Arcanoweave: A really f'ing big doily

This one is going to take a bit of explaining.... 

Back in 2022 I took a little bit of yarn and crochet hook with me on a family holiday and made a doily. It was the perfect holiday project; small, portable, light, easy to stop and start. 

Only problem is... I don't really care for doilies.

I posted a picture of the completed doily on Instagram and posed the question of what to do with it (albeit after my MIL had said she'd quite like it for her hall table) 

"Send it to me" said Inder, "I love doilies."*

And therein began the idea of making a doily for Inder...

If Inder wanted a doily, if Inder could handle a doily, I was going to maker her the biggest f'ing doily she'd ever seen.

I'd already spied the pattern I'd like to make: the Arcanoweave doily by Julia Hart. It looked like exactly the kind of making challenge I like, I just hadn't had any idea of what to do with the finished project until Inder's love of doilies** became known to me.

And then, in a most serendipitous turn of events, my daughter came home from a walk around the shops with two enormous, solid balls of very fine yarn that were in a Free Stuff box outside a shop. I now had the pattern inspiration, the free yarn, and the recipient. This project was ON!

I started on it in January of 2023 while on holiday in Bright (image above) then continued working on it at home - The image below makes me look like a doily liker after all. Ha. I made that orange one a while back and it has found a place where it's tolerable on the coffee table. 

I've no idea what the yarn is. It's very fine, a bit uneven, and breaks quite easily. Going by smell alone I think it's wool. I was thinking it was finer than the intended yarn for the pattern so I sized down from the recommended 1.75mm hook to a 1.5mm. 

Each round and each section would change and the pattern was very engaging. 

Other projects would get started, and finished, and then I'd go back to the doily for another couple of rounds. All the while I was amusing myself with the idea that it was a surprise gift for Inder, who, let's remember, really likes doilies**

By the spring of 2023 we had a holiday coming up and so the doily flew with the family to Fiji. I didn't take it on the sea kayaking trip, but it saw plenty of action on the plane flights and while lazing around at the divine Toberua island resort.

At this point I had decided that not only did the doily have a final destination at Inder's house, but that it was a holiday project - only to be worked on during holidays, weekends away or maybe public holidays at home. It now had a schedule as well as a purpose.

Back in bright in January 2024 a year after it was begun there...

And then back home I gave it its first gentle steam iron to see if the tension was even enough, and to reveal how enormous it was already becoming.

In the middle of 2024 we got the opportunity to go and stay in the south of France and look after a very agreeable and self-reliant teenager while her parents worked abroad. Easy gig. We shopped, cooked, ate, rode bikes up the surrounding mountains, and on the rainier days, I crocheted the enormous doily.

By now, it was quite the conversation starter. If I pulled it out on a train or plane to work on, invariably someone would ask about it, and what I was going to do with it, or why I was making it.

No-one seemed prepared for, or satisfied by, the answer that I was going to gift it to someone who once said they liked doilies. But what will she do with it, they'd ask. I didn't know and that's what amused me so much.

Bright again in January of 2025 and it now covered one of those outside tables.

Over a long easter weekend at my mum's place it was almost finished. Just a couple more rounds of the final seventh section of the pattern and  it would be complete.

The original giant ball of yarn was now down to mandarin sized and oddly seemed to have what looked like coffee drip stains on some sections of the ball. I figured they'd probably wash out when I inevitably blocked it - spoiler alert, they didn't. But I figure that adds to its charm and hopefully makes a future doily loving owner less precious about using and abusing it.

And then, in a cruelly ironic joke back on me, the designer released an eighth section of the pattern, emailed free to those who'd already purchased the previous 7 sections.

Evidently I wasn't stopping anytime soon after all. Inder's f'ing enormous doily was going to get even bigger.

And so in early January 2026 the doily came on the boat to Tasmania with me. Although I didn't carry it while we hiked the Overland track - its still super light but by now quite bulky.

Section 8 was busting my balls a bit to be honest. It involved creating all these individual doilies and then attaching each one to the main round, and the one before it, before beginning another mini doily.

I was making lots of mistakes and needing to rip back and I was fast running out of yarn.

