Blue – Page 5 – Hopefully Creative

Yellow Summer Coat

Making a light, bright summer coat that will hopefully protect against the rain.

I’ve wanted a thin but water and windproof summer jacket for a while now. I never really found the right fabric so it never really happened. But then I ruined my dinosaur coat with an ironing mishap and started looking for replacement dinosaur softshell fabric. On that same website (Takoy.nl), I discovered something called ‘summer softshell’. They told me that it was a light, breathable but waterproof fabric. I chose the mango yellow version. Since it was softshell, I also hoped it wouldn’t fray and I ordered enough to make the Susan jacket from Pattydoo again. This was the same pattern as I used for the original dinosaur coat.

This new jacket is not identical to the first coat that I made. For one, I decided to not include the zip-on hood. It’s now attached with only snaps which seems to be working fine. Since it would be a summer coat, I didn’t include the knit cuffs but I did include the sleeve adjusters. Third adaptation was to change the pockets. The reason the dinosaur coat died was because I tried to patch the pocket with an iron-on patch and then accidentally melted the zipper. I always wanted to stuff more into the pockets than they could realistically hold. I figured the solution for this was the create more space in the back of the pocket such that the front and back of the pocket weren’t exactly the same size; limited by the width of the center front coat panel. The back of the pocket now has a pleat on it so it can expand and not rip, hopefully. It seems to work so far.

Sewing this was quite smooth sailing. The fabric was very well behaved. I did use very thin pins because normal pins refused to go through. The only thing that really required unpicking was the bottom of the sleeves. In my infinite wisdom, I’d forgotten to read through the original post where I mentioned taking 3.5 cm of the bottom of the sleeves and these new ones were full length. I’d already put on the velcro for the sleeve adjusters all the way at the start, so that had to come off and be reattached 3.5 cm higher. I have now marked that change on the pattern just in case I sew it again. Since just yellow would make for a somewhat boring coat, I put in a contrast zipper. I then also added contrast binding the certain sections of the inside to make it a little more fun. I’ve worn this coat a fair few times now and it’s nice. We’ve been experiencing a little bit of a drought recently, so I haven’t tested it in heavy rain yet. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will hold up!

New Year’s Dyeing

Experimenting with yarn and different methods of heat setting, resulting in three different colourways!

After not sleeping enough with the fireworks still going for hours beyond midnight, completing the puzzle I started in 2021 and finishing up the last oliebol, I got to work on new years day. I’d been thinking about dyeing yarn all holiday week, and just.. didn’t get up to actually do it. I’d decided I wanted to try a few different things, oven dyeing, speckles and partial dip. I used three different yarns, all from World of Wool in the UK.

The one that I started with was some 56’s English Superwash Aran Weight, I have six skeins and decided to dye five of them. I kept one spare in case the sweater I want to make with this requires more than 5 skeins. I decided to try and oven dye some yellow and orange speckles citric acid speckles on it. The oven dyeing initially came from a blog post by Needles on the Move found here. The citric acid speckles from ChemKnits Tutorials on YouTube. I mixed soft yellow dye in a little pot with citric acid, and in another pot I mixed soft yellow dye and red dye with the citric acid. The yarn was put in a second hand roasting tin and the dye mixes sprinkled on top. Unfortunately, due to the water that needed to be added, this batch turned out a little bit runny, so the colours are not as defined as I would have liked them. Afterwards, I found a blogpost by The Impatient Dyer here, that talks about how to solve that problem.

I wasn’t going to wait for quite some time for the roasting pan to be free again to dye the other skeins, so I just used my dyeing pots for those. One has a steamer insert on which you can drape the yarn and then add the colour. The other has a steaming section for doing the same thing. These speckles turned out a bit clearer. You can maybe make out some small hue differences in the skeins that are hanging above. The two right most ones are more muted with speckles that were less clear.

The next type of yarn was sock weight, Merino Superwash / Bamboo Sock Weight. I decided to go for some blue and turquoise but with lots of white. The dye was mixed with citric acid, put onto the yarn and then the wool went into the steamer pans. I think it looks cute and I am looking forward to see what it looks like knit up into a project. In case that project will be socks, I ball them up into two ~50 gram balls that are still connected to each other, so that I know for sure how long my sock can be without running out of yarn.

