer negatives with this one. The colour is not so loud and I love the skirt length.

Sugar Plum

Hits and misses.

The fabric and colour. I love the blouse fabric, the peachy colour and the print. It goes surprisingly well with the black skirt. It reminds me of a frothy milk shake or an ice cream sundae and so goes well with the dress name!
The fit. My only niggle is the sleeves. After my hacking they are now a bit restricting. It is only noticeable when I raise my arms (as in the hands on hip poses in the photo shoot). However, I'm not going to be rock climbing in this dress (or standing around with my hands on hips) so it's not a major issue.
The skirt lining. I wish I could cope with a wool skirt right next to tights but I can't so lining is essential for me. The lining defeats the point of the stretch skirt slightly. Maybe I can find a stretchy lining in future? Again this isn't a huge problem. I didn't make the skirt as fitted as the design intends so I can still move about and sit down comfortably.

Conclusion

I'm surprised I got a whole blog post talking about these few items. Although I only made a few things, I took my time with what I did make. I think this is why I am happy with all my makes this year. There's nothing on the list that I don't want to wear. On the whole it's been a successful year.

I don't have any immediate sewing plans. After the Sugar Plum I'm not yet ready to dive into another pattern. I bought some lovely fabric on eBay and I'm thinking of making another Burda top with it. I've made three of these tops now and they get worn all the time for work with a suit. If it ain't broke don't fix as they say. I think the top would be a perfect showcase for the fabric plus it will be a nice easy make after the challenges I've set myself this year!

Thank you to my lovely readers for following along with me throughout the year.

I hope you have a happy 2014. I'm sipping wine at the moment and and about to have some Tiramasu!

See you soon.

Katy

Sugar Plum

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 01:45:00 +0000

I've finished my Sugar Plum dress from Lolita patterns!

I love this pattern. First up here are some pictures.

What I like about the design is that it's so different. A dress that look's like a skirt and top? I don't know why that should be so appealing. Probably because it's so darn different. The pattern also provides a bit of a challenge for the more experienced sewer. The button loops and modesty shield for example - so cute!

Amity, the designer, is lovely and ever so professional. Whenever I became stuck or wanted more information about the design I just emailed her and she responded straightaway.

I only wish I was able to finish in time for the Sugar Plum contest. Despite starting my muslin on 2 November 2013 I was miles away by 2 December 2013, the contest deadline. I finished putting the last button on today. In my last post I said I wouldn't finish this dress in 2013 so I've surprised myself by finishing it now!

Here are the details.

Fabric

I used a wool knit fabric for the skirt (I can't remember the mix). I was all set to use a polka dot black and white fabric for the bodice when I remembered this lovely peach fabric I bought from the old lady. This close up of the fabric on the dress form will give you an idea of what it's like. It has an oriental feel.

First muslin

I traced and cut the pattern in a size 12. I was really happy with the style. My changes were to lengthen the bodice and remove some width from the hips and side seams. I emailed Amity and she said the waist line should fall on the lower seam of the waist band.

I lengthened the skirt pieces as I didn't want it any shorter than the un-hemmed muslin.

Sleeve Changes

I didn't like the original sleeves on me. It was more gathered than I would like at the top. I then added the vertical gathers at the sleeve hem to see if that improved things. It didn't. The sleeve was too big and stood up too much at the sleeve head. I wanted it to lay flat.

I had a go at removing all the excess fabric in the gathered sleeve head. I simply made a large dart at the shoulder seam and removed all the excess. I sewed the dart and tried it on to see what it looked like. Despite the less than professional technique I deployed this was a vast improvement.

I removed the sleeve and set about making up a new pattern piece. This was really hard to figure out. What I should have done was open up the patternmaking book I bought to see if it could offer any help. I'm a bit short on sewing time so that wasn't going to happen. I carried on winging it. All credit to the indie pattern makers (who do get a hard press from some snobbish quarters). This stuff is hard.

Where was I? Oh yes. I tried to alter the flat pattern but I couldn't figure out how to get it to lie flat. I then took my fabric sleeve piece, complete with dart, pressed it flat and traced around that, transferring all the markings. (Gingermakes – is this how they did it on your FIT course? Ha ha!)

I then made a further muslin from my new pattern piece. There was still a bit of gathering around the sleeve head but it was much more to my liking. I moved the notch for the shoulder seam to where it should correctly lay with the new cut.

The sleeve hem circumference was too big for my arm. Instead of just taking in the sleeve side seam I noticed there was a lot of excess fabric at the bottom of the sleeve at the back. I took about 2 cm out of that area by placing a dart at the sleeve hem. I sewed the dart to see what it looked like and it was much better. I then transferred my alteration to my pattern piece. Instead of taking out the 2 cm in one area, I distributed the amount to be removed by making small tucks which together added up to the 2 cm needed to be removed. The pattern piece now looked vastly different at the back (and downright odd!).

I changed the sleeve attachment method. The pattern has you make up the sleeve and lining and then set into the bodice, right sides together. This would leave you with a seam on the inside. I didn't want this seam and I like my lining to look clean on the inside with all the seams enclosed. Having made the Minoru jacket twice I know how easy it is to join the hem of a lined sleeve after the sleeve is attached so that's what I did.

Collar Changes

I muslined the neck ruffle to see what it looked like. It looked alright but a bit ruffley for my liking and not in keeping with the clean lines elsewhere. I then shortened the collar piece to make a stand collar. I preferred this style on me and I thought it was in keeping with the Japanese influence of the pattern.

The pattern calls for a single layer of fabric which is serged to prevent fraying. I preferred to make up the collar with two pattern pieces with enclosed seams.

I may make some further changes when I do the pattern again. I will interface the collar stand as it is a bit limp in this drapey fabric. I will also change the collar stand piece so that it is more vertical at the centre front rather than at a 45 degree angle.

Button Loops

The button loops nearly defeated me trying to turn them through. The pattern called for one long spaghetti strap, turned through, and cut into loop lengths.

The problem was my fabric. It was too delicate to turn through and frayed really easily at the edges. I ended up making up a couple of smaller length straps to practise on. I finished the seam with a zig zag stitch to stop it fraying and I pressed the seam allowance to one side. I used the hair clip method used in the Saltspring sew along. This worked well but I had to do it really slowly and pull the clip through carefully adjusting as I went along. If I yanked too hard the clip would break through the loop snipped at the top.

I also left off the top loop as I liked the look without. Next time I will put small strips of interfacing on the centre front edges to give more body to that area as it flops back slightly.

Skirt

After finishing the seams and topstitching the waistband I decided to topstitch all the skirt princess seams. This was to try and reduce the “hanging” of the jersey fabric between the stitched panels. I'm not sure what the ruched effect was all about. I thought it may be because I didn't have the skirt quite as fitted as the design intends.

The pattern only has lining up to the waistband. As I need to be able to wear things easily with tights, I continued the lining to the skirt. My waistband facing pieces are in lining fabric rather than shell fabric as in the pattern.

I was disappointed with the skirt when I had finished because the princess seams still gave a ruched effect. Turns out all it needed was a good press, while slightly stretching the princess seams lengthwise. The ruching disappeared and I was happy once again!

Zip

I attached the invisible zip, and the zip to the lining, using my usual method (details and links can be found in this post if you're interested. (If you follow the links, I link to two step by step tutorials, the second of which does it exactly the way I do my zips and lining. I do my zippers and lining slightly different to the Sewaholic Cambie and Sunni Craftsy methods which I know a lot of sewers use).

I have a new way of matching waistband seams at the zipper tape. After stitching one side I close the zip and then line up the other centre back waist seams. I pin the zipper tape to mark where the waistband seams should go. I do small hand tacking stitches to mark these points rather than faffing around with my blunt and mostly useless chalk. I then do hand and then machine basting stitches to attach the waistband part only to the zipper tape, sewing between the two hand tacked stitches. I then close the zip and make sure the two waistband seams match. If they do then I complete the upper and lower parts of the zip.

I found that the top of the zipper tape finished about 3 mm further away from the top neck edge than on the other side. My bodice piece must have been slightly bigger. No problem because I just sewed the top neck edge 3 mm lower on that side so that it matched the other side.

Here are some pictures of the finished lining, front and back. I didn't use red lining because I thought it would go well with the peach fabric (ha ha!). It was because although the white lining (used for the bodice and waistband) was nice and soft, I didn't want to have white lining under a black skirt. The red fabric was the only lining I had that was as soft as the white lining.

Buttons

I spent a good hour yesterday trying to find suitable buttons from my button stash. There was nothing suitable so I headed down to John Lewis today to buy these white pearl like buttons. (I was the only person in the Haberdashery! I love John Lewis by the way – such great customer service).

