Leaves – Hopefully Creative

Silver Leaf

Little silver leaf bracelet.

[I forgot to hit publish on this one, this was finished before the third project]

The second project in the jewelry course (check out my first ring!), was to make something with a fair amount of soldering. The examples I got were a link bracelet or necklace. Since I still don’t wear much jewelry, I didn’t necessarily want to acquire a lot of silver for a necklace that wouldn’t see much wear. So I opted for a bracelet.

After a bit of heavy Pinteresting, I settled on a leaf design, inspired by this pin and this pin. I made an example link in copper wire to see if it was possible and then measured how big I wanted it to be. I had to size down the design a little because my wrist is quite thin and I wanted to have five links. Then came the endless period of stretching a bar of silver to a much longer and thinner wire. It was a very interesting process that involved annealing (heating up and cooling down), lots of manual turning of cranks and pulling through tiny holes, but I ended up with enough wire to make my links.

After I had the links, I made some little loops to connect the links together. All was soldered and I only melted one bit a little, something that a little sanding can make much less obvious. Once it was all connected, I had to think off a closure method and settled on an elongated pin that could pull through the loop on the last link. It works quite well so far. Some more sanding and polishing and then it was ready for wear.

I like the jingling it does, but it will probably not see much wear.

Impromptu Dyeing

First batch of ecoprinted scarves this year, fresh leaves – fresh results.

I had a week of holiday recently and one day decided to go out for a short walk. Maybe to drop of plastic trash, maybe to post a letter, I can’t really remember. While out, I noticed all the green around, leaves are really returning to the trees and plants. So while walking along, I picked some leaves here and there. I came home with a hand full of greenery and a desire to do some ecoprinting. So I got all of my stuff from the dyeing cupboard, mixed up some additional iron water and got to work. The layout is fairly random with one scarf being less densely printed than the other. All leaves were placed with the top side up, which obviously gives a different effect on the mirrored bottom-up side.

Ecoprinting is still super interesting to me. I should probably take more extensive notes on what I’m doing because I can’t really predict what the outcome will be, but that has its charms too. You can see that most of the well printing leaves on the right scarf are at the top and then one in the middle. The left one is more uniform in what printed dark and what printed light. I like these results. Unfortunately, the source of my previous batches of silk no longer lists it on its website, so I’m going to have a more expensive time getting hold of something to print new projects on. Que sera sera.

Silk-dyeing Again

Getting some more scarves finished, I now have fifteen of the things.

I really, really enjoy eco printing silk scarves. Not sure why it’s so nice, I normally don’t gravitate towards projects with an element of surprise and these have been full of surprises. I never know how it’s going to turn out. So far I’ve dyed up around 8 meters of silk. I found a webshop that sold 3 meter lengths of ‘silk crepe for dyeing’ and I got 6 meters of it. I then cut that into 1.8 meter lengths and 35 cm widths to get 12 scarves out of 6 meters. Had some leftovers for some more experimentation and decided that I didn’t yet have enough of the silk dying experience, so I ordered 6 more meters and have since made four more scarves.

The first batch you’ve already seen, but I’ve now actually hemmed them with a ‘rolled hem’ on the serger. From that batch, I learned that the bramble and what I think is a maple worked really well. The second batch had less stellar results. Most came out so light that you could barely see them, this included some weeds from outside my house (my plant determination app thinks its Vinca major?), leaves from the tree outside my house – invisible and therefore destined to be overdyed, one unknown tree and something that I just completely forgot.

Roof Terrace Fruit
Strawberry, apple, pear, red currant & white currant

The third batch, however, had some really good ones. chestnut leaves from the tree at work, hazelnut leaves from my hometown, something from the road to work with thorns and a collage of fruit plants from my roof terrace. The only one that was slightly disappointing was the fruit collage as only the strawberry gave a very clear print and the rest was quite blobby.

