Blue – Page 6 – Hopefully Creative

Mega Rainbow Quilt

This enormous rainbow quilt was a collaborative project with my mum, pops of colour all the way!

What do you do when your mother asks you if you are willing to make her a quilt? You say yes and ask ‘how big’.

And then I asked what style and colours and patterns and what is it that you want exactly and at least 20 more questions. And then she says: “Big. I’ll leave the rest up to you.” Oof, interesting prospect that was. So I set out to buy a bunch of 10x10cm fabric squares. I figured that would give me a nice starting point. Of course I couldn’t make any decisions by myself, so once my squares arrived, I set off for the parental house with two boxes of fabric and forced her to make some decisions with me. We ended up planning out and pinning together 16 rows of 20 squares in a sort of diagonal rainbow pattern.

Then I took the whole load of pinned squares back to Zeeland and got to work. First sewing together all the rows and then adding the columns together. I managed to fit my walking foot under the antique machine, which made life so much easier. Because the quilt was so big, I had to move the table to the middle of my living room to be able to get all the fabric under it. After finishing all the columns and rows, we had to decide on the border. Since we liked the vibrant blue of the sheet we used to position the original squares on, I got some of the fabric I’ve been using for masks and used that for the border.

For the back and eventually the binding we chose some different blue stuff from the internet. I wanted the quilt to be warm(-ish) so I first tried two centimeter thick batting, but that was an absolute horror and I would never have been able to get it under the machine. So I chose some batting that was a centimeter thick. I quilted approximately in the ditch from left to right. There was so much fabric to maneuver that I sometimes missed the ditch and decided that ‘rustic’ would do. Then I added six rows of ‘rustic’ stripes along the sides for some extra.. flair? Then hours and hours of hand-sewing the binding on. (Yay for YouTube!)

And FINISHED! The entire thing is ~2.00 x 1.65 meters. I had to move quite a lot of my furniture and plants around several times to be able to even lay out the backing, batting and top. I then shifted everything further around when I went to take the finished photos. While the repetitiveness was sometimes frustrating, the fact that I managed to finish and gift it in time for Christmas was amazing. My aim was to have it all done by the end of December, but I astonished myself by getting it finished on the 9th and gifting on the 19th.

As a mini reminder of who did this labour of love, I sewed a piece of ribbon with a lovely sentiment to the bottom embroidered with my name. Right now, this quilt lives on a couch and brightens up the place and that’s absolutely lovely.

Whale Hat

A newborn hat but with a whale’s tail.

I finished the quilts for the new addition and just kept on making things.. One day I felt like knitting so I ravelry’d.. ravelried (?) around trying to find a baby hat. I found one with a whale-tail called
Little Whale Tail Newborn Hat by Amy O’Holleran. I thought it very appropriate considering the first quilt and the tiny baby socks with a whale on that I found in a shop.

So I took some yarn in the same colour as the socks and knit it up. It wasn’t very difficult and for once I chose to use double pointed needles instead of circulars. I did use some of the helpful comments of people who had already made it to figure out how to do the tail. It’s easy once you understand it.

I sort of really love it and am wondering if I should just knit one for myself, but I probably won’t.

Nautical Box Quilt

This time it’s a small quilt with animal appliques!

With an impending addition to the family of friends of mine, I needed gifts. I asked them what they wouldn’t mind receiving that I could make and they said a box quilt. So I set to work on the planning stages, while making a lot of other things too. I have no self-control I guess.

I’d acquired a bunch of nautical themed fabrics ages ago, when I was online shopping for my cute animals quilt. I figured nautical would fit because my friend was already creating a whale toy at the time. So I set off to find a pattern on the internet. Eventually I came across the ‘Babe in the Woods quilt, 42 x 50″, free pattern at Maywood Studio‘, and decided that I liked it a lot. To fit the theme, I replaced the three animals with more aquatic versions from shutterstock, where I amended the whale to be a little cuter. I got some suplemental fabrics from the local market and set to work.

The pattern was first scaled a little further down to create an end format of around 100x80cm. Apart from that I followed the pattern pretty exactly. The appliques were made with a sticky cotton that was stitched down. Not sure that was the right choice because it does look a little Jack Skellington. I sewed the whole thing together on the treadle. For the back, I chose a yellow whale-fabric because whales. It was a little thin though, so I fused some of the same cotton that formed the animals to the back.

The edging was one of the squares from the quilt pattern, I just happened to choose a fabric with tiny stripes. This turned out to be very handy because that meant I could achieve a very constant distance between my stitches without having to pay much attention. Now, when it was finished, I was afraid that it would be a little dark and not to their taste. Soon up, the other one I made..

S-Bend Corset

Getting started (again) on corset making, this time an S-bend from the Edwardian era.