This last yarn was an experiment. The base is Merino Superwash Sock Weight Singles. I wanted to dye a skein partly grey with some speckles of orange. So I dumped an amount of grey dye in the water and partly hung the skein in that dye water. The remainder of the skein was draped over a steamer inset and speckles were applied. Some grey with citric acid and to create the orange I mixed some red and yellow dyes in the citric acid.

When this skein was rolled into two ~50 gram balls, it changed the look a lot. The skein has a dark section whereas you can’t really see that in the balls. I’m really curious to see it knit up. To turn the yarn into balls, I use this weird contraption that I got from a secondhand store for 3.50 euro – maybe used for spinning? In combination with a small empty bottle to allow for a centre pull ball. While it takes forever to wind up over a kilometer of yarn, I was very happy once it was all completed. The yellow/orange yarn is already being knit up into a project that’s about 90% complete, so I hope to finish that soon. There are no intentions for the two sock weights as of yet.

Oven Mitts

Making some dinosaur oven mitts to replace the old raggedy ones.

During the big supply haul of 2021, I also bought a meter of something they called ‘Non-Woven Arachne’, some sort of interlining for oven gloves. Not because I’m particularly convinced I can make oven mitts better or cheaper than any store, but because I wanted to be able to fully choose the fabric for them. I’d recently acquired some dinosaur printed cotton with details in the same colour as my kitchen wall, which seemed the perfect combination. Also, dinosaurs in top hats.. who can say no?!

As for the mitts, the plan was to have a lining, a layer of the interlining and then the cotton on the outside. Quilt those together, cut out the mitt shape and sew it into the final shape. After making a quilt sandwich with only one layer of interlining, I was a bit scared that it wouldn’t be enough heat protection, so I tried again with two layers. I’d traced around one of my old mitts and added some seam allowance and cut those pieces out of my sandwich. Sewed them together, including a hanging loop, then zigzagged the edges, bound the bottom edge and decided this order of operations was not ideal. Trying to wrestle several layers of quilted oven glove under the machine to bind the bottom edge is not pleasant.

So for the second mitt, I decided to use some of the scraps of the first mitt and cut out a second layer of interlining for the finger and thumb part of the mitt. I zigzagged the edges of the interlining and the sandwich, then quilted the extra part on top. I sewed it down along the ‘mid-hand’ edge too. I put in the hanging loop, bound the two bottom edges separately (much easier) and then sewed the two parts together. This is the order of operations that seemed to be much smoother and easier to handle. All in all, I hope these will serve a good long time as I recently had to retire some of my gloves for either being a bit too burnt or for accidentally getting a lot of dye on them.. Those are no longer anywhere close to food safe. I also still have more of the interlining and the cotton, so I can make more if they turn out to work well.

Kraken Chalk Bag

Intimidating(?) Kraken looking at you when I try to scale a wall.

While I might only boulder once or twice a year, my desire to own all the things means that I’ve been wanting to make a chalk bag for a good long while now. There are lots of examples out there of fun looking chalk bags and that was exactly what I had in mind. So I set out to find a suitable plush pattern to create a bag out of. It took me a while to find what I was looking for and in the end I went with the angry kraken. I had already purchased that pattern from CholyKnight/Sew Desu Ne (here) and made Brian the Derpy Kraken.

I made much use of the instructions from the ‘do it yourself’ chalk bag pattern by Edelrid for most of the proportions. Then the original Kraken bag was printed again on 130% scale. I chopped off the top, and redrew the sides to be a little bit straighter. I needed to be able to put my hand in it, so the opening had to be large enough. The spots were placed in slightly different locations and the side flaps(?) were also redrawn to fit the new proportions. The outside was light blue wellness fleece, the spots and other details are felt. The lining is black fleece and the stretchy blue closure fabric was some jersey. Some blue paracord for the closure and blue tape for the belt loops. His suckers are grey minky fleece.

It was very easy to put together, basically the same as Brian the original. The only difference was adding the lining and closure jersey. I was worried that overlapping the light blue to the inside would be too thick to sew through but that turned out to be fine. Because it’s so thick it really keeps its shape well and stays open. I did make one small change and that was to add some stitches to the middle of the underside to keep that from sagging too far down.

Hopefully, the corona situation eases up again and climbing will be possible so I can test out if he works in situ. I do smile every time I look up and I see him laying there, looking at me. So that’s at least something nice about this project.

Dinosaur Coat Version 0.86

Making a tiny dinosaur coat for a little human.