The pattern intends the buttons to be sewn on through the lining. I didn't want messy button stitching to interfere with the clean finish of the lining. I attached my buttons to the outer shell only but after adding a strip of interfacing to the wrong side. Next time I will add this strip of interfacing at the cutting stage as it was a faff to attach after the event.

I'm really pleased with the buttons and the little loops. Such a cute detail. The buttons are not the main closure which is just as well as they are fiddly to open and one of my loops came out too short.

Conclusion

I really like this pattern and there will definitly be another one. I might make it next even though I have a mountain of other exciting patterns I am anxious to start on!

With my reduced amount of sewing time (I work and live in London during the week and my sewing machine is in Norfolk) I have been consoling myself with buying patterns. I now have every possible Indie pattern I could ever want. I've also been slightly addicted to ebay pattern buying and I've bought a vintage Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress pattern!

Well that's it now for my completed makes for 2013!

I still hope to be back with some top 5 posts.

See you soon.

Katy

Blue Skater Dress

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 18:22:00 +0000

All I want for Christmas is ... to get all my 2013 makes onto the blog before the year end. It hasn't quite happened so here is one of them. My second Renfrew skater dress!

This version is the same as my first version in red (same fabric type as well). I didn't have enough of the blue fabric to cut another circle skirt so this one is the muslin skirt used when practising my first version. The skirt isn't as long as the red version but I quite like the shorter length. It has a nice casual feel. It's as brilliantly twirly as my first version. (Twirliness factor - check.)

Despite using the same pattern as my first version, the top came out much bigger at the waist. I therefore had to cinch in the waist with elastic at the back. Sewing elastic into a finished make was no joke and nearly drove me mad! It took nearly as long to mess about with the elastic as it did to make the rest of it!

The circle skirt was much easier to hem on this version as I was able to do it by machine.

Even with the elastic, the waist wasn't cinched in enough for my liking. I added ties using this tutorial from the Darling Ranges sew along. I made the ties much longer than the Darling Ranges ones which are tiny. The ties make such a difference and the cinched in waist is now complete!

This dress is every bit as comfortable as my first version. I wore my red version on Christmas Day - the perfect Christmas dress for sitting around in and rushing about making the Christmas dinner. I've worn the blue one quite a bit already as well (I finished it quite a while ago).

I was hoping to finish my Sugar Plum in time for the year end but that isn't going to happen so that will be a 2014 make now. I haven't managed to photograph my second Florence and Fred Rub off dress for the blog. I also made a pencil skirt for my mother which I will have to photograph at some point for the blog. I got around to changing the zip on my Plain Black (Almost) Miss Chalmer's skirt. That was such a pain to do. I had to sew on extra fabric to the centre back edges. It hasn't come out perfectly, and the piping at the back doesn't line up now, but at least I can wear the skirt again.

I hope to be back before the year end with a top 5 post (even though I haven't made enough to exactly qualify for that!).

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.

See you soon!

Katy

Red Skater Dress

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sat, 12 Oct 2013 21:15:00 +0000

Skater dresses should be made compulsory. Here is mine!

This is possibly the nicest dress I've made, or at the very least up there with the likes of my Darling Ranges dresses.

The idea to make a skater dress came when I couldn't make the Hummingbird top work for me. I made a few muslins of the Hummingbird but decided to throw in the towel. I was still keen to make a knit and something peplum-y. Initially I was going to try and make a peplum top from the Renfrew but decided to go the whole hog and make a skater dress.

I made at least two muslins, possibly three. I started by tracing out my Renfrew bodice pieces, cutting it off at the waist and adding a seam allowance. I cut out a circle skirt. I was lazy and didn't follow any tutorials to calculate the waist circumference. I just guessed and of course it came out way too big. The skirt was gathered in to fit the waist.

After the first muslin I could see the style had potential but needed a lot of adjustments. I wanted my dress to go in at the waist, and the first muslin was more of a dropped waist. I also needed to cut out a lot more from bottom of the back bodice for it to hit at the waist, far more than I had to cut from the front. It took a bit of fiddling and adjusting to get the side seams to match. I also made the neckline higher than in the original pattern. One or two muslins later and I was happy.

This red fabric was only ever intended to be muslin fabric. My chap bought it at an auction. It's stretchy and has a waffly texture on the front, and a shiny knit like texture on the back. I have some blue fabric the same and I'm convinced the previous owner bought it to make Super Hero costumes. Despite that I really like the fabric. I usually avoid red because I've read that with my colouring I should steer clear, particularly next to my face. Well I'm happy to break the fashion rules.

I still refused to follow tutorials and winged the cutting of the circle skirt. The waist was smaller than the muslin but still too big. I had to gather the skirt again but I'm not worried. If anything this adds extra twirliness to the skirt. Speaking of which, how much fun is twirling around the living room in a circle skirt? I've never worn one of these things before so the novelty may take a while to wear off.

The dress was really easy to sew up. The top was sewn as per the Renfrew instructions but I did the neckband differently. I sewed it more like the Pendrell neckline but in reverse so the band shows on the right side. (The Pendrell neckband instructions are here.)

I serged my seams together with a zig zag stitch, including the waistline seam, after trimming them down to about 0.5 cm. I then pressed the waist seam up and edge stitched the seam from the front.

The only downside to making a circle skirt is hemming the damn thing. I tried to stitch the hem on my machine but it didn't like it one bit. The Superman fabric must be rubbery or something as it kept sticking to the needle. I didn't have this problem with any of the other seams. There was no alternative but to hand stitch it. I used the blind catch stitch, which I learned from Gertie's book. The hem has come out really well. Despite moaning about hand stitching I have come to really enjoy it and I don't mind a bit of hand stitching in my makes every now and then.

I'm really pleased with the dress and I'm looking forward to wearing it. I wasn't thinking of a Christmas dress when I made it but it will be the perfect dress to wear at Christmas!

I've already cut out a second skater dress in the same fabric but blue (a great cobalt blue).

Happy sewing

Tutorial: Inserting Heavy Duty Snaps

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 21:00:00 +0000

This is the last of my Minoru jacket tutorials following my Royal Blue Minoru Jacket.

Before making this jacket I had never inserted snaps. I'll be fine, I thought. There's bound to be a tutorial on-line. If there was I wasn't able to find it. There were a few tutorials but with different snaps to those I was using. I started my practice attempts by, gasp, working it out for myself! The instructions on the tiny packet were minimal to say the least. My biggest problem was working out what part joined to what, and which way round.

On my first attempt I inserted the parts the wrong way round so, unsurprisingly, the snaps wouldn't close. I trawled the internet again to see if I could find a tutorial. The best I could find was a tutorial for adding snaps to home made nappies of all things. The tutorial was helpful in showing which way round to insert the parts so my second attempt was successful.

Another thing that put me off trying snaps was the misconception that special equipment was needed. If you're doing snaps a lot then specialist equipment makes the job easier but you totally don't need it. I just used the little tools that came with the snaps, a hard surface and a hammer.

This tutorial shows how I inserted the snaps on the storm flaps I made on the jacket. As the upper snaps were inside a hidden flap, they were awkward to insert to say the least. I suppose in ready to wear they insert the snaps before the plackets are sewn into the jacket. However I wanted to make sure the upper and lower snaps lined up correctly so I inserted my snaps at the very end.

Anyway enough talk, here's a reminder of the snaps, which gives you an idea of why they were awkward to insert.

The tutorial can be downloaded from this link. The link takes you to the Rapidshare home page. Click the blue download button and this takes you to the tutorial. Select the tutorial and click download. Unfortunately it is slow to download but you may be able to speed the process up if you sign up for a free Rapidshare storage account.

If you have any problems downloading or with the tutorial let me know.

Happy sewing.

Tutorial: Finishing the hem and plackets on the Minoru Jacket

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 21:56:00 +0000

UPDATE from 6 June 2014: My cloud storage has now changed from Rapidshare to Dropbox. I have adjusted the links below to Dropbox. Any problems let me know. Katy.

This tutorial shows how I adapted my tutorial on hemming a lined skirt with a placket (seen here) to finish off the hem and lining on the Minoru jacket from Sewaholic Patterns. The main differences to that tutorial are the use of a hem facing and the hem is attached to the lining instead of free hanging.

The instructions to the Minoru jacket use a different method which you can see here.

Here is a picture of the inside of the jacket:

and of the finished jacket:

On my jacket I added storm flaps to the front of the jacket (tutorial here). That tutorial links to this one at the appropriate place. This tutorial works equally well without the storm flaps and with the zip plackets as per the original Minoru pattern. Just ignore the references to storm flaps as you will be finishing the zip plackets with no storm flaps added.

