Lucy – Page 25 – Hopefully Creative

Accidental Harry Potter Sweater

Red and yellow seem to become Harry Potter colours really easy and really quickly. I only found this out after I’d finished most of my sweater though. Truth be told, I don’t mind. I like the sweater, it is comfortable, warm, pretty and it has stripes. Those stripes were a complete pain in the ass to finish, but that’s the life of a (somewhat new) knitter, I guess.

The original pattern is $5 in Paris which is free on Ravelry, you can see my very limited notes here. I now also remember why I thought I’d blogged about it, I did post the pictures on Ravelry. Sometimes you’d think I’d forget my head if it wasn’t stuck on. I did already show quite a few pictures of me wearing it, just see the M M M ’15 posts.

For the sweater, I basically fudged a bit and math-ed with the stitch counts to suit my gauge and called it a day. Also, the stripes were sort of supposed to continue along the arms too, but I’d ran out of white yarn, and so made them completely red. I actually like it like this, so happy accident!

You’ve now seen the front and back, and they were so pretty, weren’t they?! But the nicest bit is the neck. In it is this cute little tag I bought from a shoppy. I finished the neck with elastic, as it became a bit stretched out during the day and sank further and further off the shoulder. I hate off the shoulder everything, so that was not an option. This solution works, and it’s a nice pop of bright red on the insides.

I will write about the graduation dress when I have some nice(r) pictures. And once the day is over so I can tell all about the possible thunderstorm coming our way.

MMM ’15 Week 4 and the end

During the last bits of May, many knitted projects were worn. I seem to like them a lot.

Both the grey pants and the holey sweater made an appearance on this work day.

On the way to my parents house I wore the Harry Potter sweater again, which I apparently only wrote a draft post for, I’ll update it soon enough. I’d packed mostly me mades to be able to wear them in my mini-holiday.

Pre-blog grey pants and the Harry Potter sweater again. However, it was so hot that day that most of the day was spent without said sweater but with a lot of sun screen.

Pentecost Monday, double threat of grey sweater and a striped shirt.

I went to the Efteling, the Dutch Disneyland. Due to heat I shed the grey sweater during the day, but kept on wearing the striped shirt and green pants.

Simple jeans and hole sweater. I still really like this combination.

The January 2015 graduation dress. I think there may have been a group visit at work or something like that.

An occurance of the queen’s shirt. I really like this one. It’s comfortable.

The tester dress! I enjoy wearing this one, although I’m not sure the white tights are a good match.

I think I forgot to take a picture of the actual outfit, so you see part of the coloured pyjamas that I’ve been wearing for part of May, the fake fur cape and the Harry Potter sweater.

All in all I enjoyed forcing myself to wear me-mades, even the dresses and skirts. It does take some getting used too, but I definitely see that I prefer to wear sweaters, pants and shirts, even though I prefer to make dresses and skirts for some reason. I should definitely continue rotating the leg-less outfits into daily wear and should knit some more sweaters to wear. I’ll show you the first failure of the resolution with the dress I made for graduation tomorrow.

Alice’s Tea Party Skirt

A while ago I found some purple and white border print fabric on the market. I couldn’t help myself and bought it and of course showed it of to my coworkers immediately. The plan was to finish the skirt in a week or so. This was a good plan, although I managed to screw it up royally, naturally.

The plan was a simple gathered shirt with pockets with a waistband. I had one cut of fabric which consisted of two bits sewn together, I’m thinking it was the end/beginning of a new roll or something. I first removed the stitching and cut the bits into the height I wanted. I then seamed the bottoms with sticky iron on stuff, serged all the edges and attached them. I found some old slanted pockets and put those in. I then tried to make the waistband, that was a complete disaster. Enter the ‘unfinished projects box’. It was balled up and dumped in there.

I took it out a while later and gathered the whole business. This made it look even more hideous. Back it went into the unfinished projects box.

