Homewares: the next episode

The not-quite-scrubby-enough bath mitt that I knitted from nettle earlier this year lasted about 6 months then started to wear out.

Time for version 2.0

This time I used some of the Nutscene jute string from String Harvest. I'd bought a 40m ball of the forest green and a 130m ball of the natural colourway

I just made this one up as I went, using a "ripple" stitch on the front side (reference was my crochet stitch bible book, looking for something in the "texture" section) and a simple treble crochet on the back side

The two pieces were then crocheted together using slip stitches in the green yarn, with a second row in the other direction to make it look good from both sides, and some slip stitching into the stitches on the free edges.

In hindsight it was too dense a technique for the thicker, heavier yarn. This one should probably have been a looser knitted mitt. It also used up almost the whole, larger ball of jute. It's scrubby enough alright, but is quite heavy and solid for a bath mitt, especially when wet. I'm predicting it will last quite some time.

Meanwhile I picked up the Dishie yarn again and made a few dishcloths for our house

I used the free Nordic Dishcloth pattern on the KnitPicks website (where the Dishie yarn came from).

It was fun as I had to learn to knit cables. A new first. It would obviously be easier with a cable needle, but I made do just using another small circular needle.

They look great. Until you get them wet that is! Then something happens to the cable pattern and you end up with dense vertical lines of knitting with thin, sparse horizontal ladders between.

Even though this might not be the best stitch pattern for a practical dischloth, I am sold on the idea of knitted cotton dishcloths as they work well and don't get smelly at nearly the same rate as a sponge or commercial cloth. These three on rotation from the cupboard to the sink to the wash basket is working well. When they wear out I'll try a different stitch pattern and make some more!

Pattern testing for Liesl & Co

I'm way behind in publishing blog posts again while I'm busy making things almost every day. I can always find time for craft!

Maybe what's caused the backlog is the same as in January... Back then I did a pattern test that was not a great experience. I made a raincoat from a pattern that had a lot of issues, didn't fill any niche hole in the marketplace, cost me plenty of money to print the pattern, took a lot (really, a lot) of time and energy to proofread the pattern and submit feedback and finally, left me with a garment that I wasn't particularly happy with. The feedback I gave did amend, and hopefully improve the pattern in it's final form, but was not all that well received. I'd been thinking I'd photograph it further and at least write a blog post about construction techniques for raincoats. But to be honest, I just want to donate it to charity and move on. I have a bit of the fabric left and it will make good toiletry bags. One day I'll make those and write about them.

Meanwhile, I did a few pattern tests for a designer who always makes me feel appreciated: Liesl & Co.

Let's start with the Fira dress

I might have slipped up in that I went with my memory and "vanity" sizing rather than really getting the tape measure out and checking what the world's longest lockdown had done to my hips! This is a straight size 10, A/B cup and while that's right for my top half I should have blended out to 12 for my lower half.

Initially I was a bit meh on the pattern as I'm always concerned that my shoulders and lats look kinda eastern bloc '80's shotputter in that sort of bodice/yoke.

But it's growing on me seeing other versions and I am tempted to make another. The changes I need to make: Lower the bust dart. Oddly this pattern and the Gelato blouse/dress are the only Liesl & Co patterns with bust darts that seem oddly high to me. This one needs to go down a good inch.

I need a bigger size over the hips as well as to use that centre back seam to do a bit of a sway back shaping. I also need to add some length to the sides (sort of sway back adjustment also, right?) to avoid drag lines towards the armpit from side on.

Then I think I'll have a nice throw on, but look dressed up, kind of summer dress. I have some Nani iro double gauze that will suit it well, but I also can't go past Liesl's terracotta linen version. This one is a poor choice  poly shirting that had been intended for a kid's button up and had been in the stash for years. It'll go off to the op shop while I dream up a better version

The first of the three pattern tests that I did this year was the Geneva blouse

Again I made the straight size 10, and given my hips don't enter the equation I got away with it this time.

the fabric is a bit of leftover cotton linen from a long ago purchase from Phillips Shirts and there was just enough for this top with just one join in the neckline facing that wouldn't normally be there.

For me, this pattern had the bust dart in just the right spot. The only thing I'd change if I made this again is to give my Popeye forearms a smidge more room. The sleeve hem tends to catch and ride up towards my elbow instead of floating free and showing off the lovely lantern shape.

I've been wearing this one a lot. I like the easy blouse/shirt look but with a t-shirt level of comfort. It could definitely be lengthened to a shirt dress too.

Finally, I made the Melville cardigan. This was the only one I didn't have a suitable stashed fabric for, so I hit up Fabric Deluxe and landed on this curious poly boucle. It was priced such that it was suitable for a pattern test, but would hopefully still be nice enough to wear.