The tutorial can be downloaded from this link. The link takes you to Dropbox. Just click the download tab.

UPDATE on 6 June 2014: I tested the link today and it downloaded quickly for me, no more than 2 minutes.

Happy sewing.

French Hat Box Dress

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 22:35:00 +0000

Remember the rub-off experiment I wrote about way back in March this year? Well this is the second dress made from that. I finished this way back in April and for one reason or another I've only just got around to taking photos of it.

Anyway, better late that never as they say. Here are the photos.

Luckily I made notes of this make or I would never have remembered all this. I used the rub-off method to copy a Florence and Fred ready to wear dress. In my March post I showed you the penultimate muslin and said I was going to make another one. I did this and the only change was to add a bit more length to the bodice.

While making the dress I noticed an error on the skirt part of the muslin I showed you. I added an extra pleat in the centre by mistake. There were 6 pleats and there should only be 5! That extra pleat led me down the path of making the skirt bigger as I mentioned in the post. So the skirt is bigger than it should be for a tulip style but it's not a major problem.

More inexplicable is the roomier bodice on the final version. I tried on the final muslin again and it was far more fitted. The changes I made to the length shouldn't have affected the width! I'm not too worried. It's a day dress, and the ease is needed to move about comfortably. If I make the dress again I'll do another muslin to figure out what happened to the bodice and take some ease out of the skirt.

Fabric

This is a lovely cotton I bought from Hobbycraft. The fabric was called “French hat box” which I rather liked so that's the name of the dress.

Lining

I sorted out the lining fabric that came with the lot I bought from the old lady (which has gone down loads, especially for muslins). I removed all the lining and slippery fabric from their bolts into a plastic crate. There's some great fabric that can be used for lining, including this white one. It's a lovely soft fabric and feels great on the skin.

I did my usual method for inserting the lining based on Angela Kane's method which I talk about here. I under stitched and top stitched the neck and armhole seams (under stitching as far as as I could go – it's not possible to under stitch right up at the shoulders). I added strips of interfacing at the armholes for extra strength.

Stitching in the ditch

I stitched the lower edges of the neckbands together “in the ditch”. Don't under estimate the effect of this little step. It really does improve the look of the dress.

Zip

This was my first slot zipper using a regular zipper. I got loads of practice during the muslin stage using this excellent tutorial. My topstitching was about 3/8 inch from the centre of the zipper which I think produces a neater result than a smaller gap.

As my dress was lined I was going to have to do it slightly differently as the tutorial was not for a lined dress. I remembered that Kathleen Fansella's centred zipper technique was for a normal zipper with a facing. I used her method as usual and just topstitched around at the end, taking in the lining at the same time.

The zip came out better on this one that on my first make of this dress (which I have yet to blog). I thought about hand picking the top stitching but I didn't think it would be strong enough even though with this zip method the dress and lining are machine stitched to the zipper tape and then top stitched. The topstitching is vital as the zipper is visible otherwise. I didn't want hand picked top stitching coming undone and exposing the zipper.

This dress also marks the first time I have used Kathleen's centred zipper tutorial completely right! Despite always using her method I had been overlooking one small measurement which makes a huge difference to the final result.

I've mentioned before that Kathleen's method has the facings smaller. Instead of altering my facings (and lining) to make them smaller I have been “over hanging” the facing / lining unit about 0.5 mm beyond the corresponding shell pieces when attaching it to the zipper tape using Kathleen's method. It turns out I haven't been bold enough in the amount of over hang. It needs to over hang by 1.5 cm (if you're using a 1.5 cm seam allowances) to get the optimal effect. The method also reduces bulk at the top of the zip. I haven't trimmed the corners of the zip seams at all and but this makes no difference. (Kathleen trims the corners in her method but I'm still a fan of Tilly's method of not trimming corners).

Thank you as well to Kayotic Sewing of Gently Down The Seam as it was her comment on my post about zippers that got me thinking further about this. I have now updated my post on zippers here with this information. I have added a link there to a tutorial on Pattern Review that Kayotic Sewing referred me to which uses the over hang method.

The bottom of the zip where it joins onto the seam allowance of the dress and lining also came out really well and sits flat against the shell.

See that triangular shape at the bottom? That's the seam joining the bottom of the zipper tape to the lining. It's at an angle as it starts at the lining seam at the bottom of the dress and has to taper out to meet the end of the line of stitching that attaches the zip to the lining. I've never seen that explained anywhere like this. It just came to me as I was making my first version of this dress and has worked nicely.

Vent

The dress I copied had a vent so I added one to his make.

I used Sunni's tutorials to draft the lining to the vent which I have linked to in my earlier post on vents. Instead of drafting new lining pieces I used the back skirt pattern piece (with vent) to cut out the lining and then chalked straight onto the fabric the extra ease that is needed at the hips and above the vent. I cut out the vent area on my lining pieces as per the outer shell. I then cut the vent lining down to size when I was ready to sew the vent lining to the outer shell, figuring out where I needed to cut. If you're doing this it's essential to chalk on to both sides of the lining and outer shell pieces the centre back seam line and all the seam lines around the vent. Remember to take into account and add seam allowances to the lining pieces. This is easy to forget. I know because I did it and had to re-cut the back lining piece. (By the way I didn't do Sunni's curve thing on the vent lining).

I adapted my own tutorial here to do the hem on the lining and the corners of the vent.

When sewing up the vent of this skirt I didn't follow any tutorials. Vents freak me out a bit so I wanted to see if I could overcome my fear by sewing it up intuitively. It took ages and a bit of un-picking here and there but it came out fine.

I started by sewing the centre back seam on the lining and dress up to about 2 inches above the vent area. I then chalked on all the seam lines on the vent and chalked in the centre back seam line, extending the chalked line right down to the hem edge (on both the shell and lining pieces). That centre back chalked seam line is valuable for lining up and folding the vent accurately.

I stay stitched with small stitches just inside where the seam line will be on all the critical corners of the vent, including the corner which meets the centre back seam. I did this on the lining and the shell pieces. You need to clip into these corners and so you can clip up to the stay stitching. I also added squares of interfacing in those corners. This is crucial if your fabric frays easily.

I stitched the vent intuitively starting from the long vertical edges of the vent. Where I wasn't sure I would leave a gap of about 1.5cm before the edge of the seam, turn though and then see what I would need to do next. This took some time but it enabled me to work out which bits needed to be clipped to make the vent work and why.

Hem

I made a hem facing for the skirt by tracing out pattern pieces from the bottom of the skirt pattern pieces and added seam allowances to the bottom and sides. I love how the hem facing has turned out. It's given a neat result and fits perfectly.

Conclusion

I love the dress and wore it a lot over the summer, including to work. I'm a rub-off fan and will definitely be doing it again. In fact I bought a nice dress from H&M this summer that I want to rub off. The dress fits really well but has a high-low hem which I'm not keen on. How great that the rub-off method can let me create the dress again with a hem-line more suited to me!

Happy sewing

Tutorial: Storm Flaps

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 17:10:00 +0000

UPDATE from 6 June 2014: My cloud storage has now changed from Rapidshare to Dropbox. I have adjusted the links below to Dropbox. Any problems let me know. Katy.

Hello all. I hope you're having a good Saturday whatever you're doing. I've taken a break from hemming a circle skirt to finish my tutorial on how I did the storm flaps on my Royal Blue Minoru jacket.

Here's a reminder of what they look like.

What are storm flaps? The best explanation I could find on-line is:

“To prevent wind-driven rain from coming into the garment through button-holes or zipper teeth. If you're really out in the weather for an extending period, and are counting on the coat to keep you dry, they're somewhat important. Zippers aren't waterproof.”

Just the ticket for a winter Minoru!

As with my last tutorial the lined bellows pocket with a flap there are too many steps to insert into one blog post so it is available as a download for now. I use Dropbox for my cloud storage and you can download the tutorial here. The link takes you to Dropbox. Click the download tab.

UPDATE on 6 June 2014: I tested the link today and it downloaded quickly for me, no more than 2 minutes.

I realise it would be better to have the tutorial available on the site. Now I have this page set up I might get around to adding all the steps to the end of this post on an ongoing basis and let you know in a separate post when it's ready. In the meantime the download will always be there!

Please let me know if you have any problems downloading it or with the tutorial.

Happy sewing!

