“Shirt with Gloves”

Having sized up from an 8 to a 12 (his current ready to wear size is 10) when guesstimating O’s current size I went a size too far. He didn’t mind swimming in the latest batch of Rowan Tee Hoodies with kangaroo pockets, but the fact that the sleeves were about 6″ too long was a stopper. He very kindly didn’t want to let me know. We’ve been working on talking about fit and style preferences and how yes, when someone cooks you food, you eat it and keep your mouth shut if you don’t like it, but when it comes to clothes you should speak up. If I don’t know you won’t wear jeans you will end up with jeans. If you tell me there is a hole in your shirt I will fix it. If your sleeves are 6″ too long and your shirt is too big I can fix both of those. Given 6″ of extra fabric rather than waste it I decided to turn it into a thumb hole cuff for O. Uncertain of how this would be received/fit I hedged my bets, by completing only one for him to try. When he came home from school O slipped the shirt on and was accepting of the somewhat shorter sleeves until I pulled the cuff up slipping it over his thumb. O preceded to run around the room cheering and shouting happily about “a shirt with gloves” as though he had never before encountered this style before. I’ll take that as a win. Thumb hole cuffs it is.

 

Photos in Real Time

Sometimes you say “Fuck it.” and accept that a picture of your child from behind while she’s distracted is all you can get. Keeping with the theme of Mommy and Me I took advantage of my husband’s day off for errands to have him snap me in the same pose. Besides I feel like you’ve seen this dress from the front a million times. Another maxi hacked Cashmerette Turner with my go to altered scoop neck it finds its partner in a self-drafted drop waist dress with a crewneck.

The fabric is from JoAnns. The kids love that she can use this camouflage to turn into a disembodied head by standing in front of me. Amusingly, they feel this is best accomplished by wrapping the skirts of my dress about her shoulders so that only her head sticks out, which means she could be naked under there and it would look the same.

Adrienne Blouse Dress Hack

Time for the annual holiday dress. Being totally on top of things this year, I have fabric and a style in mind. I extend the Adrienne Blouse pattern 32″ creating a simple dress that will be low stress. Until I realize I will need to make a muslin and that will require 5ish yards of fabric of a similar weight and stretch to the double knit the final garment would be made of. Luckily I found I had 5 yards of a lovely black and white houndstooth ponte that would look great with those long lines. But, it would look lovely as an Adrienne dress…what if it didn’t work as a muslin.

Clearly it was time to see if I had some old fabric that I couldn’t see myself using for anything else. Enter the glitter poly velour I’d purchased to make some Elsa capes/dresses for the littles before they refused to wear the other velour capes I made them. It had been sitting in a box for years voluminously eating up storage space. Check. This fabric would be good enough for a skirt fitting and it would no longer take up storage space. Sewing along I keep thinking: “I don’t hate this as much as I should.”, “Man that is really loud.”, “Could I get away with wearing it? It’s really loud, but I don’t hate it as much as I should.” Later, as I try it on to check for fit before finishing the sleeves the kids admire it adoringly. Of course it is Elsa colored (picture one is closer to correct. Picture two couldn’t be made to not look grey.) and sparkly. Their enthusiasm is to be expected. It’s softness is also a plus in their book.

Then my husband, coming down the hall, admires the dress. He rarely comments on my makes. Everything looks, “fine”. Now I have a much admired muslin that could mean I don’t have to rush into sewing up the chevron ponte that is a little more pink and less red than it appeared online. That time could be used to finish warping the loom or baking cookies. Somehow, I still feel like it might be a bit more Halloween costume than dress for the office party. Also, the fit is ok (RTWish), but could be improved. What to do?

In addition to lengthening the hem and extending it out. I narrowed the sleeves by 4.5″ and lengthened them by 5″. My favorite part of the dress is this patch I made when I screwed up cutting it out. Cutting on the fold led to a little piece missing from the underneath layer and I just zigzagged a scrap on. Luckily, the patch not only matches well enough and the stitching doesn’t show over much, but it is in the armpit. No recutting a giant piece for me.  Of course, I also matched up my underarm seam to the repair rather than the side seam, but it was a muslin so…  Well it is matched beautifully.  Oh well.

Blah Wool Dress

Sewn in October.

Having made more than half a dozen Turner dresses, putting on this luscious chocolate wool dress with its lovingly serged seams and double needle finished hems, I was surprised just how blah it looked. I did raise the neckline one inch, since my current bra seems to want to play peek-a-boo with a couple of my more recent Turners and it is a wool dress for winter. There wasn’t enough fabric for me to make the hoped for lantern sleeves. Still that doesn’t explain my blah feeling either. I tend to prefer patterned fabrics for dresses, but I do own at least 6 other solid colored dresses: 2 black, 2 white, 1 burgundy, 1 purple. Those solid colored dresses are split equally between linen and knits.