Then I took it out at the beginning of the month. First things first, discard the waistband idea and cut square pockets from the fabric. This worked, I only later found out that I completely failed in making the pockets sufficiently deep for putting my hands in if I wanted to have the waistband all along the edge. I took out the gathering and redid it using the lining. Eventually sewed a casing to pull the elastic through. Almost all the gathering is in the back now, with pockets on the front. Because the elastic kept twisting, it’s been sewn on at regular intervals.

During the last session of this skirt the aim was to finish it before going to bed. This did mean that due to exhaustion and frustration, several parts had to be redone twice or three times. Conclusion, this is not a smart idea. Moreover, I haven’t completely solved the ‘if I put something heavy in my pockets my skirt fall down’-problem, but I’m thinking of ideas, and it was 2:30 and I HAD to sleep. Anyway here it is, front and back.

So why is it called Alice’s Tea Party? Because there are teapots and rabbits and butterflies and mushrooms and cupcakes and all kinds of cute Alice in Wonderland themed bits on it, if you ask me. Below the pockets and a close up of the back, with all the gathering.

I am very happy that it is finished. I like it a lot, because of the print on the bottom. I think it’s really cute. That one problem still needs to be solved, but I’m thinking of some sort of waist stay concoction that could solve the issues. Lastly, it’s all nice and finished on the inside with lining and everything.

Next up is a larp present, basically a copy of something I use myself. You’ll see…

MMM ’15 – Week 2 and 3

So… I’ve had a holiday! It was fun and I wasn’t too interested in writing blog posts. I did manage to take pictures almost every day. So below you’ll find all my *cough* wonderful outfits.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday I wore my larp outfit, consisting of dress, shirt and apron, including backpack and black cape. I didn’t take a picture on Sunday, because it all was quite the same. I did wear my old school hoody and one of the striped shirts for clearing up the campground.

I wore my wonderful plaid skirt with double zippers on Monday, while staying at my parents. Apparently this was made before blog.

Not willing to change, the Tuesday outfit was the same, apart from the black leggings. I’m wearing red socks, my feet are not usually that colour.

I wore really old, before blog grey pants. These pants are the first pants I ever made and the burda waistband instructions were much to difficult for me. So these are hardly finished on the inside. I did have to sew on a hook and bar before wearing, as the snap that was on had fell off.

Time for a dress. The graduation dress to be precise, still love this one.

Friday were the big grey pants. Again, one of my favourites.

This was another no pants day. I was wearing the sailor skirt, which also seems to be pre-blog. I also learned that this skirt is not meant for bicycling in. It’s almost painful.

Ducks! I love the ducks. I’m fairly certain I wore this outfit on Monday too, to show my boss, who really liked the ducks. And again, no pants, good girl me.

On Sunday I also wore my derby gear, which that week consisted of a striped shirt and my derby shorts.

Knitted HP sweater. Just finished by then. I still haven’t written the blog post for this one.

Yesterdays knitted sweater was covered by my old plaid jacket. These buttons suck to do up, but everybody seems to love this thing.

Again, the grey pants, as seen before. But now topped by a home made jacket. I found a decorative stitch on my machine when making this. I cannot seem to find the post, so I’m guessing the jacket is also pre-blog.

Now, I’ll upload the pictures for the next week and try to finish it all up before May ends. I am enjoying wearing the things I sort of forgot about. Some are actually way more wearable than expected. See you when I find time and energy to write the post!

Kiwi Presents

So what do you do when you seen an invite for a colourful party on your colleagues desk? You probably don’t offer to make a kiwi necktie. Well, I did, quite a while ago, but only recently did I manage to get my butt of the chair and get to work!

Remember when I made my green pants? If you don’t, or have never seen it before, check the goodness out here! These pants have a belt/sash type thing made from a kiwi fabric, on the bias. While cutting out the sash, I didn’t pay enough attention to how many pieces I needed. This meant that I have had the fabric for another sash in my stash, cut out and all, since August 2013. I’d just found the bit back again when I made the offer.