Tutorial: Lined bellows pocket with flap

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 08:43:00 +0000

UPDATE from 6 June 2014: My cloud storage has now changed from Rapidshare to Dropbox. I have adjusted the links below to Dropbox. Any problems let me know. Katy.

I have now finished the first of my tutorials following my second Minoru jacket - the fully lined bellows pocket with a flap. Here are some pictures of the finished pocket to remind you what it looks like.

There are too many steps to insert into a blog post so this tutorial is available as a download using this link. I use Dropbox for my on-line cloud storage and the link takes you to the file uploaded there. Ignore the hyperlinks I created in the document. They no longer work since I converted the document to a ".doc" format.

UPDATE on 6 June 2014. I tested the link above today and it downloaded quickly for me, no more than 2 minutes. I have not yet moved over to Dropbox any of the links to pattern pieces etc referred to in the paragraph below. Please let me know if you would like the links in the paragraph below and I will arrange for the links to be added.

I also created pattern pieces using the free Google Sketch Up application which can be downloaded using this link. You need to have Sketch Up loaded on your computer to open the file - see the link to Sketch Up here if you want to download it. For those with access to Windows: please see the instructions using this link for printing the pieces to scale. (I haven't tested this as I don't have access to Windows but my techie brother assures me it works). Mac users: I don't think you can print to scale on the free version of Sketch up. You can view the shape of the pieces on the Sketch Up document or you can refer to this link to see the measurements I used to draw my pattern pieces.

The lining is pretty nifty and I think the principle and the pattern pieces can be extended and adapted to make a lined hand bag.

Please let me know if you have any problems opening the links.

Happy sewing.

Royal Blue Minoru Jacket

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 18:04:00 +0000

At last I can show you my finished jacket! I actually finished this on 21 June 2013 but have only just got around to photographing it. Without further ado here are some photos.

I have already done two progress posts on the various changes I made to this jacket. In the first I talked mainly about the interlining. In the second I talked about a few other changes I was making.

I took detailed notes of this make and took lots of progress photos. I've written up several tutorials. I'll do an overview here and post the tutorials when they're finished. (Ha ha I just removed the word "brief" from that sentence!)

I started cutting this on 21 April and put on the last snap just before midnight on 21 June 2013! I added a further step of waterproofing the jacket a month or so ago but more on that below.

Planning and Cutting.

I cut all the pieces and interlining over 3 days. I wrote above the interlining here.

The pattern only lines the inside of one of the collar pieces, where the zip is, but I lined both. When the hood hangs down the lining inside the collar is visible.

I lined the hood, which isn't called for in the pattern. I made the hanging loop out of lining rather than shell fabric. I interfaced one of the loop pieces to give some body. I also interfaced both collar pieces this time.

Pockets

I added lined patched pockets to my first Minoru. I talked briefly here about the changes I was making to the pockets this time. Last time I didn't interface the pockets save for the under flap. The lining I used on my first Minoru was not good quality and has fluffed and curled around the edges. I thought interfacing all the pocket pieces would help keep them flat. I also made the pocket flap slightly bigger. The biggest change was to make a proper bagged lining for the pocket, so that your entire hand is encased in soft lining when they are in the pockets! Here are some close ups of the pocket and the lining.

Update: My step by step tutorial on how I did the pockets is available on this post.

Lengthening the Jacket

I mentioned in this post that I was lengthening the jacket. This change was forced on me for reasons I can laugh about now but were minor heart attack inducing at the time.

To explain the context you have to understand that the lined pockets took ages to attach. On top of the actual sewing I was taking photos and writing a tutorial. In one of the tutorial steps I dutifully tell everyone to chalk the pocket placement lines and then sew your pockets within those lines. When you eventually see the tutorial you will from the photo of this step that I chalked both the finished hem line and the pocket placement line. Guess which one I attached my first pocket to? Yes I attached my pocket to the line indicating where my finished hemline would be and noticed only after spending ages attaching it!

Leaving it as is was not an option as having no gap underneath the pockets before the hem line would be crazy. Option 2 was to reduce the generous 3 inch hem on the Minoru jacket. I wasn't keen on that idea so I went with option 3. I cut a hem facing for the jacket and attached it to the bottom edge of the jacket with a 1 cm seam allowance. This had the effect of lengthening the jacket. I actually like hem facings and they turned out really well.

I didn't have to re-cut the jacket lining pieces as I made the hem facing long enough to comfortably attach the lining and allow for some ease. The only pieces I had to re-cut were the plackets and I had to buy a longer zip.

Update: My step by step tutorial on how I did the hem facing and finished the lining and corners on the jacket is available on this post.

All in all this was a good save! I did want a longer Minoru. The only change I would make if I was to make another in this length would be to move the pockets higher. I have long arms but even so they are fully extended when my hands are in the pockets.

Sewing the hood and lining

As others have pointed out, one of the quirks of the Minoru jacket hood is that the seam attaching the hood to the collar can be seen inside the collar when the hood hangs down. I trimmed and finished that seam with a zig zag stitch. I thought I would save time by zig zagging the bottom edges of my hood and lining pieces before I started. This turned out to be a complete waste of time as you really do need to trim and grade that seam down so that you can topstitch along that edge.

I went over the trimmed seam with a zig zag stitch and it's not too bad. I took this nifty extra step to ensure that seam was as small as it could be and had less scope to move about when worn. I topstitched the right side of the hood at the lower edge, taking in the trimmed neckline seam of the coat on the other side. I made sure the collar was folded away as I didn't want to stitch onto that. Here's a couple of photos which I hope explains what I did. The coloured headed pins sticking up show where the topstitching is.

Collar is folded down out of the way

View from the other side

Zip on the collar

I had a few problems with this step. First, I noticed after inserting the zip (yes always after) that I had the collar lining on upside down. The collar is longer at the bottom than the top but I had the short edge of the lining along the bottom. I thought: “Jeez I cut this really badly” before realising my error! Duh!!

My second problem was pressing that window for the zip once it is turned through (rather like a welt pocket). The interfaced fabric meant it was hard to press. I pressed for ages and got it to go as flat as I could.

The corners of the zip window where you snip into? I had the same problem as last time with a small amount of my lining peeking to the right side. Not as much as last time though. I'm also not brave enough to snip right up to the stitching and this adds to the problem.

My main problem was attaching the zipper. The zipper window being slightly too big in one place caused my topstitching to miss the zipper tape in one small area measuring around an inch. I had to go back and fix this which meant stitching over the previous stitching which is quite noticeable.

I'm going to take extra care if I make the jacket again to ensure the zipper window is not too big and to make it uniform. I was lazy about transferring over the zipper markings at the cutting stage. (Seriously the pieces take ages to cut and the last thing I want to do is tailor tack the zipper opening along with the the placement for the elasticated waist). The zipper window only needs to expose the teeth so there's no need for it expose the tape.

Storm flaps

I mentioned in this post that I was adding a front flap to the jacket as I couldn't find a zip to match my fabric.

I'm really pleased with how they look. There are two flaps covering the zip. The under flap is cut smaller so the top one can lay flat. The top flap has a hidden under flap which has the upper halves of snaps invisible from the outside. The lower flap has the bottom halves of the snaps. I worked out how to do this from a ready to wear jacket. I have hand tacked the under flap to the top flap in between the upper snaps.

Here are some close ups of the flaps which hopefully show how they work.

Update: My step by step tutorial on how I did the storm flaps is available on this post.

I've done a step by step tutorial on how to do the storm flaps which I'll post once it's finished.

I also did my first ever snaps. I don't have any fancy equipment for this. The snaps came with a small punching tool and a spreading tool which are used with a hammer to pierce the fabric and attach the snaps. The pack also came with a base tool which holds the snap in place while you hammer it.

My test snaps came out better than those on my finished jacket. Only one has come out really well and they are a bit stiff to close. It was difficult to hammer the snaps into the finished jacket, particularly the under flap, as it was hard to keep the rest of the coat out of the way. I now want fancy equipment for attaching snaps but I can't justify the expense.

It is possible to remove snaps with a hammer, chisel and some patience, as I found out when I totally messed one up.

Update: My step by step tutorial on how I did the the heavy duty snaps is available on this post.

Inside phone pocket

As I mentioned in this post I devised an little pull tab to put my phone in. It's not quite worked out as planned. It's great for inserting the phone, where it sits upright. It also pulls out using the little tab. The problem is that the phone doesn't pull out freely when it's in a rubber case like mine. It works better without the case. Also it's a hassle putting the tab back in once you've pulled out the phone. It would be easier if the top half of the tab was stiffened, with cardboard hidden inside the tab or something similar.

It's pretty neat and I do like it. It keeps the phone upright in the pocket. It's probably not worth the hassle though unless it is stiffened with cardboard or something.

