Ashton Shawlette

I fear that lace knitting might become a serious addiction. I've even begun to re-think my ambivalence towards Kidsilk Haze. It is absorbing, and rewarding. Browsing the beautiful finished shawls on Ravelry is an extremely pleasant way to lose hours and hours of your life.

I present my first shaw effort: The Ashton Shawlette. My garment naming is seriously boring, I just go with the name of the pattern. Or, if I've made it before, add a sequel mark to it (eg Miette II). I'm not going to win any blogger awards, but I'm ok with that. 

My shawl(ette) is not made from laceweight mohair/silk, but sport weight (5ply) bamboo. And it is not a shawl, according to the pattern, it is officially a "shawlette". But I'm ok with that. The smaller size makes it more wearable, similar to a bolero, or a cropped cardigan, showing off an outfit, rather than dressing as a lady wearing a shawl. Plus, I can have it double as a scarf in the winter.

The yarn has been lurking in my stash for years. I love the colour and the sheen. It is a bit splitty, but I don't mind that, I like sharp needles anyway. The bamboo has the properties I like from cotton: it is rigid with great stitch definition, and drapes nicely, but with additional softness and the bonus sheen.

In a sport weight, the pattern begins by knitting up very fast. By the time I got to the more complicated parts, with larger rows, I was completely hooked.

The pattern instructions are very detailed. Almost too detailed for my simple mind. I can follow written or charted instructions as long as they are chronological. I found this one jumped around a lot. But once I had taken the time to sit down and get to grips with the instructions, they were helpful and I did learn new things about lace knitting and reading lace charts. The early stages of the shawl, in the bud pattern, are also really easy to memorise, so you are not spending the whole time reading the chart as you knit.

I sat up late finishing this for a special occasion. The binding off took me about an hour and a half! I wore it unblocked and, since I have blocked it, it does look really beautiful. I think a lace skirt or dress might be my next lace project. Shawls are incredibly beautiful, but where, oh where does one wear one?

Navy Pin Dot Peony Dress

I am still in mourning for my beloved, faded Navy Spot Sundress, so when I saw this quilting cotton at the Knitting and Stitching Show, I knew it had potential as a replacement. I bought 2.75m but ended up only using 1.75m for this pattern.

I was going to make exactly the same pattern, New Look 6968, but Colette putting the Peony Dress on sale tipped me towards a new direction. I've admired it for a long time, 2013 in fact, when I rediscovered sewing, and first discovered the wonderful world of sewing bloggers. I love the bateau neckline, the cap sleeves and the flippy skirt.

It came together very quickly, but it did need quite a few fitting changes along the way. I cut a size 4 all the way through, with no grading. I am so pleased I did some blog research before I started sewing (but only after cutting - when will I learn?). The front bodice waistline darts are in a location that I just don't understand. They are unfathomably close together, I moved them out by 5/8", and moved the point of the side bust darts out by 2cm. (Apologies for mixing my units of measurement - I have a ruler in inches and a tape measure in cms.) My waist doesn't nip in as much as the pattern, so I reduced the legs of the front darts by 1.5cm. I did this at the waist only, the under bust portion is the same as the pattern. This means that my darts are not triangular, but rectangles with triangles at the top.

I didn't shorten the waist, but did do my usual 1.5cm sway back adjustment. I typically reduce the seam allowances at the waistline to 1cm so I did that here, in the bodice and the skirt. I also added binding to the seam joining the bodice and the skirt.

The neckline is very high and very wide. I reduced the seam allowances between the facing and the neckline to 1cm at the shoulders and it just covers my bra straps. If I hadn't I would have had to add bra carriers, but these would pull the bra straps to an uncomfortable angle, so I'm relieved this was enough. I lowered the front neckline by 1.5cm and it is still very high. All my dresses come up very large around the shoulders and I still need to pull the shoulder seams in by another 1cm (ie 2cm seam allowance at shoulder seams). [Update: I pulled the shoulders up by quite a lot - 1.5cm at the neckline, tapering out to nothing at the sleeve - I am much happier with how the whole bodice fits.]

After my festival of seam binding on the last dress I made, I had a change of heart. Seam binding adds a lot of bulk and can make the seams pucker. For this dress, I went with a really simple zig zag finish. It won't win any prizes for the most beautiful insides ever, but they do the job they are meant to do: be invisible and stop fraying. 

Both my Colette dress patterns, the Dahlia and the Peony, have gathers at the waist, instead of skirt darts, which I really like, I think it suits me. I will possibly adapt all my future skirts to this method. This time though, I changed the skirt gathers into two small pleats. I think they look neater and smarter, and reduce the puffiness you get with gathers. I added a LOT of length to the skirt, I cut the skirt length to the size 18 and it added about 10cms to the length and I hemmed a 2cm hem. I am not entirely sure this is entirely right for me, but as I am pushing 40, my bare knees need to disappear from public life. I still might shorten it, or I might go back and make a straight skirt with a back vent. Peony with a pencil skirt is definitely on the cards for the future.

