White – Page 3 – Hopefully Creative

Statement Sleeves

When your sleeves are the center of attention.

So when planning the graduation outfit, I actually started with the top. Why did I not tell that story first? Because I didn’t end up wearing it at all. I chose a simpler white blouse to go with in the end. The statement sleeves on this one were just too much with the cape. This top was originally a dress pattern, I just didn’t draw the bottom half of it. The pattern was from Simplicity Naaimode 35 – dress models 11-14. This sleeve is from model 12. The set is also known as Simplicity 8511.

For fabric, I chose some thick, white, almost quilted looking fabric that I got in Utrecht some time ago, for I think 1 or 2 euro per meter. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it, but the price was too good so I left with a lot of it. I absolutely cannot be trusted around cheap fabric, I want to hoard it all. Anyway, I traced and cut the pattern pieces and then started putting the top together. This fabric frayed in a very interesting way, so I pulled out the serger to neaten up the insides. Then I had to fit it. The tops of the sleeves were too high, so it was pulled in along the sleeve seams to a more pleasing fit. When trying to apply what I thought was the neckline facing, it took some tries to discover that it was supposed to be a band, not a facing. Before that realization, I’d already retraced the new neckline and made an actual facing. I like this better anyway.

For the sleeves, the instructions said to add buttonholes and such. I didn’t trust the fabric enough, so I put in some thin round elastic that would fit my buttons. The buttons are fabric buttons made with a button press. It took some tries, but I’ve got some lovely buttons now. They were attached to the sleeve cuffs and the elastic can loop over them nicely. I’ve not actually worn the top out yet. I’m waiting for spring to actually arrive so that my arms don’t freeze. I’m also not entirely sure I’m brave enough for it. I guess time will tell.

Leftovers Hat

With the last of the leftovers, made a jaunty hat.

After the success of the Nutmeg leftover sweater, I set out to finally get rid of the last bits of that yarn that had been hanging out in the stash for way too long. So on New Years Eve, I got the knitting machine ready, and cast on some stitches to see what the settings needed to be. Turns out that it was impossible to knit this yarn when casting on on every needle of the machine, so I had to skip every alternate needle. This did mean that while knitting, it was very wide but it would shrink in width and expand in length when off the machine. Since I was fairly uninterested in actually doing a super good job, I just cast on the maximum amount of stitches that would fit and figured it would probably be fine.

I was actually inspired to knit this thing by this video. While looking for a tutorial for a triangular scarf on the knitting machine, one of this channel popped up. After I watched it, it moved on to this new video and I decided to watch that too. I didn’t do any of the special things, but I did get the idea that rectangle hats were a thing. So after the cast on, I just knit until there was no more red yarn, then I switched to the white until that was all gone too. Next up, blue and because I didn’t think it was long enough yet, I also added two of the leftover tiny balls of grey. The rectangle of knitting was taken off the machine and I used knitting needles for the cast off. Then I sewed the sides and top together et voila, hat!

Since there is no further stitching in the hat, you can just fold over the bottom grey edge any way you want. I’ve been doing a fold in such a way that there is a three layer bottom and no purl is on show. Of course, you can also just fold it over and have purl visible. The points of the hat can be back to front or side to side or at any given jaunty angle. In the end, I used 45 g of grey, 15 g of red, 15 g of white and 37 g of blue. This means that I now only have 34 g of grey and 27 g of black leftover. We’re getting to the bottom of this particular yarn stash!

Nutmeg Leftover Sweater

Random stripes for random colours.

Some time ago (Ravelry tells me May 24, 2020), I started on a sweater meant to use up leftovers of Zeeman Tweed wool, the thick version. I had the body of a Marsala sweater basically finished and got stuck on the sleeves. It went into a box of doom for probably two years or so, never to be worked on again. In October of this year, I unraveled it all and started on a new leftover sweater. This time using the Nutmeg by Jenifer Stark.