I still had about a meter of my dinosaur coat softshell fabric left and really wanted to use it for something useful. Luckily, friends of mine have produced a little human and I decided that he needed a dinosaur coat too. The pattern used was a free one called Schnabelinas Softshelljacke that came in sizes 74-146 and three different versions. I chose size 86 and the ‘Gerade Teilung’. Yes, this pattern was in German. However, I managed it because it has extensive instructions with photography and google translate was a great help. I also made my life a little easier by not putting in pockets.

This Gerade Teilung has straight seams at the front instead of the curved ones from the other versions. The pattern gives the option for a short and a long version – I chose long. There is also a possibility to remove the shoulder seam by creating a back pass (?), so that happened too. The sewing went pretty smoothly apart from the finishing. The snaps in the hood were not having it at all. So I think this is no longer a removable hood, unless you want to pull the snaps off too.

I really like the zipper guard that’s made from a contrasting fabric (blue with white dots). I chose to use a separating zipper and put in dark blue cuffs. It’s a bit big for the recipient but he’ll likely still grow, probably a lot faster than I ever did! It feels nice that the fabric went to a lovely new home where it will be used instead of staying in my hoard languishing forever, as so many lengths are currently doing.

Night Holly

That elation that you feel when you complete a 3 1/4 year long project and end up with a lovely night sky sweater.

I cast on my starry night sweater on the 22nd of May (2021) and finished it today! So about three months of intermittent knitting and a rush dye job in the middle and the project that got conceived in 2018 (backstory here) is finally done! Must say that it feels very rewarding to complete something that has been on the ‘to make’ list for such a long time.

The pattern I chose was the Holly by Anna Bell, which is out of print but can still be found on the internet archive. I chose to deviate from the original a little, mainly in the length and amount of stitches. My gauge was wrong so I recalculated certain bits to fit better with the gauge I was achieving. I started with the front and back at the same time so I could be sure they were of equal lengths. When both the front and the back had a complete ball in them, I started on the sleeves. To my surprise those also took a complete ball each. Cue some ‘waiting for another skein to be delivered’ (so frustrating) as I wasn’t sure I could make both the top of the front and the back and the neckline with the one ball and change I had left.

Turns out that that was a good choice because by the end I had 97 gram leftover. I’d have lost yarn chicken if I tried it. Waiting for the yarn to arrive when the sweater had been completely done would have been worse than in the middle of the project as it was now. I added a button to the neckline because it matched the yellow in my yarn. I think I probably added a little too much yellow while dyeing the yarn to achieve the exact effect I was going for, but I still really like the result and so far it’s been nice to wear for this afternoon. I think it will be a success!

Fluffy-Toothed T-Rex

Feathers are not fleece, but who knows, maybe T-Rexes really were this fluffy?

I think this one is the cutest so far. He doesn’t look like much from the front on account of his eyes being invisible, but from a side angle, very adorable. It’s the free T-Rex pattern from Sew Desu Ne/CholyKnight. After finishing the Turtle Duck, I was supposed to finish a turtle. While the turtle has its eyes by now, it’s not completed. So why did I start on this one, you ask? Because I had blue thread in the sewing machine from completing the not denim pants. I was simply too lazy to change it out so I grabbed my previously cut pieces and got to work.

I’ve still got at least 4 more cut out plushies, since I decided to cut the free plushy patterns that I’d been eying for a while on the same day. All the bits are now waiting in plastic wallets with their appropriate paper pattern pieces. With the cutting out of the way, it took about 3.5 hours to complete this little critter. I’m just never going to be a fast sewer I think.

Of course I have a weakness for dinosaurs, so it’s not a surprise that I like this one. I do find the teeth quite challenging. Fluffy teeth seem wrong in some way. That doesn’t make me want to hug him any less though!

Definitely Not Denim

In the month I wear mostly skirts, I chose to add to my pant collection by hacking some bloomers.

While I’ve been doing quite a lot of historical-ish and plush sewing, I also felt that my current wardrobe had some gaps. I wanted more long pants, preferably some jeans. I also wanted to try the Cycling Bloomers pattern from Bikes & Bloomers some more, since I liked the width, the pockets and the back waist points. So I grabbed some paper and some tape and made a new frankenpattern. Then I grabbed some weird blue fabric that drapes too much to be real denim and got to work.