For me, the cummerbund belt really brings this dress together and makes it special. The picture above, without the belt looks pretty frumpy - a shorter skirt would help. I chose to add white piping to the edges of my belt, to give it some contrast with the dress. I made the inside in white cotton, but I don't expect I am going to wear it the wrong side out. It looks too much like a bandage, and a belt like this needs to be in a darker colour than the dress. I considered plain navy, but the cotton I had in my stash wasn't a perfect colour match, so white it was. I added a scrap of interfacing to the two edges of the belt to stabilise the buttons and button loops. I finally got to use the three navy buttons I bought in Italy that didn't make it onto Ruby Tuesday. Because they have a rope motif, I made button loops out of unadulterated piping cord and called it nautical. This is definitely not my excuse for avoiding cutting out, sewing up, turning and pressing proper button loops. No indeed!

Costs:
Pattern: Colette Peony, £7.72
Fabric: 1.75m, £10.06
Contrast Fabric: Rainbow Fabrics, Isle of Wight, 30cm, £1.80
Piping Cord: didn't record price.
Interfacing: scraps, £0.00
Thread: stash, £0.00
Buttons: Italy, £1.20
Total: £20.78

Felt pouch, with tutorial

I had a gift wrapping emergency this week, so I decided to make my own gift pouch.

Here’s how I did it:

Supplies:

1 x felt rectangle

1 x piece of fabric (half a Fat Quarter is about right, depending on the size of the felt)

1 x snap

Thread

Yarn for crochet decoration
Button for decoration

Instructions:

   1.       Cut lining fabric so that it overhangs the felt by 1cm on all sides.

   2.       Fold the sides of the lining fabric inwards by 1.5cm, wrong sides together. Press. You can make mitred corners if you like.

   3.       Pin the lining fabric to the felt, wrong sides together and topstitch in place.

   4.       Hold the lined felt so that it is facing you in “Portrait orientation”. Fold up along the bottom just over 1/3 of the way up.

   5.       Stitch along sides of folded edge, reinforcing at the top edge. You now have an open envelope.

   6.       Fasten with a snap. If your snap is very large, or strong, you might need to include some interfacing inside the lining fabric before you attach it to the felt.

   7.       Decorate the front flap. You could sew a collection of buttons on the front, embroider a motif with embroidery thread or yarn. I made a crochet flower with a button centre. Pattern linked from my Ravelrynotes.

Finally finished: the Florence Scarf

This has been a work in progress for a long time, 9 months, according to my Ravelry notes.

I had one ball of Rowan Kidsilk Haze left over from a bolero I made to go with a bridesmaids dress. I matched the yarn and the pattern to the bride’s bolero and matched the colour to my own dress. I didn't really enjoy knitting the bolero, and am not wild about the finished product. But I had one ball left over and this seemed like the perfect pattern to use it up.

On the whole, I am not wild about this yarn. I can see why it is popular: it is lovely and soft, has a great aura and comes in a wide colour range. Because it is lighter than a feather, the ball is an extremely generous size, making it easy to justify the price tag. But it sheds like crazy! I end up covered in fluff whenever I wear one of these two, not so elegant. I also decided that I don’t love knitting with lace weight yarn, the result is beautiful but knitting with tiny needles and a thread like yarn is just too hard on my hands, my shoulders and possibly my eyes. But lace knitting is addictive...

The Florence scarf has a really simple repeating pattern and it is really easy to memorise. It works up into chevrons, making it very current! I made a few mistakes along the way, but the fluffy yarn is forgiving enough that they are not too noticeable. When this happened, the pattern was really easy to modify to get back on track, without having to rip back.

My hesitation with knitted scarves is the right and wrong side issue. Unless they are in a rib or seed stitch (not my favourite stitches), they are going to have two different sides. When I’m wearing it, I don’t want to fiddle with tying it perfectly, I just want to throw it on and wear it out. I’ve left this unblocked on purpose, to allow the sides to curl in, showing off the right side on both sides. It is a more rolled scarf than is ideal, but I like not having the wrong side on show and I think it ends up a nice width.

I wore it out and about during Me Made May, and realised OMG, it is my first knitted scarf for me! After 4 1/2 years of knitting, it is only right that I now have a scarf.

Red Bow Dress

May is the month when I get the most sewing done for me. Not panic sewing - promise! But I am more motivated to get new stuff to wear by moving through my queue. Although I made, and wore it, during Me Made May it's taken a while to get it up here on the blog.