The pocket is slightly longer than on the Minoru jacket pattern, which was not big enough for a smart phone.

Cuffs

I had a few minor problems here. Firstly I cut out elastic for the cuff to fit my wrists, which are very fine. However they were too much of a mismatch for the size 14 cuff. I then went with the elastic recommendation for a size 14 which was too big. I then made the elastic 2 cm smaller which I was happy with.

I did the gathering stitches on the raw edges of the cuff as recommended in the pattern. However I tried to pull up the gathering with the thread tails and ended up snapping the thread. The gathers wouldn't pull I think because of the weight of the fabric. I removed the gathering and just eased and pinned the cuff onto the sleeve. This worked fine. I spent ages removing all the gathering afterwards so I'll be glad to avoid that step next time. I also attached the cuff with a 1 cm seam allowance as I like long sleeves.

Joining the hem facing to the plackets

I adapted my own tutorial here to finish this. I prepared a tutorial for this which I'll post when it's finished.

Stitching in the ditch

This is where the jacket and lining are joined at the collar. It turned out better than on my first Minoru. For the most part the stitching is not visible on the lining of the lining side. It's still impossible I think to get the stitching exactly in the ditch on both sides. I wasn't aiming for this, but I did spend a lot of time making sure the stitching didn't stray too far into the collar part of the lining side. There was one small section on one side of the lining that I re-did twice on the machine. In the end I ended up doing that part by hand. My hand stitching doesn't look great on the wrong side, but that was mainly because I was impatient to get it finished. It doesn't show on the right side which is the main thing.

Elastic casing

I marked the channels for the elastic by pinning the side seams of the lining and shell together starting from the under arm, seamline to seamline. I then pinned the areas around the elastic channels knowing that the jacket was properly aligned at the side seams. As in my last make I extended my elastic out to the front about 2 inches from the side seam. (On the original pattern the elastic comes out much further.) I did notice one thing though when aligning the shell and lining on the jacket fronts. The lining was a bit tight on the side where the inner pocket was. (I only made one inner pocket). I don't know why this was. It wasn't a huge problem at all but it would be a good idea next time to add a tiny bit of ease, widthways, to the front lining piece.

Threading the elastic took a ridiculously long time. I started doing it with a safety pin. The safety pin kept getting caught on the basting lines which attached the inter lining to the jacket. In the end it was easier to start again and do it without a safety pin. I then tested the elastic width with pins. I first tried somewhere just under the elastic length recommended in the pattern. It was way too big. I then pulled it tighter and it was then too tight. I then decided that my elastic should come out slightly more from the side seams than 2 inches as mentioned above. I extended the channels to 2.5 inches out from the side seams which looked better.

Waterproofing

My mother gave me some fabric protector she had left over from making blinds (Scotgard Protector for fabrics). The blurb says it: “forms an invisible barrier which resists water and oil based liquids (eg, rain, wine, salad dressing etc). It also provides dirt resistance so fabrics stay looking cleaner for longer and are easier to clean. Does not change the look, feel or breathability of fabrics. Ideal for clothes and soft furnishings.”

As I hadn't yet properly worn the jacket I decided to waterproof it a month or so ago. It's best to do this on the washed fabric before making but it's equally possible to spray a finished coat (which is one of the recommended uses). My chap did the spraying while I held the coat. He sprayed it really well, with extra on the collar, corners, the pockets and along the stitching. He held the can about 20 cm away from the coat. I then left it overnight.

Conclusion

I'm really happy with this coat. It took a long time to make but was worth the effort. With the storm flaps, lined pockets and interlining it's like a Minoru deluxe! I wore my first one to death and I'm sure I'll do the same with this one.

In other news (for anyone still reading – thanks if you are!) I'm currently making a skater dress based on the Renfrew pattern. I've also just finished a pencil skirt for my mother. Before that I started the Hummingbird peplum top from Cake patterns. My muslin didn't turn out well so I didn't go any further with it. However I was still keen to make a knit and something peplum related. It was then that I hit upon the idea of making a skater dress with the Renfrew pattern! Happily this has turned out much better and I'm looking forward to showing you once it's finished!

Happy sewing.

Mending Project: Hem Band

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 18:22:00 +0000

I've finished the second project in my mending pile - lengthening my Angela Kane Shift Dress. I made this dress over two years ago and it's the page that gets the most hits on my blog. (Ta!). I hope no-one minds the change.

I mentioned here that it's too short for my 2013 taste. I decided to lengthen it with a hem band. Here are some pictures of the finished dress.

There's not a great deal to say except the dress is once again wearable. If the nice weather can linger a bit longer I may even get some wear out of it this year. If not the dress will be a welcome addition next year.

Instead of finding the original pattern pieces I just traced out a hem band using the rub-off method. I unpicked the hem and trimmed it to a 1.5 cm hem allowance. I placed tracing paper under the edge of the front section of the dress, with a piece of cardboard underneath. I found the half way mark of the hem and pinned along the hem fold of the dress, onto the tracing paper, with the cardboard underneath. I drew the side and centre of the pattern piece (the centre being the fold and grain line). I removed the pins and joined the dots made by the pins. I measured the depth of the hem band (6 cm) to complete the pattern piece. I repeated with the back of the dress. I then had net pattern pieces and added seam allowance when cutting the fabric.

I cut out 2 pieces for the front and back hem bands, four in total. I joined the hem bands at the bottom and sides, with a 1.5 cm seam allowance and then attached it to the bottom of the dress with a 1.5 cm seam allowance. This took me a few hours to do today so I'm really pleased.

In other news it's been a while since I last posted. This is mainly due to the fact that I work in London during the week now and go home to Norfolk at weekends. I have been sewing during that time but the main thing to suffer has been the photo taking. I will get around to this at some point. We're staying in London next weekend so I might get around to doing some photos then.

My sewing machine is also in for a service and repair at the moment as the foot pedal suddenly stopped working last weekend. It's the first time I've taken it for a service in 17 years (bad me I know, but I've only really used it for the last 3 of the 17 years!).

I'm loving working in London again though. One of the best things is building up my hours to leave early on Friday. I also cross Waterloo bridge on the bus every day, so I have some great views of London. There are some amazing sewing and fabric shops as well near me, including one that's open until 11 pm every day. The possibility of late night sewing shopping!

Happy sewing and I hope to catch up soon.

Cambie Fix and Mending Pile

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 14:22:00 +0000

Afternoon all! I've now finished my lovely second Minoru. Nearly two weeks ago in fact but I've been up to my ears in DIY and decorating and stuff so no time for photos. I've also written loads of tutorials for various steps on the Minoru, such as the lined bellows pocket, the flap etc. You're going to be sick of hearing about the Minoru as there are likely to be a few posts. I'll probably start with a “ta da” type of post and follow with separate tutorials.

Anyway something I've been really good at lately is mending. Seriously don't under estimate how fulfilling this is. It's really quick once you get going and you get a real sense of satisfaction. If you need a quick and easy project there's no need to make another Sorbetto or Scout tee, just get going with some mending or giving a facelift to an existing garment!

My mending spree started earlier this year when I fixed the covers on my mother's sofa. I then shortened two further wrap tops that I had, identical to this one I shortened in December 2011. On a roll I took in the metal closures on my two tulip skirts here and here as they were too loose.

Today I've mended my Cambie dress made last year. Here's a reminder of the original. (Yes I changed the straps).

My first fix was to mend a hole that appeared where the waistband joins the skirt. The fabric on this dress is terrible and frays like anything. When I made this dress I was still of the view there was no need to finish seams on a lined garment. Not any more. I finish all my seams whether the garment is lined or not. Anyway I fixed the fraying and hole by adding some interfacing to the area and re-stitching the seam.

When I tried it on I realised I wasn't happy with the buttoned straps. They were too thick and didn't sit right, particularly now that I've lost some weight since last year. I therefore removed the straps and the buttons. I then made some new, narrower straps and sewed them in place. This is what I have now.

This has really improved the dress. I'm looking forward to wearing it now. The skirt and bodice are a bit big now. It doesn't notice that much so I don't think I'll bother taking the sides in.

Here's some other projects in my mending queue.

First up my Angela Kane shift dress. This is a bit too short for my liking now. I want to add a hem band, maybe in a light blue.

Next up the Pendrell blouse. I've worn it exactly zero times since I made it. This is purely down to the sleeves and ruffles. A perfectly good blouse is going to waste. Time to bite the bullet and remove the sleeves and ruffles and have a plain layering top.