It came to Bright for the fourth time in late January 2026 where I made as much backwards as forwards progress and eventually ran out of yarn. I put it aside and planned to get that second enormous ball out of storage when we got home.

But I discovered it was a completely different, much brighter, white colour. The enormous doily had reached it's end. 

One section shy of the actual finish line. That this really irked me was almost as funny as making the damn thing in the first place.

time to block it...

Snap some photos and post it off...

And Inder's response?

Exactly the mix of baffled amusement, gratitude, wonder and mild annoyance that I'd been dreaming of. She has fully appreciated the thought and craftmanship but has also rued that I have now created an "old lady situation" that she may not be able to explain to her husband.

And I find that absolutely funking hilarious.

*Inder has no recollection of saying "send me a doily" but has conceded it sounds like the kind of thing she might have said.

**possibly factually incorrect.

Melbourne Frocktails 2025

Holy smokes, it's almost a year since my last blog post. I've been making things like crazy, of course, but even snapping a quick picture seems to elude me these days.

Melbourne Frocktails has to be documented on the blog and this year I decided to knit!

photo by Penny Stephens

I liked the idea of a close fitted lace blouse with a simple skirt and I already had just the pattern: The Barbroe Blouse in the Knitting For Olive book.

Ruth (Rootaberger, long time blog reader, I'm the fan ) and I went to the Bendigo Wool Show in July and amazingly had shopping lists and a plan. Of course we came home with more than we'd planned for!

On my shopping list was some very dark colour of fingering silk to make the Barbroe Blouse. I spotted the Green Tea Yarns silk and when I asked about a sombre, dark shade (what is it with yarn people and all those bright colours?!) I was pointed to some dyed-just-for-the-show navy which apparently nobody else was yet to show any interest in. Perfect! 

The knitting was a journey and the full notes with all the tweaking to fit adjustments is finally up on Ravelry

For the skirt I wanted something with a flat waistband and hip area, knowing that the top would lay over it, then an A-line or wider skirt.

Turns out the Vogue 1486 pattern that was a free giveaway from Simplicity McCalls Australia in last year's Melbourne Frocktails stash bag was just the thing.

The skirt pattern is intended to be made in scuba knit and left un-hemmed. I wanted to use silk to match my blouse, definitely needed hemming and lining and only had a too small pattern, but the style was right so I made it work. Oh, and I wanted a curved waistband so it would lay flatter under my blouse than the high rectangle of the pattern. Not much to change, right?

The silk fabric was a very cheap shantung out of India from an Etsy seller. It feels crisp like paper which is what I wanted, but I could have done without the fraying!

I used the waistband from the Grasser wide leg jeans that I'm loving wearing (but still haven't documented here) and then slashed and spread the too small skirt pattern pieces to fit the waistband. I used an invisible zip instead of the pattern's exposed zipper.

The skirt has come out to be worn again since Frocktails and I really like the shape. It's fancy fabric but can easily be dressed down with T-shirt and sandals.

Frocktails came around and the weather turned awful! We had sideways rain all day long and it barely got to 12degC. At least that meant I could wear a camisole under my almost see through lace top and not be too hot.

We do so much planning together for Melbourne Frocktails, but Lisa and I never share what we're going to wear - it's good to have a surprise. Yet this year we looked almost co-ordinated...

Photo by Penny Stephens

Here's Rooty and I in the photobooth! Cheers.

Last minute jumpsuit - Grasser 1040

Late last year I made a whole capsule wardrobe for my brother of things that I had in the stash (pattern and fabric), things that he needed, and that he couldn't easily buy due to him having very long limbs (herein referred to as the Long Limbed Sibling Freak (LLSF)).

None of that has made it to the blog yet, but just this last fortnight I've been sewing him a jumpsuit...

It came about because he was in the country and was attending an award ceremony. It should be noted I was not his +1, but I was concerned/curious enough to ask what he was going to wear. I suggested I  might make him a pair of black trousers, but then I decided a jumpsuit would be much more fun. Turns out a jumpsuit, with appropriately long legs and sleeves is something he has always coveted.

 

 

I was excited to try the Grasser 1040 pattern. I'd been impressed with the pattern for P's pants in the last post and am wearing a pair of Grasser pants of my own (as yet undocumented) as I type. 