The combinations from last time weren’t actually finished yet when I started the main part of the project, an S-Bend corset. I googled for a while and then found a pattern by BlackSnailPatterns #1015 Edwardian Straight Front Corset, which I purchased from Etsy. I also got two Victorian/Edwardian skirt patterns at the same time, but you’ll hear about at least one of those later.

I set out to make a mock-up from some green canvas type stuff. Put a separating zipper in the front and used zip ties for the boning. I put on the first draft and it was very crooked. It’s unclear to me why this was the case. Options include: 1) I’m just crooked, 2) the stiffer boning channels on the one side pushed the front askew, 3) I sewed something wrong? Anyway, it stayed a little crooked in all my fittings. However, the lacing gap in the back seemed accurate enough, while the waist was a little bunchy. I made another mock-up in a size smaller but that was a Bad Idea™ and I quickly reverted to the original size. I then decided to remove half a cm from the waist and that seemed to do the trick.

After getting hold of some coutil from the UK, I cut out the pattern and got sewing (on the treadle!). This coutil stuff is so weird, it honestly felt like handling cardboard… Anyway, this is a single layer corset with boning channels made from the same coutil and a waist stay. There are two metal bones on either side of the lacing and five synthetic whalebone bones per side. It’s finished with some white bias tape along both top and bottom and some lace along the top. The pattern indicated that the first two bones needed flossing to keep them in place. Flossing is the name for additional stitches that anchor the bone and also serve a decorative purpose – the stuff in blue below.

The flossing along the vertical measures the same from bottom pin to top pin for all synthetic bones.

Because the fabric is so very tightly woven and stiff, it’s hard to push your needle though without completely bending it. So I took a different approach and pre-punched holes with pins. In order for the flossing to stay similar along all bones, I used pins in different colours so that I was sure to go from one hole to the next correctly. From yellow to yellow, red to red etc. Depending on the slant of the bones, the flossing points in a different direction.

You might see that the bones in the front end before the end of the boning channel. This does make sitting a lot easier and is why the flossing was required. I finished the flossing on the first two bones quite early and then got to sewing on the lace along the top. After that was hand-sewed on, I added the same blue ribbon as in the combinations. I can tie the ends into a bow and it looks very cute. If I do say so myself. The aim of this type of corset is to create a straight front and to allow the butt to stick out. This is to do with the ideal shape in the 1900’s. Mine’s not as pronounced because I’m not using any padding whereas true Edwardian people would most definitely have done so.

This pattern is also based on more modern bodies and therefore doesn’t exaggerate the shape nearly as much as an authentic Edwardian S-Bend corset would. After finishing a mock-up of this one, I made a mock-up of an original S-Bend from Corsets and Crinolines, which was way too big at the top and way too big at the bottom. But I might finesse it to fit me without padding by taking out a whole panel and taking in the hips a little. There isn’t much space between the last of my ribs and the top of my hip bones, which also means that my body literally cannot compress as much in the waist as would sometimes seem ideal. This thing reduced my waist measurement by 4 cm compared to normal. I wished in the past that I had a more squishable middle, but I’ve given up on that and I can’t be bothered by it too much anymore.

Next up, the skirt (which is wrong, it should have been a petticoat, but that isn’t finished yet…)

Edwardian-esque Combinations

A pair of Edwardian-esque combinations with lace and blue ribbon.

I became somewhat obsessed with early-ish Edwardian underwear lately. I’m not sure how it happened, but I did decide that I wanted to make an S-Bend corset. Now, what I’ve learned from following all kinds of historical and costume sewists in blogs and on YouTube, is that one does not wear a corset on bare skin. So off I went to make a pair of combinations. A pair of combinations, in this case, is a set of open-crotch drawers connected at the waist to a top of some sort. I’d been googling and reading a lot of projects from other people including Sew Historically and Amelia Marie. Next to that, looking at images on Pinterest, collected here.

Eventually I got to work using the book Amelia Marie recommened, The American System of Dressmaking. I had a lot of attempts, first to try and draft the top (which did not work as planned as it was too small), then I drafted a pattern from a few pages earlier which I haven’t gotten to work yet (still working on it). Next I did use the drawers pattern from page 502, but increased it along the back and raised the ‘crotch point’ up by a decent amount. I cut out my original top draft from about armpit level down and added more width to the sides. Once it was mostly sewn together, with some ladder lace along the waist, and a lace with holes along the top and insertion in center back, I needed to decide on the legs. I chopped off about 10 centimeters and added a ruffle of about 10 cm with lace at the bottom and ladder lace at the top. The center front has a facing and then hand worked buttonholes and mother of pearl buttons. The majority of the project was sewn on my treadle sewing machine (I love that thing!).