Finally I need to fix the zip on my black Miss Chalmer's skirt. I love this skirt but the wretched invisible zipper broke soon after making it. This has put me off invisible zippers. They're not suitable for sturdier garments and I try to avoid them altogether. I'm really not looking forward to unpicking the zipper but I can do it!

Oh yes. I have to shorten my chap's new trousers. You can tell I'm thrilled about that one!

In other news I've bought the new Colette Hawthorn pattern! How cute is that sundress. I really love buttoned garments since making my Darling Ranges dresses and Wiksten skirts. I can't wait to make this one.

Happy sewing.

Update ... and High Street Copycats

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 17:29:00 +0000

Happy Saturday all! I thought I'd drop by to let you know what I'm up to. I don't like to leave the blog gathering dust for too long between finished projects.

I'm still working on my second Minoru jacket. Here's a sneaky peek of one of the finished pockets. My unfamiliarity with a pressing cloth is slightly noticeable here!

In addition to the changes I mentioned in my first update post I've made three others.

Firstly I'm lengthening the coat slightly. This one was forced on me. I'll explain more when I eventually post. It's quite hilarious really.

Secondly, wearing my mad professor hat again, I devised an inside pocket to hold a phone that you can pull out with a little tab. It's finished but very much a “mark one”. If there's ever a third Minoru it can be improved.

Thirdly, I'm making a front flap to cover the zip. This is mainly because I couldn't find a zip to match my fabric. One thing I like about my first Minoru is the black zip to match the black fabric. I tried to find a matching zipper. My on-line research indicated that royal blue separating zippers exist but only if you order 50,000. I made that figure up but you get my drift. Not entirely seriously, I emailed YKK at some global head office somewhere to ask where I could source one royal blue zip in my required length. I was amazed to get a reply a few hours later. My chap couldn't believe they answered. “YKK are huge!” Anyway they just referred me to two on-line retailers I was already aware of. They did no more than search on Google like I had done but at least they answered.

My two Rub Off dresses continue to get worn. I'm sure photos will happen eventually. It doesn't help that my camera bought at great expense a couple of years ago has died.

I've subscribed to Angela Kane's site for a year. I had a free membership a couple of years back when I made up the pinafore pattern. She recently sent an email offering £5 membership to all lapsed members which I took advantage of. I had most of her patterns but I downloaded them all anyway (just in case any had changed). I have downloaded a lot of her videos, including a series on making jeans.

I also bought some Victory patterns in their recent sale. I have long admired their patterns and thought it was silly to let another sale offer pass by. I bought the Hazel, Lola and Anouk.

Now onto what I was going to post about! Since I started sewing again, like a lot of you, I'm very familiar with a lot of indie pattern designs. The Sureau, Darling Ranges, Banksia, Cambie, Datura, all need no introduction. I'm less familiar with the big 4 than some of you.

Other than this I don't follow fashion at all. It's fashion and ready to wear on one side, indie sewing pattern designs on the other and never the twain shall meet. Sometimes though I'll stumble on an article about a celebrity, or the latest High Street fashion, and be struck at how similar something is to an indie pattern design.

For example, it may just be me but it seemed like the sewing blogosphere were doing peter pan collars and peplums way before the High Street caught on. What about this example of Georgia Jagger from last November? Angela Kane did a chiffon animal print shirt at least two years earlier.

Source

The next one took the biscuit. As soon as I saw the picture I thought “Sureau”. Is it me? They haven't even tried to change the fabric choice that much!

Source

Update: I've spotted some more High Street look-a-likeys on my travels!

Source

I'm certainly not criticising the designers of these celebrity clothes. The word “copycat” in the heading was in the interests of a punchy title only. I love taking inspiration from clothing I see on-line and on celebrities. I have a bookmarks folder overflowing with ideas as much as the next person. It's rather nice to think that even big shot designers, who may have celebrities wearing their clothes, can take inspiration from furtive scouring of indie sewing pattern websites.

Happy sewing.

Second Minoru Jacket Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sun, 12 May 2013 20:31:00 +0000

Good evening all. I'm a bit behind with photographing finished makes. I have not one but two versions of the Florence and Fred rub-off dress to show you. They're great and I've worn them quite a bit. They're now ironed once again waiting to be photographed.

In the meantime I thought I'd talk about the progress of my current make - my second Minoru jacket. I think you know how much I loved my first version. I always knew I wanted to make a second one. The advantage of having worn the jacket for eight months is that I know what changes to make for the next version!

First up is warmth. 99.9% of the time it is cold in the UK. I may have exaggerated that figure but that's what it feels like! It would be nice to have a Minoru that kept me warmer on really cold days.

I realise this jacket isn't really designed for warmth like, say, a winter coat. Tasia (the designer from Sewaholic) has mentioned the fabric shouldn't be too thick as it has to gather at the neck and waist. I'm using the same fabric as in my first version, a fairly thick cotton canvas. To add warmth I looked into interlining the jacket.

I read a bit about interfacing jackets. The texts I read were aimed more at suit jackets where the interfacing would add structure. I don't think there's a right and wrong way about where to interface. Things like collars, pocket flaps and button bands are always interfaced. In addition to these areas, some people interface just the jacket front pieces while others interface the back as well, or at least the upper part of the back. I read that sleeves are rarely interfaced except for the top part of the sleeve cap, extending down to around 2 cm below the under arm. See this link to Claire Shaeffer's Couture Techniques book on Google books which talks about interfacing the sleeve. I followed this except I didn't cut the interfacing on the bias.

Laura from My Little Nook has written a couple of helpful posts on interfacing and interlining a coat. (She's also made some fantastic coats if you're not familiar with her blog). See her post here on interfacing a coat and her post here on interlining a coat. She lists all the suitable fabrics for interlining.

I used a medium weight sew-in interfacing on the jacket fronts, jacket back, the sleeve caps (extending to about 2 cm below the under arm points) and the collar pieces. For the lower part of the sleeves I used a white cotton (as I couldn't find any batiste). Here are some pictures of the finished pieces. Yes it took me ages to sew all those lines onto my pieces! This step also ate up a whole spool of thread, so I'll have to buy more! I have no idea if this experiment with interfacing will work but I guess you don't know until you try!

Those creases in the corners are pins by the way

The second change I want to make is to the patch pockets. I added huge patch pockets with a flap on my first version. Huge pockets are a must. I end up shoving all sorts of things in them. I'm not changing the design of the pockets, just the construction of the lining. The pocket lining on my first version is more of an inter lining. So if you peek inside the pockets you can see the pocket seams. I want the lining to be more of a true lining so that the seams are not visible when you peek inside. The lining will be more like a pocket bag and I think it will need a back lining piece which extends up into the pocket flap. It's going to take me some time to work out how to do this, but you know I like nothing better than a geeky challenge!

Another minor change I've already alluded to is to add interfacing to the collar pieces. Hmm the collar on my first version is pretty stiff already. I'm not sure why I'm doing this but I'm going ahead with it anyway! I'm also lining both collar pieces as the original has only the outer collar piece lined.

I just need to cut out the interfacing on my placket pieces and then I can start sewing. This is not going to be a quick make with all the extra work I've added. I also have very little spare sewing time at the moment. It might be some time before I have another finished make but hopefully I'll be back soon with some photos of my Florence and Fred dresses.

Update

I've started sewing the sleeves so I thought I'd update this post to show how I've got on with the thickened fabric. It's come out fine so far and the seams after topstitching have come out fairly flat. I'm being fanatical about grading the seams to remove the bulk. It's amazing what a difference this step makes. Here's a picture of a graded seam from one side. The lowest point is the interfacing, then the middle layer of the outer shell is cut leaving the third layer of the outer shell uncut. I then snipped through the curved areas in the sleeves, through all the layers. The ends of my vertical hand stitched lines used to attach my interfacing are tied at the edges. I trimmed around these parts so as not to undo the hand stitching.

Here's the view on the other side. Here just the interfacing is cut down, the next layer being the uncut third layer described above.

Here's a picture of the topstitching.

The Great British Sewing Bee

The Great British Sewing What? Yes I know I'm late with my observations on this but better late than never!

Like many of you I've been a great fan of the series, watching every episode on the TV and then on the iPlayer. My thoughts very much echo everyone else's. It was surprisingly good and exceeded expectations. How wonderful that it focused on garments rather than home furnishings and cushions which is what I thought it would be like.

The challenges were really tough. Most home sewers sew for themselves and yet there was a weekly challenge to tailor a garment to fit a model. I really like how this not only pushed the sewers involved but the judges' comments got me thinking about things in a new way and have encouraged me to up my game. The show hasn't just been good for encouraging new sewers.