He was concerned that the pattern model's version looked too big (they kindly give the model's measurements and the size worn, and I think he's wearing about two sizes bigger than he should as well). His only other requests were that the fabric should be soft and plain and the sleeves long enough. Beyond that it was my choice. 

For a jumpsuit to look a bit more awards-ceremony-red-carpet and less mechanic-on-a-lunch-break it needed all those zippers and maybe some silver metallic topstitching.

 

 

I bought the pattern online on Wednesday morning and Creffield Digital Print had the printed roll ready for me to collect before lunchtime. I traced it off that afternoon and then realised I didn't have enough black cotton drill in the stash. Thursday was a long work day, Friday the Anzac Day public holiday and Saturday full of chores and activities. No time to shop for fabric. Thankfully Fibresmith had a warehouse sale on the Friday and I picked up 5m of a lovely cotton drill in a light bluish grey. Spotlight opened in the afternoon and I bought some fabric dye and so then by Saturday I had my black cotton drill, even if it's a weirdly off black shade of black.

 

Sourcing the zippers was the other challenge. I needed 12 zippers in total in no less than 9 different lengths and the lengths would need to be adjusted as I sewed. I'd anticipated this as soon as I bought the pattern so I'd zoomed over to LZF zips in Brunswick where the super friendly staff cut me zipper tape to make 12 zips, put the bottom stops on leaving enough length for each of the zips, supplied all the pullers and plenty of the little top stops for me to apply once the length was correct. And so cheaply too. Five stars for LZF

To make it just a little bit "extra" I used some black and silver flocked iron on transfer material and my Silhouette Cameo to cut a letter G (the LLSF's initial) for one of the pockets

 

 

I couldn't quite follow the pattern's instructions for the pockets as it has you use the zipper tape exposed on one side to make the pocket edge and that only works if you have plenty of tape at both ends of the zip. It would be a curious finish, but impossible if you're only shortening your zippers at one end. 

Most of the rest of the instructions were easy to follow, with the caveat that they're translated (fairly poorly) from Russian and there's a lot of "processing the detail" type phrasing. There are photos although they don't always match the written instruction so you need to have a bit of sewing experience to tackle this one. The drafting is spot on, so once you work out what you're meant to do it all comes together perfectly. Which is good cause I only had two days and a few evenings after dinner to assemble it all.

 The sleeve cuffs, leg hems and waist all have little tabs with snaps so they can be narrowed in a bit. But if you like your legs flared, or need to get your jumpsuit off over your boots there are gusset zippers in the inner leg. Probably completely unnecessary but why not sew on two more zips!

It was finished Sunday night and washed to get the pencil marks out and then ready to wear for Monday night's event. He was delighted!

 So, who got to be his +1 for the awards ceremony? Our mum!

 

 

 

And it turned out that I dressed her as well, as she's wearing a  Vogue 1817 jacket that I made for her two years ago.

 

Details: LLSF: Grasser 1040, size 48, height 188-194, 1.5cm sleeve length added otherwise no alterations. Cotton drill.

Mummy: Vogue V1817, mix of dobby spot linen, plain black linen and a poly/metallic blend spot fabric

More baggy jeans - Grasser 950

When I was searching for baggy jeans/cargo pants for P, in addition to the Mascultory jeans I also came across Grasser 950

 

 

With their elastic waist, lots of big pockets and baggy leg shape, he was super keen and I couldn't resist buying him two patterns.

The patterns are sold as single size and I went with their size 46 based on his measurements, and then you choose from 4 different height ranges. This is the size 46, height 188-194cm with no alterations. He adores them.

The fabric is some of the excellent Japanese stretch cotton drill that I'd bought from Draper's fabrics and used previously. The use of camouflage fabric for this pattern irked me a bit as a lot of the online versions of the pants are balding middle aged Russian guys in camouflage cargopants. I definitely want to make another pair similar to the sand/tan coloured ones in the pattern product images.

 

 

The pattern instructions would have had all these snaps on the pocket flaps hidden inside the flap, but then the topstitching gets a bit dangerous trying to stitch adjacent to an already inserted snap, so I just put them on afterwards and made them visible. 