Normally one of these would be worn directly on the skin, but with the sheerness of the fabric, I did not want to expose the internet to that.. So I wore a black camisole and underwear underneath it. It’s really quite comfortable to walk around in and I do understand why ladies wanted to wear open crotch underwear under their corsets now. Still the overlap ‘covers’ enough that it’s ok to sort of wear it. Not outside by itself mind you. I also used blue ribbon in most of the lace with holes so that it could theoretically also count for ‘blue things’.

Next, the corset.

All the Blue

I mad some blue things to cover my face and to snuggle with.

I don’t like doing laundry, I do like finding cute images on the internet and I still had a length of blue fabric left.. So I made more facemasks, assembly style, on the Pfaff 130-6. After finishing the drawings and ironing those, I sewed up the facemasks. Afterwards, some elastic was added too, but I took the picture before completing that last step.

This time I made twelve facemasks, all in the same blue as last time. Why change a winning combination?! The image sources are available in the description.

Dragon; Penguin & Bear; Cow; Mouse; Giraffe; Heffalump; Panda; Piggie; Tigger; Penguin; Eeyore; Catpuccino

I also found some very soft blue flannel and made some more poppies. They are identical apart from the stitching around the head. It’s a little wider with one of the two. I made a pattern for the little hands and feet this time (basically just cut out a quarter circle from a piece of paper). I’ve saved that piece of paper in my pattern stash.

These two things are not the only blue things I’ve been making in the past few months, but they deserve their own posts so you’ll see those soon. *Must find the motivation to write!

Blue Lace

First time bra making – it was a success, even if taking pictures was quite the failure.

It was July and I wanted a new project. I’m not entirely sure what came over me, but I decided to order a bra making kit and a bra pattern. I guess that I mostly wanted to see whether I (and my sewing machine) could make something that looked as complicated as a bra. The answer was yes. I managed to create my first bra and it fits really well and is very comfortable.

The pattern I chose was the Boylston bra by Orange Lingerie. I’d read some good reviews, I liked the shape and figured it was worth a try. The kit was nr 201 koningsblauw from Kantjeboord, I also bought some foam because I like my bras to be shaped. Once I had everything ready, it was off to the races!

I did some measuring and then I taped the cup pieces together out of paper to see if they would fit. They fit remarkably well straight out of the package so I continued on. There were no clear instructions on working with foam and I hadn’t googled well enough to find a suitable tutorial to follow so I just.. muddled along. The way I’ve done it is not the cleanest, but it works, so who cares. It’s only me who will see it in real life after all. The next one will follow some sort of tutorial to nicely finish the edge though.

In the kit there was some blue lace. I put that on the outside of the bra cup and then just folded in little pleats at the bottom until the lace lay flat. I then mirrored that on the other cup and sewed it all down with little stitches. I then added the side pieces in a black stretch stuff with a mesh overlay and the back pieces from just stretch. On went the elastics and the underwire casing. Off to the shops to find a fitting underwire, and then just sew the casing closed. I redid the straps a couple of times and probably made a bad decision there, using something stretchy for the fabric straps, but it seems to hold up quite nicely.

Since I don’t really feel like putting my torso on the internet and I don’t have a nice mannequin, you’re getting the bunny again. Bunny is apparently pretty similar in circumference, but he doesn’t have the goods to fill the cups or the shoulders to hold the straps up. Black and blue also has no intention of getting photographed nicely, however, I did have fun dressing up a giant rabbit in lingerie.

I’ve actually been making quite a lot during these coronatimes, but I don’t always feel motivated to write about it. There are no less than 5 other drafts waiting for me to finish them, so you’ll eventually get an ecclectic mix of stuff I’ve created over the last few weeks and months.

Seattle Plaid Sweater

After two years, there will finally be more plaid clashing in my wardrobe!

My Ravelry notes say that I started this project on July 16, 2018 *gulp*. Whoops, that was quite a while ago. There were lots of delays along the way. Some had to do with my arm injury that was preventing me from knitting as much as I liked. Others were because of pure laziness, to be honest. On to the story..

So I used another free pattern from Ravelry: Seattle by Leah Swindon. From reading my Ravelry notes, I didn’t completely follow the pattern. I don’t remember much because the knitting was completed a good long while ago. I do remember that I made a significant colour change and that was too also add the yellow horizontal stripe along the body and not just the sleeves. I apparently stopped knitting some time between 2018 and May 2019 when I noted something about restarting the sleeves. Then the project remained in a bin for about another year. You see, with adding in those yellow stripes, it meant that I had so many ends to bind off. I don’t like binding off ends, so I procrastinated for a very long while.