Then there was some more experimenting but that didn’t turn out so well, so I only finished the one where I put flowers on (Common ragworth). This resulted in a bit of a polka dot effect, but much darker than I expected. Not sure it’s as lovely as I’d imagined, but at least I now know what it would do if you put this type of flower in an iron bath.

So at some point last week, I decided that it would be a lovely idea to actually know which plants all my scarves came from. So I set out to collect leaves from all the places that I’d harvested them from initially to determine the species and dry them. This also meant that I couldn’t help myself and I got more leaves. I opted for a few that worked the best (more chestnut!) and some that I found along the way.

*Aesculus hippocastanum* – Horse chestnut

I collected some chestnut leaves because they make the best print. Then while cycling around, I found some really cool looking leaves with five leaflets that turned out to be Virginia creeper close to the original Ginkgo. While passing another big tree next to my former home, the leaves from a Red maple were collected. The Black poplar was the last I took with me. This one has an alternating pattern of back/front of the leaves and you can sort of see that. This one is also a prime example of how folds leave blank spaces in the print.

Conclusion is that I’ve really enjoyed this dying process and with winter starting, I don’t have many more opportunities. The only problem with this hobby is that it produces way more items than I actually personally need. There’s only so much gifting I can do to get rid of them. Sometimes I wish that my hobbies didn’t amount to so much stuff… Ah well, at least these take up way less space than plushies.

Tropical Me!

I sewed a dress form shaped like myself. It’s very tropical.

Years and years ago, I asked my parents for a dress form for my birthday. I chose one of those adjustable ones, but when it arrived, I wasn’t happy with it, so it got returned. Then I tried to make a duct tape dress form with my dad. That didn’t go very well either. Both because it was very crooked and because we made a mistake with the foam we put in. So the dress form plans got put on hold. I googled regularly for forms that could be like me. But since I’m short and not necessarily averagely proportioned, it was not easy to find. I didn’t really want to take the route of padding out a form. Earlier this year I found some videos and blogs about a BootstrapFashion made to measure dress form pattern. That seemed to be the solution.
This project was involved, and as such this is a long post.

After weeks of agonizing about it, I decided to take the plunge and ordered the pattern. This involved first taking a bunch of measurements and putting them into the system. You can choose to order a free preview, which is what I should have done. I didn’t, and immediate ordered the pattern. This meant that I probably had to do more alterations that would have been necessary had I first previewed. I probably would have ordered one with slightly less ‘belly protuberance’ than I did now. However, what was done was done and I figured my pattern adjusting skills were up to a high enough level that I could fumble my way to a decent end result.

Then came the task of collecting all the necessary bits. The pattern calls for fabric (some off cut of curtain that I already had in hoard) stabilized with woven interfacing, which I got from the local shop. Stable fabric for the inner support that was some denim that I cannot remember getting. For the stand, I chose to go with scaffolding pipes and for the ‘over pipe’ some form of plumbing pipe. The neck required a sponge from the hardware store, and the arms and bottom needed cardboard that I got from one of the boxes that came via the mail. It’s filled with about a kg of fiberfill and there are two zippers from the hoard.

On to the actual sewing. It wasn’t very difficult to put together initially. The order of operations is mostly fairly clearly explained in the instructions. I finalized it all, and started stuffing it. I got about halfway down and decided that it wasn’t.. well.. me. It’s boobs were too deep. Effectively, the distance between the underbust and the waist was too short. It also had some real hunchback of the Notre Dame vibes. Conclusion, I had to make some adjustments.

The bag on the right is the original. About 1/3rd was stuffed into the form – that’s the bag on the left…

I started with taking measurements of myself and of the dress form as it was at the time. Then I spent an inordinate amount of time hunched over a light pad attempting to transfer those measurements to bits of paper. The main changes were that I needed to raise the underbust, reduce the cup size, reduce the belly and reduce the hunch-back. This meant that just about all body pattern pieces needed adjustments. Since I’d already sewn the whole thing together, I wasn’t going to take out the neck or the arms or the bottom. Some ehm, creative sewing needed to happen.