 At the hem there are these little straps with adjustable snaps, which is kind of neat when you bicycle everywhere and need to keep your baggy pants out of your chain. The Mascultory jeans need to be tucked into a sock on the drivetrain side!

 

These side cargo pockets are almost too big, as if you put what fits into them (his laptop no less!) then the weight of the filled pocket overcomes the elastic waistband and you end up dacking yourself with your own cargo!!

Maybe the next ones will have a modified smaller pocket... Meanwhile I bought myself a Grasser pattern to try as well.

Frocktails 2024

Melbourne Frocktails is always such a blast and the display of garment making talent and taste is extraordinary. Everyone has their own take on "cocktail" and as an organiser the last thing I want is for anyone to feel it's a competition, or that they're under, or over, dressed. Just come as you!

And as an organiser the last thing I've got time to do is make anything over complicated for myself. Enter some easy to sew cotton and a straight outta the packet Vogue pattern:

Bonus it has pockets!

I better start with that fabric cause then I can (maybe) explain what's on my head!

Ages ago I bought some cotton sateen from SuperCheap Fabrics and made this dress for A. I didn't have much expectation of the fabric but when it arrived I really kind of wished I was keeping it for myself. It was a lovely tight, crisp weave with a slight sheen... Anyway, when the same print with a white background recently reappeared on their website, and of course it was on sale (are they never not?!) I snapped some up. From memory it was about $8/m

A moment of calm just before the start of Frocktails 2024

I wanted a fairly straightforward pattern for the print, enter Vogue 1898 a Badgley Mischka pattern that I must have picked up some time ago and stuck on the shelf. 

All I needed was an invisible zip and some lining - the perfect rayon, high quality lining (at all of $12/m) came from Textile Merchants (which happens to be right near Darebin Indoors Sports Centre where the kids were enjoying some track cycling fun over the school holidays. Winning!)

I had a back up plan if this dress didn't work out, which would to make another Vena Cava knit dress in some stashed knit fabric. So with nothing to lose I just cut a straight size 16 as per measurements and sewed it up. No adjustments. Super easy, super cheap. But what to wear underneath it?!

I couldn't find a sewing pattern for a "plunge" bra that would go anywhere near low enough so I hit the shops and found a Spanx branded bodysuit that had a crazy low front, but held everything in nicely (cost about 3x the dress!). Going to the toilet would have been a challenge, but there were so many people wearing jumpsuits (what's the collective noun for Zadies?) I wouldn't have been the only one struggling.

So what's on my head you're asking?

I figured it would be fun to add a bit more bird action to the whole ensemble, so I created this little fellow then made a little fascinator thingy for him to perch on. And you know me, of course I had to over commit to my crafting and complicate things

The crochet bird pattern comes from the Vanessa Mooncie Crocheted birds book which I've dived into a few times already. One of the birds on my dress fabric is a little red breasted robin. There is a robin in the crocheted birds book but I preferred the shape of the wren, so I just adjusted the colours to give him a red chest.

Oh, and I went way down on crochet hook size and used Scheepjes Sweet treats fine crochet cotton so he'd come out suitably tiny.

The bit where you make the wire legs before inserting them in the body always cracks me up

Then I bought as fascinator sinamay base that had a comb on the underside as well as some flowers and foliage from feather.com.au and set about creating something to perch on my head. I was fully expecting it to look ridiculous, but I didn't care. I take my Frocktails job of looking daft enough to put other people at ease very seriously!

I stitched all the flowers and foliage in place then sewed the little birds feet to the branch. Sorry bud! 

I was quite surprised that it almost looked elegant. :) Most importantly it was quite light and pretty secure.

Frocktails was a blast. Like a garage sale, they turn up early and start queuing....

But unlike any garage sale they're an amazingly well dressed bunch! We had just over 400 attendees this year and it was a whirlwind. Lisa always knocks it out of the park with her outfits!

 We made life easier for ourselves by staying in the hotel next to the venue, and had our uber-helpful door blokes on hand again

And so there was a different backdrop for the annual post frocktails bedtime bathroom mirror selfie

Until next year!

Photos are either by me, or the good ones are from Penny Stephens (@bypennystephens)