Week Forty One - Updated

I'm back with photographs.

I cast on Flo by Kim Hargreaves with my dark blue pashmina yarn. Much as I loved the Reine cardigan I planned for last week, once I downloaded the pattern details I thought it might not be suited to my yarn.

Plus, dark blue is part of my daughters school uniform. Since I spend a lot of time in junior school, I didn't want to be too similar to her dark blue collarless blazer.

I have had Flo in my queue for a few years now. I originally bought it as a kit (with dark red cashsoft yarn). Then I thought I'd use grey Blue Sky Alpacas Silky Alpaca.

I'm very happy with this now. I haven't picked the contrast colour yet, I have a lot of kidsilk haze in stash and will probably go with either a pale grey or cream.

My next project cast on is Edge Hoodie by Veronik Avery. I bought this Fibre Company Savannah a while back. The colour is 'Bluegrass'. I'm still not 100% on this yarn and pattern selection, although i do know it will be a sweater. The direction may change once I've finished the first sleeve. The photograph isn't great, I'm reading it off a downladed PDF on my iPad.

Finally, I am still exiled from my craft room, but I unpacked some embroidery threads and an iPhone case.

I got the motif from this book. It promises 2 hour cross stitch. Which turned out to be pretty close to time.

 

 

 

Week Forty One

Posting is a little behind this week.

The builders have taken over my craft room so I had to pack up all my stuff, except for some current knitting projects.

Hopefully I will be back in my room when some brickwork is removed and some new glass doors to the garden are finished. (I am so looking forward to it. I won't want to leave my room!)

In the meantime, I have cast on two new projects and progressed a couple more.
Photographs coming tomorrow.

Week Forty

I have continued to work on the Emelie cardigan. I have now completed one sleeve and set it in and am working on the sleeve cap of the second.

The original pattern has these sleeves picked up, short rowed and knit down from the armhole but I have recalculated to knit them as separate pieces up from the cuff. I am quite pleased at how this first one fits. Now to make sure the second matches!

I have buttons for this cardigan. Simple shell ones which I hope are not too distracting from the lace panels.

I am about to cast on a Reine cardigan (Ravelry link) with this lovely dark blue Madelinetosh Pashmina. The colour is called Ink.

I bought these buttons some time ago and hope they will suit the buttonband. They're hand carved resin, so not too heavy, the colour is perfect.

There are still two other knits in progress.
Annabelle in the Sundara Aran Silky Merino. I'm still working on the yoke and have some enamelled coconut shell buttons for it.

Here is a close up of the button.

And my young boy's pullover is ongoing. I have some wooden buttons for the raglan ribbed opening.

I'm thinking about summer coming and have a plan for two dresses with a couple of different Vogue patterns.

I'm going to make the sleeveless version of Vogue 8742. This fabric is a Ponti knit. It has quite a lot of stretch in it, so I might be able to avoid a centre back zipper. But I haven't decided that yet.

My second dress project is planned for a fabulous print, like the Ponti above it also came from Tessuti Fabrics. This is called Little Critters and is a digitally printed cotton elastane jaquard.

I have been looking for a simple sleeveless dress with minimal seams. But its time to try something a bit different from my straight sheath dress pattern.

This has cap sleeves and is fairly straight to show off the print. Its Vogue 8319 but as I can't find it to link on the Vogue website, it might be out of print.
I'm making only the dress. (The jacket is very cute, maybe another time)


I tried a couple of experiments with bleach on the blue cotton knit.
I plan to dip bleach the front and sleeves about 50% of the way up and then over tie-dye with charcoal.

I didn't get a chance to sew up the previous bright blue tie-dye tshirt for my daughter this weekend. We didn't have time to dye the fabric I'd cut out previously either. So all that is still to look forward to.

Week Thirty Nine

Back to school this week and lots of catching up with things left undone during school holidays.

I have two crafty projects to report on.

I finished my boy's quilt.
This was a linen screenprint fabric by Shannon Lamden of Auntie Cookie. The design is called 'Cheater'. I bought four metres and split the length in two, seaming to make an approximate 2 x 2 metre quilt. The reverse is plain white linen from a local fabric shop.

I used a plain navy blue bias binding around all the edges to match the navy blue of the design. The quilt is oversized for this king single bed because I thought it would be more useful to have it queen sized and for today allow for a greater overhang at the sides.

Apologies: The colour is slightly off in this weeks posts because my computer is giving me trouble and I am unable to do any photo editing. What you see is what has come out of my camera!

Here is another image.

I used only the two Mello linen pillowcases today with a plain blue cotton. The teal and blue Kaffe Fassett stripe turned out to be too dominating.

I have been knitting as well.