One of the measurements that the pattern calls for is the underbust. I raised the underbust by about 2.7 cm, but the original pattern widens above the underbust. This meant that I needed to shave down all the pattern pieces that had underbust on them such that the underbust measurement matched again. For the back, I took in the center back to reduce the hump and also cut of some of the inner support for the same purpose, apart from that, the back was fine.

Original (left) and altered (right) bust cup pattern pieces

The front however.. Every one of the six pieces (upper center front, upper side front, center bust cup, side bust cup, lower center front and lower side front) needed serious adjustment. My changes included shifting the seam between the top center front and side center front 1 cm towards the center front. Reducing the depth of the cups by about 3-ish centimeters and shifting the seam at the top. Increasing the attachment seam of the cups at the lower fronts but not shifting the seam there. In the end I also took the center front seam in by a decent amount because it had too much of a belly. I shaved bits of the inner support to make it less belly-heavy.

The bottom is pretty nicely finished with two zippers that still allow acces to the pipe.

Having made all those changes on paper, I then had to transfer them to the tropical me. Keeping in mind that my fabric was limited and that I didn’t want to put the arms or neck back in again, I decided to perform surgery. I prepared a bust piece that had the bust cups, the upper fronts until about 2 centimeters below the armhole and the lower fronts until the waistline. I opened up the side seams, sewed the new bust on and cut out the old one. Stitched the new underbust line in place along the back and called it a day. After anxiously stuffing her again I was much much happier. My operation had been successful!

One way to test this was to put a very formfitting garment on myself and then on the tropical me to see if it fit about the same on both of us. I chose a red mermaid dress that I finished a decently long while ago and apparently never wrote about? The other was to just take some side by side pictures. So I did that too.

Actual me
It’s the arms that made me recognize the difference

All in all, most of the pattern was very good. The one issue with the bust was one that I had spotted on a lot of other finished projects before, so I wasn’t too surprised about it. I’ve now adjusted my pattern enough that I can make a new one with a lot less surgery. I’m expecting to do that at some point. Now I can put projects on this form without having to undress myself all the time. Another benefit, with this lovely tropical me in the living room, I now also have an easily accessible huggable object close by. Success!

Frankenpatterned Leaves

Remember those green plaid pants I made recently? I’ve worn them quite a lot since finishing them and I really like them. There was only one problem.. all my sweaters seem to be red or contain red, not green. So, I did the obvious thing, I knit myself a matching sweater. I’d had the perfect green yarn in my stash for a while, which I’d knitted up into a hideous sweater before that I’d frogged. Yarn sorted, I needed a pattern.

The obvious place to look for patterns is Ravelry, so off I went on a quest for the perfect pattern. I found the Waiting for Spring pattern, and I liked the idea of a stripe of leaves along one side. However, the leaves on that pattern weren’t very nice, so off I went again looking for other leaves. Those were found in the Provence Baby Cardigan. I also didn’t like the neckline, so I substituted the Ginny shawl collar with some modifications. At the end of the knit, there was yarn left over and I like a warm butt, so I added the flap-bit of the Eyelet Yoke Sweater. I also changed the shaping of the sweater completely, so there’s nothing left over from the original pattern apart from the number of stitches I cast on. You might get the name frankenpattern now..

Detail

This is a close up of the leaves and below you can find the complete sweater. Please ignore the very interesting pose I made. The sun was out the morning after I’d finished it, but only if I squatted in a certain way did it show. You can sort of see the flap at the back and the neckline at the front. I made monkey length sleeves such that they had the space to shrink, which they did. I like it, it’s nice to wear, the holes from the leaves are not cold, so it’s even good in winter. This was an entertaining and useful project.

Green Front Back

If you feel like knitting this entire thing, you can do so! I kept track of every stitch I did and noted down the entire pattern here. Next up will be owls…

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.

Tag: Leaves