For example Patrick and May talked about “balance”. This is not something I've thought of before but it's a problem that I often have without knowing what it was! For example the bodice seeming to be higher in the front than behind or the hem rising up higher in the back than the front. May also talked about the flow of a pattern starting from the centre which I haven't thought about before.

I'm glad Ann won as she really was the best sewer. I loved her jacket and man's shirt. Hardly a level playing field given her experience but there were no categories in the show so the best person won.

I went to a local fabric shop a couple of weeks ago to buy thread and I got talking to the owner about the show. She agreed that Ann was the right person to win but she wanted Lauren to win. She thought this would have encouraged more young people to sew. This was an interesting perspective from a lady who was not young herself but could see the benefits that Lauren may have bought to sewing (and perhaps to sales in her shop!)

Happy sewing until next time!

Tutorial: Hemming a Lined Skirt with a Placket

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:52:00 +0000

When making my first Wiksten skirt it took me a bit of time to figure out how to finish off the corners of the skirt and the lining at the hem. I used this tutorial from Fashion Incubator as a starting point. When I worked it out I took some photos as I went along. I then went the whole hog and turned it into my first proper tutorial.

I followed my tutorial when making my second Wiksten skirt and the corners came out fine. I even used it on my latest make to sew the corners of a vent on a lined skirt. I'm fairly confident it works so I thought I'd put it out there.

If you know of any other tutorials dealing with this area please provide a link in the comments. I'm always interested to read other ways of doing things.

So on with the tutorial. Firstly I have made it available as a PDF download here. Please let me know if the link doesn't work.

Just in case cloud storage disappears I have set out the tutorial in full below. The references to 1.5 cm below refer to the seam allowances used so this will change if you use a different seam allowance.

Hemming a lined skirt with a placket

This tutorial describes how to finish off the bottom corner of a lined skirt with a placket. The lining is loose rather than sewn into the hem.

The following steps should already be done.

The placket is attached to the outer skirt stopping just shy of 1.5 cm from the bottom of the placket. (Update: this is actually step 1 of the tutorial).

If you're topstitching the placket you can either do all the topstitching at the end or topstitch up to about 3 inches before the hem depth and do the rest at the end.

The lining is hemmed.

The hemmed lining is stitched to the placket facing.

The hemmed lining (with placket facing attached) is stitched to the outer skirt along the waist, down the length of the placket and halfway along the bottom of the placket. (Update: see step 1 for sewing the bottom of the placket).

The outer skirt is hemmed stopping around 2.75 inches before the placket. (This gap can be smaller if your hem is shorter. My hem is 2.25 inches. The purpose of the gap is to leave enough room to finish off the placket).

Tip: I thread traced my seam allowance (using long basting stitches) on the bottom of the placket and placket facing in advance. I then used this thread traced line as the guide to hem my outer skirt as this line also marks the fold line for the hem.

Step 1 – start of tutorial

Sew the bottom edge of the placket, stopping just shy of the finished width of the placket. In my case I stopped 1.5 cm from the edge, being the seam allowance. Don't sew all the way to the edge. (The stitching to the right in the picture below is the thread traced basting mentioned above). Use pins to move the rest of the fabric out of the way if necessary. Press.

View from the other side

Step 2

Preparing to turn through. I've been experimenting with Tilly and the Buttons' method (http://www.tillyandthebuttons.com/2012/11/how-to-shape-sharp-corner.html) of not cutting the corners diagonally before turning through. I graded my seam allowances and then pressed them towards the back of the skirt (ie towards side with the lining attached). Alternatively you can trim the corners.

After turning through, press.

Step 3

Tack together all the seam allowances that meet at the bottom edge of the placket and the bottom edge of the outer skirt.

In the next photo I've put a white headed pin in the seams I'm going to tack together. I tacked using a small zig zag stitch, lowering the feed dogs and doing a few stitches. This can also be done by hand

Bonus photo: not in the PDF download

Step 4

Fold the lining back onto the placket facing, right sides together. Loosely tack the lining onto the placket facing just to keep it out of the way.

On the right is the the part of the hem of the outer skirt not yet stitched down

Step 5

This is where it's important to have a bit of the outer skirt un-hemmed before the placket as mentioned at start of the tutorial.

Stitch the side of the outer skirt hem to the side of the placket facing, right sides together. In the photo below I have pinned where I will sew, with a 1.5 cm seam allowance. You can also see my tacking in this picture from step 3, on the left of the picture next to the red headed pin. To the left of the picture you can also see the stitching from the long seam that joins the placket and outer skirt.

This isn't the easiest part to sew by machine but it can be done. Here is a picture of the work in my machine before sewing. That green pin at the back was there to keep the fabric out of the way.

Step 6

Press the seam allowance of the placket facing and hem towards the placket. In the photo below you can see where I've tacked the seam allowances at step 3. Again using Tilly and the Buttons' method (http://www.tillyandthebuttons.com/2012/11/how-to-shape-sharp-corner.html) I haven't cut diagonally along the corners. If you want to you can undo the tacking and trim away those corners. Turn through.

Step 7

Finish / complete any topstitching on the placket.

Step 8

Hand stitch the rest of the hem on the outer skirt. (You can't see the top of the hem in this picture as it's underneath the lining).

Light Blue Wiksten Skirt

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:39:00 +0000

It's been a lovely sunny Saturday in Norfolk. I spent the afternoon trundling around the charity shops in Wymondham looking for an upcycling project. I've never seen so many charity shops in a small town. I found two items for about £3.50 each which I'm looking forward to up-cycling.

When we arrived home my chap suggested we take some photos as it was still sunny. So I got changed into my light blue Wiksten skirt and we went to Caistor St Edmund which has the ruins of a Roman market town. Here are the photos.

I didn't know the camera was still rolling here!

This is my second make of the Wiksten tulip skirt. I made no major changes from my first version which is detailed here.

I used a light blue fabric from my stash but I'm not sure what it is. I lined the skirt again. My only change from my first version was to line the waistband and plackets, rather than face them with the skirt fabric (or polka dot cotton as in my first version). I still interfaced the lining for the waistband and plackets. This has produced a lighter overall result than interfacing with self-fabric or cotton.

I used a vintage seam finish on both the skirt and lining (which I also did on my first version). I like this finish but it does add time onto the make.

Anyway there's not much more to say about this skirt. I thought this would be more of a spring / summer skirt but I think it looks OK as a winter skirt with dark tights and a dark jumper. I'm looking forward to pairing it with my white Banksia top in the warmer weather (I can hope!). I'm stumped as to what other colours go with this light, duck egg kind of blue. I've tried googling but have found nothing much apart from a nude coloured cardigan which does go well. Does anyone have any other colour combination suggestions?

Happy weekend.

Denim Wiksten Skirt

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 00:23:00 +0000

It's only 3 degrees celsius in Norfolk this evening which makes a change from zero or 1 degrees. It doesn't look like we'll have a balmy spring any time soon so I thought I'd brave the cold air for five minutes to take some long overdue photos. I finished this skirt in the first half of January and I've worn and washed it loads of times. It's been hanging up for about 2 weeks taunting me to get on with the photos so that I can wear it. So at last I can start wearing it again – I've really missed it!

Weird how you can't see the bow belt in these pictures

This is the Tulip Skirt from Wiksten Patterns. The download is available here for $4.20, a bargain £2.60!

I love this skirt and of course it's made with my favourite fabric, denim. It's a comfortable skirt and goes with many things.

Luckily I made notes as I was making the skirt as I wouldn't have been able to recall any detail now. I started making this before Christmas and even had a couple of blissful hours sewing this on Christmas Day!

First muslin

I cut an extra large knowing it would be way too big, but figured I would fit it down to size.

I made the skirt in a different order to the pattern instructions. I attached the waistband pieces to the corresponding skirt pieces separately and then sewed the side seams of the skirt and waistband in one fell swoop. That way I could just adjust the sides to fit. The seam allowances are 1.5 cm on this pattern which I used throughout

After the first muslin I took in the side seams by 1 inch on both sides, tapering up to 1.5 inches in at the waistline starting from a distance of 3.75 inches down from the waist seam.

I found the back skirt piece to be 1 inch longer than the front skirt pieces. This may have been me cutting it wrong. Anyhow I subsequently made sure the pattern pieces aligned correctly with the waistband.

Slash Pockets

I wanted to add slash pockets at the sides much like I did here for the Miss Chalmers' skirt. The pockets are based on the pocket pattern piece for the Crescent skirt. I had to move the position of the pleats further along to allow enough room for the pocket openings.