Emelie cardigan in the Antique Lace colour is progressing. I have finished the two fronts and attached them to the back at the shoulder line. I short-rowed the shoulders and did a three-needle bind-off. I still need to knit the button bands, which is why the cable is holding live stitches around the back of the neckline.

I am working on the sleeves now.

Here is the back which shows the semisolid variegation of the yarn. I need to alternate my knit rows with two skeins.

I went shopping for buttons for three projects this week and have lots more to post about that.
So I will be updating this blog later this week to include that, plus some  tie-dye and bleach experiments in anticipation of more t-shirts.

Week Thirty Eight

The last week of school holidays and we did the tie-dye project.

This is the kit I had to start us off. I bought it from Eckersleys art supplies. It came with red, yellow and blue jaquard dyes and a powder for the fixing solution.

To start with we decided to dye with only the blue and with plain white cotton cut up to make two tshirts. I wasn't sure how successful we would be on our first trial.

We did simple knots on the unassembled fabric. My daughter used the dye in a squeeze bottle.

The next day I washed and unknotted the fabric. Here it is dry and ready for sewing up! There are two long sleeved tshirts to be made.

We will use the remaining colours in the coming weekends. The next versions will have tighter knotting and I think we might have let the dye puddle a bit too much in the creases of the fabric.


On other crafting news I am almost finished both fronts of the Emelie cardigan so I can choose buttons this week.

Week Thirty Seven

There has been a lot of kids crafting during this first week of school holidays, but those artistic works don't belong to me to show ;-)

I have been knitting on the Emelie Cardigan in Madelinetosh pashmina.
I am now past the armhole shaping for the left front. I'm hoping to finish the second front by next weekend and then be able to start a button band (so I can shop for buttons).
Sleeves can be knitted after that.

I'm much happier with this colourway over the bright green malachite. I think it will be much more wearable.

I have made a few modifications.
The lace panel is one 'column' wider than the original. I've also reworked all the shaping including the armhole.

Like my malachite version I will be knitting the sleeves upwards from the cuff, rather than top-down.

 

I unintentionally knit the right hand side lace chart on the left hand side front. It won't be an issue, just as long as I remember and knit the left chart for the right front! (The patterns have to mirror one another.)

 

Here's a close up of the lace panel. Its unblocked so will spread out a bit more when finished.

One more week of school holidays. We're planning to do some tie-dyeing with some white organic cotton knit.

We have a big family gathering next weekend, so my sewing break continues.

Week Thirty Six

School holidays have begun! We spend a fun few days out of the city and lots of crafting.

I pulled out this fabric for my boy's bed. I first mentioned it in Week 18. It's a screenprinted linen made by Auntie Cookie. For obvious reasons the design is called "Cheater".

I cut off the selvedges, seamed up two lengths to make a wider quilt size. Then I sandwiched it with a batting and backed it with plain white linen.

I'm not a quilter, and my poor old machine doesn't have a lot of space under its arm, but with my daughter's help we got parallel lines stitched.

I then ran the overlocker around the edges to trim and neaten them.
I still have to apply a binding, probably navy blue. But that will have to wait for a week or two.
I will do a full reveal when its all finished.

In the meantime I quickly stitched up some pillow cases using fabrics from the stash.

Two of this Swedish linen Mello in a pale blue.
I stitched a secondary line around the edge to give a neat tailored finish.

I also added offwhite grosgrain ribbon closures.

Then this fabric remnant, also from Kelani Fabrics. I can't remember what its called but the colourway is a Kaffe Fassett one.

I dug the fabric boxes and found this blue stitched ribbon for the closure.

Then my daughter and I had the inspiration to do some fabric painting.
I cut this pale blue cotton knit into a short sleeved tunic top. The pattern came from one of my favourite Japanese sewing books.

Unfortunately we spilled paint on a sleeve piece, which is why it turned into a ribbon-tied sun top!

I did the first painted daisy and she completed the rest.
It was a day to dry and then I ironed the reverse to fix the paint.

I then used the overlocker to quickly assemble it. Elastic gathers the top and yellow ribbon is stitched to the shoulders.

 

Here she is modeling it with the white GAP shorts, she said were "too boyish" in Week 5, until we gave them a butterfly sequn embellishment.

One note to remember for next time. She wanted to do a sun on her right shoulder. But such a lot of paint applied made the fabric quite stiff and hard to gather. Next time I think it would be better to keep the applied designs to flat fabric sections.

And finally, I finished the Polly cardigan to go with the sundress from Week 6. The yarn is Madelinetosh Vintage in colour Lepidotera.

This coming week we have plans to try tie-dyeing with a  some organic white cotton knit fabric. Hopefully it will become t-shirts.

I have also been knitting on the Madelinetosh pashmina yarn to make Emelie cardigan. I've made good progress on the back but as its plain stockinette its not that interesting to see.
I'll photograph it once I start the front lace panels.