Then I postponed, and postponed and postponed.. Then I couldn’t find the fabric anymore. Then I found it again, and, vaguely remembering something about the party being in May, set out to create it.

You may know that we Dutchies celebrate the birth of our reigning monarch each year. This year this was on April 27 and I’d made arrangements to be with my parents that weekend. I brought along my sewing stuff and got to work. I started by finding a tutorial (this one) and simply cutting the sash ends to be straight angles. I fused interfacing to the thing and followed the tutorial by adding lining bits and sewing those on. Then I folded the sides to the middle, it turned out that the ‘thin’ end was too thick, so I thinned it somewhat. I sewed it all by hand and once the tie was tie shaped, I added a label that said handmade for you.

Cute, right! It also holds the tie end, when the tie is knotted. The bottom lining piece is another kiwi, which I find a nice touch!

My colleague was really quite happy with it, or so it seemed. He also got a lot of compliments from random people, which he found very interesting. He’s head of the financial department, so he’s a real permanent suit and tie kinda guy. Anyway, here is his smiley face!

MMM ’15 – Sign Up

Prepare to be bored out of your brains again, it’s Me-Made-May Time!! I’ve done it before and I will do it again.

For those of you who do not know what MMM is, this post explains it all. You make a pledge to wear items of clothing, accessories or ‘other’ for a specified number of days in the month of May. My pledge is below:

The reason you will be bored is because I’m also planning on documenting all outfits every day. So you’ll be getting me in clothes in round-up posts for an entire month. I’m already sorry.. almost.

I participate in MMM for two reasons, one, it teaches me even more about what I do and don’t wear and why and two, I should challenge my sartorial choices more as I seem to live in jeans and a sweater, with the fur animal hoody over the top.

Wish me luck!

Leafy Graduation

After the fireworks and exhaustion from vacation and new years eve, I spent January 1 and 2 by myself. I took out an stashed piece of fabric that I’ve liked for a while and found a pattern with a design feature I wanted to explore and got to work. I wanted to make a dress to wear to the graduation of the first class of 2015. I was planning on this being it.

This is the pattern I chose. I went for a combination of view 4 and 5 with lengthened sleeves. What is so special, to me, about this pattern is that it has princess seams in front and back. However, it’s got only the one pattern piece to make both the center and side front/back. I wanted to see if and how that works. It turns out, it works!

I made the smallest size, 36-38 and made it from a stretch cotton fabric with giant leaves on it. I hoped it would fit because I’m generally not a size 38, but I figured, smaller is always possible and larger is difficult. The shell of the dress was put together and then I had to decide how to put in the sleeves, right or wrong side out. I pinned in both ways and decided I needed a twist and put in the sleeves wrong side out. I felt less like a giant couch that way.

When it was all together and I basted in the back seam, I found out I could get in and out of it without problems. I also found it was really big… So I took in the back seam a bit more. It should have been 1.5 cm, but it was as much as you can see in the left picture below. There were facings involved in the making of this, and they work perfectly fine!

All in all, it took me 2 days to finish basically everything. Then I took another day to hem. I hate hemming, so it took a while to get that done. I did invisible stitches and I’m quite proud of the way they turned out. On the right is a close up of the neckline. I think it looks nicely done!

Here’s the finished product. I really like it with the white belt.

Last Friday, during graduation, this dress did have its first outing and it performed splendidly. Definitely a keeper, especially with my old petticoat under it.

Holes

Happy new January etc.

As you may or may not know, people in the Netherlands are allowed to ignite fireworks in their own backyard and/or street from 18:00 on the 31st of December until 2:00 on the 1st of January. Being somewhat easily scared and with a severe dislike of loud bangs, you can understand my dislike of the party. However, apparently, most other people do like it. Anyways.