This one's a simple knit cardigan with facings at the neckline. There's this cropped jacket length as well as a hip length and a full length version. And options for sleeves or sleeveless.

The sleeves are finished with a cuff with a notch which looks quite elegant. I've surprised myself by how much I like wearing this. I often wear it unbuttoned over a plain shirt and it's really quite stylish. 

For an open poly weave, it's also surprisingly warm. This pattern is straight out of the packet perfect for me.

Looking for the perfect size and style of button I eventually decided to use these super special buttons. these were custom designed for Melbourne Frocktails 2018 by ArrowMountain. It was the first Frocktails that Lisa and I hosted, and HoMei of ArrowMountain designed these beautiful buttons for us and put a little origami folded package of 4 buttons in every take home bag.

They were perfect for this cardigan.

Liesl + Co take pattern testing seriously. They reimburse for the cost of printing the pattern and pay for the pattern test. They employ their pattern testers to do a good job and it's always an honour to do it. It's not a workshop of the pattern, it's not a popularity blog tour.... It's checking a pattern, providing feedback via a detailed form, and being paid to do so. I invariably use the money I earn testing the pattern to turn around and buy the hardcopy version of the final pattern! It's the only way pattern testing should be done, and I swear to myself, again, not to fall into the trap of offering my services freely in any other way.

If you're interested in testing for Liesl & Co, they've just put out a call for more pattern testers. Check it out here.

Harry Potter knitting

Before it's forgotten altogether I need to get this project on the blog.

I made the rookie error of completing the much asked for Book Week costume Harry Potter scarf and beanie in sufficient time that, a week later, when book week dress up day came around the novelty had worn off. Potter was out of favour and I was making the last minute Malory Towers dress. You'd think I would have learned by now. ;)

At the peak of her HP obsession, A dragged me to a Harry Potter shop over in Fitzroy which is actually quite a neat conversion of an old terrace house. A shop downstairs and Potter themed cafe upstairs. She bought herself a tie with her pocket money and really, really wanted s scarf too. I said, "I could knit that..."

The scarf took forever as the whole thing is knit in 1x1 rib which I believe is slow knitting even if you're not already a slow, novice knitter.

The beanie was much more fun and actually went along quite quickly

Both are knit in super cheap Stallion 8 ply acrylic from Spotlight, which is really very soft and pleasant.

The scarf is based on the Harry Potter Slytherin House Scarf pattern although I used 3.5mm needles, cast on only80 stitches and did only 9 repeats of the pattern. The original pattern in a finer wool and smaller needles would take me FOREVER to knit.

The hat is the Hogwarts House Hats pattern by Sarah Belcher. 4.5mm needles for ribbing and 5.0 for hat. Only other modification was 4 rows of ribbing in each colour rather than 3. This was really fun to knit and I'm a little sad to have not seen her wear it yet. But, for a $2/ball outlay, I was much happier to spend less than $20 and a lot of time for a passing fad than the official merchandise retail price!

Lockdown crochet critters

 How can you tell how long I've been in lockdown?..

...by the number of crochet animals around the house.

Melbourne has, I think, just won the world record for the city with the most number of days in lockdown. If I can't celebrate that with a blogpost about crocheted critters, what I can do?*

This is "Georgie" who was a request from A when she was flipping through my Crochet Wild Animals book.

I was ordering some yarn online for a different project and it seemed easy enough to through in some cotton for this one. I think it's a Bergere de France yarn, but I appear to have tossed the wrapper already

It was a fun little project to make and those horns (ossicones, to be precise) are just too cute!

The primary reason I was yarn shopping, late at night, on my phone was for a different project.

Actually, the real reason is because we were STILL in lockdown and late night wine fuelled online shopping is what you do when there is * (see footnote) else to do

We have a bit of a gap under our front door and the cold winter made it clear we needed a draft excluder.

Let me introduce you to Portal, the door-snake

Portal is also made form a pattern from the same book. She's crocheted in a cheap King Cole Merino blend DK that was a bit of a beast to work with as it tended to split really easily.

But the real challenge has been trying to train her to stay at her post by the front door... Here she is in a brief moment of good behaviour:

A little off duty leisure time on the carpet...

Then, good girl, back where you belong

The pattern had an error in how much of the beige/off white yarn was needed, and she lay around half finished for a bit while I waited for another ball of yarn to make it's way to me (and yes, I bought that ball late at night, with wine in hand and may have added something else to make up for paying for the shipping, see footnote)

In the end I ran out of the brown colours a repeat or two before the pattern indicated I should stop, but she was already long enough.

once she was finished, she was off!

She's stuffed with tiny scraps from the fabric bucket which gives her a bit more weight and better draught excluding properties and also makes for some interesting views of her multicoloured "guts" between the crochet stitches. 