When my mom came to visit, I showed her this knitting project and a few others that are also still languishing in bags, boxes or bins. She said that she would be willing to bind off the ends if I put the sweater together. So I took that challenge and sewed the thing together, since all the pieces had been completed ages ago already. She then set to binding it all off and I got my finished sweater on August 29, 2020, over two years since starting the project. Not going to lie, I’m very happy that it now gets to take up space in my closet and no longer in my unfinished projects pile.

I don’t own that many plaid that can fill the sweater role. So I’m very happy to add this to my wardrobe and see if I can plaid clash some more in my life. I like the spiral on the front and that was fun to knit. Trying to figure out how to get the yellow across the spiral wasn’t the easiest, but I think it worked out. This sweater is also remarkably warm, so it’s probably going to be in use this fall/winter. I’m looking forward to it!

Come Rain, Come Dinosaurs!

When the world still doesn’t think adults should wear dinosaurs, you make it yourself!

I finally, finally (!), managed to cut into the most expensive fabric that I’ve ever bought a long length of. This softshell fabric with dinosaurs has been hiding in my hoard since September 13, 2017 when I bought it at the Stoffenspektakel in Goes. The 13th of September 2020 was coincidentally the day that I started cutting out a new rain/fall coat. I only found this out when I went looking for the date when I bought the fabric and was pleasantly surprised.

On to the coat. The pattern is the Pattydoo Susan with optional add-ons of a concealed zipper in the hood and cuffs. One teeny, tiny problem with this pattern is that it is in German. My German is nearly non-existent. Why choose this pattern then? Well 1. Because it’s awesome and only 3 euro (HOW?!). 2. Google Translate exists and 3. They made an instruction video in which they show all the steps (still in German though). I hoped that with the video, I’d manage to figure out how to make this thing. So about 296 replays on – I kept repeating every second sentence they said to figure out what to do – and I have my coat!

Finished inside neckline and hanging loop, neck protection and hood snaps, concealed neck zipper, double sided zipper.

I’ve never made as many trips to sewing stores as I have done for this coat. That’s partially because I kept forgetting that I should bring the fabric if I wanted to colour match. I’ve gone for thread, and then for elastics, and then for velcro and then for zippers, and for more zippers and for cuffs and for the adjuster-things on the hood.. Let’s just say that the local shops must be fed up with me and my stupid German project. Anyway, once I’d gathered most of my materials, I had to start cutting into my precious fabric *Gollum noises*.

Hood with adjusters, hood back adjustment strap, concealed zipper and pieced center hood piece.

Once I had nearly all pieces cut out, I had about a meter of fabric with both selvages left. However, I also had a pattern piece that would need to go lengthwise and therefore would steal a further 40 ish centimeters from that rectangle, just by itself. For some reason I couldn’t bear the thought of cutting into my pristine fabric and therefore cut it from a bit that was too small. My hood thus has two extra seams in the top where I pieced the ‘Kapuzenstreifen’ together. It’s not noticeable at all, so I’m quite happy with this solution. Next to the hood thing, I only made minor changes to the pattern. These include a hacky swayback adjustment (taking in the back seams from armpit to waist by a up to 2 cm) and shortening the sleeves by 3.5 cm or so. Apart from that, I pretty much followed the movies exactly.

Pocket opening, pocket inside and sleeve cuffs.

While the pattern has pockets, they are quite shallow, so I can’t stuff them full of whatever my heart desires. This is unfortunatly a feature of the pattern since the pockets are set in the side front seam and extend to center front, which isn’t very far. However, the way they have you sew them in is ingenous. There’s a built in zipper and it is automatically concealed. I also really love the concealed zip at the neck so you can remove the hood. This version is much nicer than the one I cobbled together on my red coat.

All in all, I enjoyed working on the project. The cutting and sewing stage only took three days, but the gathering of materials and taping the pattern together added another couple of hours. I seamripped maybe three bits in total? The pattern itself is completely glorious in its markings that all fit together absolutely perfectly. I’d already bought another Pattydoo pattern for a sweater that may be jumping ahead in the queue a little. For now, I’ll just continue to swan about in my dinosaur coat and be quite proud of myself for finishing this thing!

Blue Pants

I wanted to gift a pair of pajama pants to a family member recently. So I found a free pattern online from Life Sew Savory in size L. Once it was printed out, it was so large that the only fabric I could realistically use was the blue mask fabric. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large pattern piece – there are no side seams, so that’s why it’s so enormous. I added a few centimetres to the bottom to increase the length, although I’m not sure if it was needed.

In the end, I put in the elastic at a later point in time based on a different pair of pants of the recipient. I haven’t yet seen if these actually fit, so that’s still a guess. For now, I’m quite happy that I did manage to finish them and I still love the colour.

Compared to me, they are certainly quite large…

Tag: Blue