Way back in 2014, I finished a new sweater. The pattern, or as they call it recipe was called the eyelet yoke sweater and can be found here. I had actually completely finished the body and part of a sleeve when I decided that it really was much too big and baggy and not what I wanted. So I frogged and started again, using the very unscientific method of not knitting 1 every 8 stitches. And some calculations to get the yoke to work out.

Left the frogged version, right the current one. See the difference?

Now, the eyelet yoke sweater sort of has its description in the name. There are eyelets in the yoke, aka holes. Once I’d finished the thing it was difficult to think of something to wear underneath, because there were holes that would show whatever was underneath. Eventually I had the brilliant idea to just wear a blouse. I own two and even though they are blue and white, I don’t think they clash with the red in the sweater. I’ve now worn it out and about, and forgot to take pictures every time, so that’s why it’s ‘late’.

Here is was after a wash, you can see on the left that the bottom is not the same length all the way round, sort of. And on the right the built-in shaping which I may have overdone a little.

The left is the finished version of the bit with the holes, and right the frogged version. There is a little difference but not much.

Below you can see the thing on me. Excuse the horrid lighting, it’s winter, I feel like I’m in perpetual darkness with all the storms, rain and other light-blocking weather features.

And this is my ravelry project.

Cluck Cluck

What do you get when you put three exited girls in a quilt shop? MAYHEM!!

I went to this quilt shop a while ago with two friends. One of them and myself found a large wicker basket (a meter high) filled with small pieces of quilt fabric with a note attached that turning it over was allowed. So after we went around the shop and saw a myriad of nice designs on the walls, we turned over the basket. We touched, looked at and judged all of them and all of us took a few of the scraps home with us.

One of the designs I saw was a log cabin chicken. Log cabin is a type of arrangement of strips of fabric that forms a square eventually. The chicken is two of these log cabin ‘blocks’ sewn together to form a chicken. I knew I wanted to make one, but I also knew that I didn’t really want to put it out in my house somewhere. Then after a miserable Tuesday where it felt like everything went wrong, I knew what to make the chicken for. That Tuesday was the day I forgot my key in the house and the people who have a spare were both gone. Clearly I needed someone else to have my key and I figured I had to make a key chain. I used some of the scraps from a ‘foot of the bed quilt’ I’m currently making for the chicken.

It’s all hand sewn and the beak and head thing are felt. I think it’s cute.

I saw some examples on the internet that had a tail attached, which I thought was really cute so I added one too. I had to look up how to sew the chicken together because I couldn’t remember it from the top of my head. Luckily patterns for things like this are abundant.

Chick back

Deadline Work (1) – Gala

The last couple of weeks have been quite busy with a few events on the calendar. First, we had a gala on Friday, which ofcourse required a new dress. The Wednesday after we had an important visit for which I wouldn’t mind something new, I had a wedding that Friday and just now I’ve come back from another larp event, for which I wanted a new outfit. So all in all I have a lot to tell you about the things I’ve made and produced.

Let us start with the gala dress. I wanted a new one and at some point before the gala was actually happening I set out for some fabric. My first idea was to make something with a draped cowly bit. However, I couldn’t find any fabric I liked for that. Eventually I found some blue fabric with a design that I really liked, so I bought a meter of it. Not long after I found something that coordinated (at least in my head).

The plan became a top based on the pattern for the larp top (here) from the patterned stuff, and a simple A-line empire-ish skirt from a pattern in a simplicy magazine I already had. I also wanted to a different ish strap because it would be too boring otherwise. Well this is the finished thing:

And on me. Excuse the mirror pictures, it’s difficult taking photographs when alone. As you can see though, it is a bit long, I’m not wearing heels in these pictures, but even with heels, it’s a little too long. That’s what you get for hemming the morning of the feast, I guess. It is a bit tight at the top, but I quite like that, if I’m honest.

And lastly, it turned out that my fidgeting to get the back point right turned out wonderful, check that matching point across the zipper people!

Next up, a shirt fit for a queen.

Category: Lucy