P managed to wrestle her down out of the trees and tame her..

or did he?!!!

* sweet fuck all is the correct answer.

Camo kids

The big kid recently put in a request for some camouflage fabric cargo pants. he doesn't ask for much, and only seems to grow upwards, so any sewing is always worth the effort.

He's wearing cargo pants from two years ago cut off and hemmed to shorts, so there's plenty of wear in one garment. Ok, I'm onto it...

Camouflage fabric is not something I usually shop for (trust me, if there was any chance this inner-urban city kid could be mistaken for someone who shoots things, these pants would NOT have happened!). The only place I could find any that was offering pandemic appropriate click and collect was Spotlight. It's described as "novelty print drill". So yeah, weird, chemical smelling painted fabric, but it fitted the purpose.

Only after I'd cut them out did he tell me the pocket was too small for his phone and asked for it to be deeper. I'd already cut something else from the leftovers, so the leftover-leftovers were small and the pocket couldn't be recut, but was extended by about two inches with a nifty diagonal addition.

The pattern is the Oliver + S Field Trip Cargo Pants (his all-time favourite) in size 12 (largest size) with 2" extra length at upper thigh and 3" extra length at the hem. The next pair of cargo pants will certainly need to be a different pattern. :(

The little kid was watching with interest and wanted a camo fabric garment of her own. 

We'd recently been talking about re-making the Hopscotch skirt, with its cute cargo-esque pockets, so that seemed the obvious choice.

Also a size 12, although this is a pattern that would be very easy to add width and length to, and keep using for some time to come.

It's the little folded pockets that look like noodle boxes that make this skirt pattern something extra...

And I figured it would both suit the fabric and styling, and save me the trouble of buttons and buttonholes, if I used snaps for the front placket. Just a few minutes with some antique brass press studs and the bench top snap setter and it was done.

She went on to make her own scrunchie out of the very teeniest leftover-lefotver fabric, but I've been remiss and not photogrpahed that.

(if the brown long sleeved tee looks familiar, it was my Metro tee from last year, that proved it's pure wool-ness by failing to survive the washing machine. Damn. I'd loved that top. Anyway, now she does too)

Vogue 8813 - all the checks

 Ages ago I saw an inspiration image of a shirt using multiple different checked fabrics and I'd been wanting to make a dress with that idea ever since.

I found the perfect fabrics, although perhaps I chose the wrong pattern. I'm still on the fence about that part....

The checked linens all came from Fabric Deluxe. They're lovely quality linen and knowing they were all the same weight/type made me feel comfortable about mixing and matching the fabrics within the one garment.

The pattern is, of course, that Marcy Tilton dress with the puppy sized pockets.

It's been a few years since that first version I made and my mum now has that one as well as her fishy linen one.

I sized down from my previous make and started with the size M for this dress. It was certainly only a starting point as I fiddled in various ways trying to like it.

Ostensibly I was sewing view C with multiple different fabrics and the pockets left open to hang (or catch on every doorknob and counter corner in reality).

But there was just SOOOO much fabric in the front half of the dress. The gathers under the neckline were causing the centre front section to plump out like a maternity dress. The sheer volume of fabric in each side section was falling inwards and making that centre front section plump out even more.

I just wasn't feeling it, at all.

It sort of looked better when I put my hands in the pockets and pulled the dress outwards. So first I tried threading some thin hat elastic (we call it mask elastic these days, right?) into the rolled edge of the pockets. That made a wee bit of difference to the front section (maybe a trimester's worth less fabric pooling?) but now I had gathered side saddle bags to contend with as well.

So, I pulled the elastic back out and decided there was no way around it: I had to take the volume out of the centre front panel. That meant undoing all the rows of gathering stitches and then unpicking the collar. The centre front panel was cut down to width so that when it was ironed flat it was about the width that the gathered panel would have been at its narrowest point.

It still hangs a little oddly at that point where the pockets pivot off the centre panel, but when I'm wearing it, and in motion, that bothers me less than when I was trying it on and standing in front of a mirror.

I added the buttons and the pleats into the pockets in order to take out some of the saggy volume. Sadly that means some of the visual of the inner pockets being in the lightest, contrasting linen was lost. By this time I was very much of the midset thta finished was better than perfect and I was ready to knock it off and move on to somethingelse.

Having said that I wore it for a few days and really quite grew to like it. When the hotter summer days hit and I want a loose, linen tent to wear I think it will be a much loved dress. 

And, happily, there'll be enough left-over matching linens to make that button up shirt when I do tire of wearing this dress.

Details: 

Pattern: Vogue Marcy Tilton 8813 (now out of print)
Size M - with a big reduction in the front panel
Fabric: Check linens from Fabric Deluxe
Buttons: two big, chunky, black plastic button from Jimmy's that I didn't take any close up photos of.