Belt Ties

These are sewn into the side seams and I know some people leave them out. I decided to keep them in but they were far too short for my liking. I doubled the length of the ties which means I can tie them in a bow. By the way it's really hard to tie a nice bow. Is there a tutorial to show how you can do this nicely? Every now and then I do something slightly different and end up with a brilliant bow. The problem is I can never remember how I did it or what exactly I did!

Lining

I'm a lining freak so of course I wanted to add lining. The skirt isn't designed with a lining in mind. The placket as designed is effectively a single strip of fabric (interfaced) that sits on the top of the right side of each of the skirt front pieces. The seam allowances are tucked inside. (The placket is attached much like bias tape is attached to a neckline where you want the bias tape to show from the outside).

To add lining I cut 2 more placket strips so each placket had a facing. I reduced the front skirt piece by shaving off 2.5 cm from the centre front of the skirt, and using it to cut both the skirt and lining fabric. (In fact I did separate skirt pieces for the front skirt lining and front skirt as I adjusted the front skirt piece to add pockets). My lining was loose hanging rather than sewn into the hem.

Hem

The hem is around 7.5 cm on this skirt. I cut my lining pieces so that they would sit about 3 cm shorter than the skirt after hemming by turning under 1.5 cm twice.

Belt Loops

I decided to add belt loops after the skirt was finished. Although the ties looked OK they had a tendency to ride up past the waistband. I thought belt loops would keep the ties aligned with the waistband. They were fiddly to do but I'm so glad I took the time to do them. They have improved the look and feel of the skirt.

Topstitching and buttons

I did double rows of topstitching at the hem and the lower edge of the waistband. I did single topstitching lines on either sides of the placket and on the belt loops. I used lime green ordinary thread for the topstitching. I tend not to use the thicker topstitching thread now as I can't get the tension right on my machine on the reverse side. Normal thread looks fine for topstitching.

The Wiksten skirt is designed with 4 buttons on the plackets but I didn't feel that was enough so I added 6. The waistband is designed with a metal closure but I added two buttons to the waistband instead (making 8 buttons on the skirt in all).

Conclusion

As I said I'm really pleased with this skirt. So much that I've made a second one in a light blue. This one I haven't yet worn and it's sitting patiently on a hanger waiting to be photographed.

The Great British Sewing Bee

Source

Can I just say how exciting it is that our very own Tilly is a contestant on this show. I hardly watch any TV but I was glued on Tuesday night. All the contestants are lovely and some are very funny.

The challenges were tough. I wouldn't be able to finish, to a good standard, an A-line skirt in 3 hours and a dress to fit another person in 7. I felt for Tilly when her in-seam pockets came out baggy. I love that she was cool and collected enough to even think of adding them in that timescale! Yeah just adding pockets, not a problem. Love it!

I thought her red scalloped dress was lovely and looked great on the model. It had a lovely lining in a red scissor fabric. Yes the bust darts were baggy and the editing of the show focused only on that. I'm sure the judges must have praised other parts of the dress in real life but no praise was shown.

Lauren's Macaron dress was praised by the judges but it was way too tight for the model around the bust and there was some weird puckering above the sweetheart bodice.

I'm so looking forward to the next episode. Go Tilly!

Florence and Fred Rub Off

noreply@blogger.com (Katy) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:11:00 +0000

Hello everyone! I still owe you two skirts but it's flipping freezing around here so not much progress on the photo front. Instead I thought I would do a work in progress update on my latest project. It's taken a lot of time and effort so far so a progress post is rather apt.

I don't know if I've mentioned before but I have a really well fitting ready to wear dress that I've been planning to copy. I first started thinking about this when Karen from Did You Make That copied a ready to wear skirt she owns (see her post here). After finishing my slip, rather than making yet another garment from a pattern that would take endless muslins to get right, I thought I would turn my hand to this project for a change of scenery. The result so far has been endless muslins to get right. Hmm sounds familiar. Anyway I'm pleased with it so far so let's start at the beginning.

The Original

The national supermarket chain, Tesco, has a pretty good budget clothing line called F&F, or Florence & Fred as it used to be known. In about 2008 (way before I started sewing again) I bought this green dress, on sale for about £10:

You're probably expecting me to say I've worn it non-stop ever since. Not so. I can hardly believe it now but this thing didn't fit (I bought it without trying it on). I couldn't do it up so it was flung to the bottom of my wardrobe ready to throw away at some point. Luckily I didn't throw it away and I happened to try it on last year. I was blown away at how nice this cheap old thing looked! I recalled it being a plainer shift dress, but look at all those details – the neck band, the waist band, the skirt pleats. (Interesting – perhaps it's only sewers that notice details like this). Above all I loved the fit, especially the bodice.

Ethics of Copying

One of my favourite bloggers, Roisin of Dolly Clackett did a lovely version of a Bernie Dexter dress she had seen (see here post here). There were some interesting comments to her post. Even though Roisin used a commercial pattern an anonymous commenter complained about ripping off the designs of small businesses, copyright and the like.

I don't know what the legal implications are. I figure I'm OK because I'm not trying to sell the dress or pass the design off as my own. I'm just doing this for fun, a hobby and to see if I can achieve the amazing fit the dress gives me. (Amazing fit is something I've yet to achieve with a commercial pattern). I can see that if enough people like me, Roisin and Karen copied ready to wear then the designers may have grounds to complain. However I don't think there are enough of us bothering to do this to have any effect. They are interested in those unscrupulous enough to make a gain at the expense of their designs, which is not what I and other home sewers are about.

Rub-Off

After some internet reading into the rub-off method (see this post for example) I set about tracing the dress. Here are a couple of pictures of my rub-off in progress. I will put at the end of this post all the pictures I took of the rub-off process.

I love those vintage paper weights my chap bought me last year at an auction. Yes my other pattern weights are kitchen door handles. I couldn't find large washers.

Thoughts

As you can see I did a pretty thorough job of pinning the outline of the garment to my tracing paper (which is underneath the garment in my pictures. I have a cardboard grid on my table so I was able to pin through to that.) In my mind this was going to produce a really neat and accurate pattern. Then I remembered darts had to be added. This is when I started to get a bit lost and go a bit mad. Calm down and focus I thought. All I need to do is slash and spread. Yeah - easier said than done getting it all to go flat to produce a flat pattern piece (when you slash and spread your pattern does not stay flat!). Many hours later I managed to arrive at something that resembled a flat pattern piece but to be honest it involved a lot of guess and eye work rather than the result of technical skill. If anyone knows how to do this or can provide a link this would be good.

Anyway the long and short of it is that for all my effort with the pins and rub-off, I probably ended up re-drafting the whole thing again (maybe several times over) with the help of my curved ruler, adding bits on here and taking away there.

Although I've ended up with a pretty good pattern I'm slightly disappointed I haven't achieved this by doing it “properly”. You know, measuring and stuff, like an engineer would do when designing, say, a bridge. Anyway I guess there is a lot more to it than I thought.

Sunni at A Fashionable Stitch is working on an interesting project called Pattern Play where she plans to design her own garments from a basic pattern. She has given several suggestions for getting the basic pattern, including a sloper, a basic sewing pattern and even the rub-off method. I felt less bad about my pattern drafting efforts after reading her post. She too has found it difficult to draft a basic pattern from scratch.

Latest muslin

Anyway who cares about my less than professional pattern-drafting skills because it has produced a pattern that I'm really pleased with. I'm hopefully 90% there. Here's the latest muslin.

I somehow did the pleats wonky on this version

I've lost count of the number of muslins I've done. I think this is muslin number 4, but it's probably more like number 5. Just before this one I did a half muslin of just the bodice and waistband. I was tempted to move to the final garment after the half muslin and making my changes to the bodice but I'm so glad I didn't. I've made what I hope are the final adjustments to my pattern pieces which were:

Adding 2 cm to the length of the bodice pieces (1cm above and 1cm below the bust line) so that the bottom of the waistband would be nearer to my natural waist.
Adding more width at the widest part of my hips.

Even though it is tempting to just move onto the final garment I think I will make another muslin. You never know if the adjustments you have made will throw off the fit so I think it's better to be safe. Please pray with me that this will be the final muslin!

Anyway I hope you have found this interesting. The whole process has been an eye opener and learning curve for me. I'll finish with the rest of the photos from the rub-off.

Happy sewing.

Front bodice. I ended up doing this again, splitting it into two parts
in view of the excess fabric around the dart

A closer look

Front waistband

Back bodice with dart. I didn't have to repeat this one as there was not
a lot of excess fabric around the dart unlike the front bodice

Skirt front - lower half

Skirt front - upper section