The pattern came together easily although there was again some pulling along the front pockets. This time I fixed it by adding a tab and a popper. If I do make it again, and I’m expecting that I will, I’m going to try to add some width along the front so it doesn’t pull as bad and make a single welt pocket. Hopefully that’ll deal with the issue. I did add some back pockets to this version and I used the free pattern by The Last Stitch for those. Lastly, I added some belt loops to the sides to hang keys on. If we can ever go back to the office, I need to leave my keys somewhere.

They are quite long (6.5 cm in the hem) but I guess I’ll see how they hold up or if it shrinks up. I’m a little afraid that the fabric pulls out of shape easily, but there’s only one way to figure it out and that is to keep wearing it. So far, it’s been very comfortable! I’m not sure yet if it will replace my normal pants pattern. This one does take a lot more fabric due to the width in the legs. I guess I’ll keep you posted.

New Shoulder Friend

When the perfect shoulder dragon pattern comes your way, you have no choice but to craft a new friend!

Have you ever had that moment that you spot a pattern for something online and you just.. had to have it? I had that Monday a week ago when I found the pattern of a plushy shoulder dragon by Choly Knight. In the basket it went and out of the printer it came. All the pieces were cut and taped together, and some were printed again so I could optimize my layout. The main colour was blue, it’s belly would be a light blue, then green claws and a white spine-spikes. Coincidentally: my new best friend is a lint roller and I don’t think my vacuum will forgive me if I force it to suck up another bit of blue fuzz.

I then started the process of putting my new friend together. I chose to make a western style dragon with clawed legs, and the pointy spine-spikes. From the free add-on pattern, I chose the toothless style horns and face-spikes. He’s got the lizard style eyes and the lizard scales on his forehead and legs. The pattern is extremely comprehensive and easy to follow. My machine didn’t particularly like the enormous amount of layers along the spine-wing attachment, but he got through it. This was also the first time I used armature wire, and it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be.

So last Saturday at around 7 o’clock, Pjotr the Shoulder Dragon was completed. He’s a slightly sub-par scarf, but still a lot warmer than nothing. So far, he’s been received with universal acclaim and he’s literally the cutest thing in my house.

I’m Dyeing (Wool)!

The first step of the journey to make a night sky on my body with yarn.

Ever since May 2018 when I saw the image below on the new Facebook page of a knitting shop that was to open in Vlissingen, I’ve been obsessed with recreating this. While I would have loved to support the shop, the colourway that they had of this was very blue and not very night-y, so I decided to wait until the next dye-run was completed. However, before I could get my greedy mitts on it, the shop sadly closed in 2019.

Months of feverish Etsy-searching on, and nothing would come remotely close to what I dreamed would be my starry sweater. Several times over the years, I went into the Etsy and google searches looking for my perfect starry night yarn. Then I decided to just take the plunge and order yarn and stuff for dyeing. I filled my online basket, got scared and deleted it all again. Cue several repeats of that too. Then came lockdown, and two months in (May 2020) I decided to give myself permission to actually spend the money and buy the things.

So off I went to worldofwool.co.uk and got myself 5 skeins of Cheviot Superwash Aran, Eurolana dyes, some other random single skeins and a drop spindle kit (potentially more on that.. in the distant future). Once the lockdown was eased a little, I went on several haunts to the local second hand shop and got some pans, stirring things, and eventually a steamer – very good bargain there. I’d read that you really shouldn’t use the pans for dyeing for food so separate everything was needed. Hence also the creation of the Dyeing Cupboard. And then all the equipment sat on the Dyeing Shelf, sat some more, and sat some more. Until the very final day of my Winter holiday, i.e. last Sunday, when I decided I was going to Do. The. Thing. Today.

I used these instructions and set out to dye some test bits of yarn. That seemed to go well enough, so after some more general being scared, I actually dyed my first skein. I figured that the final result would only be visible after drying and I wasn’t going to wait for that, so I did all five that afternoon. I used yellow, navy and blue to create a sort of variegated night sky with somewhat random bits of yellow.

Since I quite enjoyed the process of puttering about with dye and yarn, I bought myself some more skeins this last week and hope to get some more funky yarn dyed in the future. As for knitting this up into that perfect sweater, that’s going to have to wait until I’ve finished my current ‘fallen leaves’ sweater. I’ve just divided the body stitches from the sleeve stitches after the yoke, so there’s been some progress?

Tag: Blue