What about this feels blah? Having considered and discarded the idea of embroidering flowers in white wool along the neckline, I don’t think that would fix the blah either. Accessorizing only made it feel like I was hiding a blah dress. It will likely be comfortable and warm and will coordinate with my new army of Astoria tops giving me many functional and wearable outfits, but understanding the blah issue is vital to not creating more future blah. Perhaps it is the texture of this superwash wool jersey? Have you ever made something that you loved the look of until you put it on? It went together brilliantly and I love the color and fabric and chocolate brown usually looks great with my dark hair and warm complexion, yet blah..?

Crochet Challenge

The local spinning guild had a meeting yesterday and one of the members brought a bag of yarn and challenged us all to make something for the homeless. It was perfect. When you have piles and piles of things to do, do you ever take a left turn? All of this knitting is enjoyable, but takes brain power, same with my embroidery and sewing and of course that gave me the urge to do some restful crochet. The only crochet projects I have going are an entire afghan or a sweater that I’ve been avoiding. Not restful. My chapter of the EGA has been doing a drive for winter gear for the homeless too, but I’ve had so many things to do instead. The reminder was great and I’ve started a cowl. There is only 230 yards in this skein, which means a bit of altering will be necessary, but the pattern is fairly simple. The yarn is hand dyed from mill spun fleeces from her sheep and has a gorgeous variegated appearance. It is working even better than I’d hoped for this pattern, the Sandy Cowl by Little Monkey Crochet.

After knitting socks for so long, this flew by in just a few hours.  I enjoyed this little crochet vacation.

This is my leftover yarn.  The coloring is more accurate in the top picture.

Things Piled Up

Piles of French knots on make blackberries on my first mountmellick stitchery. Eventually it will be a biscornu.

Things have been piled up lately. Good things like hundreds skeins of yarn and many WIP, not so good things like all of the things I promised myself I’d get to when both kids were in school and pictures to be taken. The long and short of it is that I haven’t been as active here as I’d like. It’ll likely be that way for a while as I work my way through the piles and the holidays approach. We’ll be traveling to visit family soon too.

For now here are some of my favorite piles.

Yarn from an amazing destash sale, proceeds from which went to charity. Two bags of mohair, one of wool, one of mohair boucle, one of sock yarn (enough for 19 pairs), one bag of mohair weaving cones. All save the cones have been inventoried. My kids of course ran straight to the more expensive (still a steal) silk blends. A is learning to finger crochet with some art yarn. The pink one in the middle next to the empty bags. She’s making a blanket, as afghans are her happy place. I never imagined having so much yarn. Two mid-sized rubbermade totes had held my yarn with room to spare. Fortuna rewarded me for cleaning up the landing zone where everything goes when it first comes in the house, with an envelope of holiday money gifted to me last year, which had been lost in the piles.

Fabric from Joanns to make more shirts for an ever growing boy. Part of my promise was to sew up lots of things from the make list to get those piles of fabric out of the craft room, but with the addition of the piles of yarn the craft room won’t be free soon.  So, oh well if the boy’s fabric pile gets bigger too right? Of course, the piles of Halloween decorations on the cutting table need to go back into their boxes before sewing happens.

Many things are happening here, each chugging along a little bit at a time; like these socks for O. Sock yarn is surprisingly expensive if your goal is to outfit the family in warm socks for winter and a fussy-toed little girl with handknit socks year round. It feels like I got my money’s worth of sock yarn and everything else was a bonus, which is probably why my house now has bags of yarn. Now to turn everything into warmth for family and friends.

There is a small pile of these too. And I’ve wound the warp for more, but only a teaser pic as they will be gifted. The loom is waiting for a new reed to arrive before it is warped, hopefully I can fit all of the weaving in before we travel.

I don’t have a picture, bit I do have three quilts in various stages of completion. It’d be nice to finish up one or two for gifting.

Quilted Adrienne Blouse

Changing from a jersey with beau coupe stretch to a quilted double knit seemed like it would need some adjustment. Apparently only those changes previously considered for a slightly better fit would do it. I narrowed the sleeves by 2 inches, removed the extra room I had added to the bodice neckline and went with the recommended length of elastic.

You may remember this fabric from last year’s holiday dress. It has such gorgeous quilting.