I got the fabric on a recent trip to Australia. I have to pause to give a big shout out to Spotlight stores. I always make a trip there whenever I can. They look a bit rubbish: their branding is seriously out of date, their TV ads are terrible, the stores are a jumbled mess, and they pile cheap home furnishings right at the front. But… if you go inside and actually look around, they have a huge range of fabrics, including worthwhile apparel fabrics, a large selection of quilting cottons, from major fabric companies and lots and lots of fabrics for everything from costumes to evening wear. The downside is that you have to rummage, and you have to be very careful about pricing, the rolls are not clearly marked. I advise double checking the price with the staff before they cut. Ask me how I know...

I was drawn to the colour of this cotton drill / twill. I didn’t realise it was also a stretch.  They very kindly sold it to me at the standard price, because someone had put the roll back in the wrong place. I only bought one meter, thinking to make an a-line skirt with it. This but in a plain. When I got home, I had another think: it would make a fantastic dress. I wanted to get this pattern from it, but it takes 1.5m, and I only had 1m. 

The fabric constraints meant I needed something sleeveless, so I went back through my pattern stash and discovered Simplicity K1609, included with an issue of Sew Magazine. I decided to make View B, the bow front. It is pictured in blue on the pattern cover.

I remembered that Gertie had made about 5 or 6 versions of this dress, but I stupidly only read her comments after I had cut mine out. Unusually, it comes up a bit on the small side and there are no lengthen or shorten lines on the pattern so I forgot to adjust for my short waist. It needs 1 – 2 cm shortening, and then it would be a great fit. The slight stretch in the fabric saved me in the end, but it is more rumpled than it would be with a better fit. I did remember to do a 1.5cm sway back adjustment, and I shortened the back darts by 3cm. I made the armhole seams with a 1cm seam allowance plus same for the side seams below the bust. 

I cut the front on the fold, omitting the centre front seam. I didn’t need the waist shaping and  I didn’t want such an obvious seam line distracting the eye from the lines of the dress. The pattern photography takes great care not to show this seam on any of the four versions, you have to inspect the line drawing on the back, or the illustration from the original 1960s pattern envelope to know it is there. I'm sure it is fine in a busy print but not great in a plain. I lengthened the hem to the remainder of the fabric and got about 1 - 2 inches extra on the length. Which is perfectly short enough, thank you very much.

I didn’t have enough fabric for the facings, and considered cutting them from contrast fabric. But I know my fitting issues well enough to know that a sleeveless dress would have the facings on show, particularly when I am sitting down. I had some plain red quilting cotton in my stash, so I cut the facings from that. The colour is a good match, and I'm pleased with the extra stability that a woven gives. I still interfaced them though.  Ironically, the skinny quarter or so of facing fabric cost me almost as much, in the UK, as the entire dress fabric did, in Australia.

I went to town on the seam finishes and bound them with contrast bias binding. I love the pop of colour inside, and it makes me want to wear it inside out! The fabric frayed a lot, so the binding is a good option for a nice finish, but it does add bulk to the seams, and I over stretched it a bit, which makes the seam pucker. It’s a shame, I don’t think I would bind again, unless it was with a very light, sheer fabric – which, quite frankly, sounds like a bit of a nightmare. I didn’t do a hem binding, I think it is less bulky this way.

I changed the lapped zip for an invisible zip which I knew would look less home made than any lapped zip I would be able to manage. John Lewis were out of the 55cm size, and I was impatient to finish, so I bought a 45cm zip. It needs a tiny bit of wiggling to get on and off but, again: stretch fabric! My back seam fitting gave me a 1cm seam allowance through the waist and hips, and more than 1.5cm through the bust, increasing to a lot at the back neck. It is taken in by about the same amount again as the back neck darts. I must sit up straighter…

I went for the bow option on the front, Version B. I think the solid fabric needs something to distract the eye from the creasing, and I like the 60s vibe of the bow. I didn’t have enough fabric to cut the bow in one length, but I managed to do it in two halves. This adds a very bulky seam under the knot, which stops it from pulling into tight folds, but I like it this way. I mistakenly cut it longer than the pattern, by about 10cm, but I’ve left it in the longer length with the tails hanging lower. I hope it will come out of the wash intact, it is only bound and secured by hand stitching, only along the knot so I am a bit concerned about how long this bow might last.

I styled up with coloured tights and platforms for the photo! But, as this dress is not lined, it is not for wearing with tights. Nor giraffe-sized platform shoes!

Costs:
Pattern, Sew Magazine: £5.99
Fabric, Spotlight: £4.00
Fabric facings, 25cm, John Lewis: £2.50
Interfacing, 25cm, John Lewis: £1.13 
Bias Binding, 4.2m, eBay: £4.16
Invisible Zip, John Lewis: £3.20
Thread, used previously: £0.00
Total: £20.98