It’s a fairly simple raglan sweater with the one design element being the roll over hems, made with 5 knit rows and one purl row. The original pattern was quite boxy, so I added some impromptu shaping in the sides and some sort rows to the back at the bottom. The original plan was to have all the hems in grey, and then alternate stripes of red, white, blue and green. About three stripes in I devised a new plan, to have main colour stripes (red, green, blue) that would all have white in between colour switches. It worked out quite well, but I had a literal mountain of ends to weave into the sweater. I dedicated long stretches of time to do this fairly regularly, knowing that if I didn’t do it immediately, the sweater was liable to go into another box of doom.

The body was finished first and then I completed the sleeves. At that point in time, I was wondering why the purl row at the bottom of the sleeves worked so well to stop further curling, but the one at the bottom of the sweater was doing nothing of the sort. Turns out, I’m still crap at counting and only did four rows before casting off. I undid all of that and knit an extra row. This seems to have helped a lot. Then it came time to do sweater surgery. Originally the neck was grey-blue-red, but the new white in the middle plan necessitated some adjustment. The neck was knit again, and then I matrass stitched it to the first row of the original red stripe. It took a while, but it worked out well. The last thing I did was to add a contrasting stitch in the back of the neck, so I can easily see how to put it on.

In the beginning I had 44 g of green, 136 g of blue, 101 g of white, 164 g of red, 79 g of grey and 27 g of black. At the end, there was no green anymore, 37 g of blue, 15 g of white and 15 g of red leftover and since I didn’t use any, still 79 g of grey and 27 g of black. All in all, a pretty good score. I think that leaving the grey out makes this a much brighter sweater. The grey really muted it. I think it’ll be easy to wear and we’ll see if I finally managed to make sleeves that are the right length. Something I’ve proven to be exceptionally bad at…

Next up, a hat as part of the leftover projects!

Grabby Oven Mitts

Making some new grabby oven mitts with coordinating colours and fabrics.

At some point in the past, I found a pattern for grabby oven mitts from so sew easy. They call them ‘pinch grip oven mitts’ and they are quite different from my first attempt at oven mitts. Of course I needed to try them since I still had some of the original oven mitt interlining in the hoard. The pattern works in such a way that you basically sew two mitts, put one inside the other and then connect them at the armhole. To do this, the pattern calls for batting on the lining and insulation on the top layer. I decided to do insulation on both layers as my previous mitts proved that two layers of insulation are definitely necessary.

Strips of the cottons were cut out to the width of the pattern pieces and strips of the insulation were sewn on using the lines on the insulation. The original mitts are very long, but my fabric wouldn’t accommodate that, so mine are shorter. I also think that I probably made a mistake at the ‘corners of the mouth’ as they look a bit weird, but it still seems to function. Two of the mitts are slightly smaller to fit my tiny hands and the other one will find a new home somewhere. The combination of fabrics is such that I could get the most out of the interlined strips, and piecing is fun right?!

I started these a few .. weeks? months?.. some time ago, but only finished them now because the finickity binding on the arm hole edge needed to be completed. I’d initially sewed one of the mitts together and then tried to sew the arm hole edge and just got frustrated and chucked all of it in the bin of shame. However, holiday led me to finally tackle this problem and now I have new oven mitts!

Paper Rabbits

A cute little polygon rabbit that was super easy to put together.

I recently rediscovered the Canon Creative Park Paper Craft pages with the help of a friend of mine. These are mostly fairly simple paper crafts that you can download for free. There are many different things available, from more bendy models to the regular polygon types but also post cards, moving toys and other art. I also found a set of stacking animals that is absolutely great and I am planning to make at some point.

I looked for a bunny that I thought a colleague would really like, and managed to find a polygon rabbit. So I printed it out and left it in the corner for a few weeks. Spurred on by the plan to have lunch, I decided to get going and actually cut and stick the creature together the night before. While the instructions were slightly different to other paper crafts I’ve done – no numbers but coloured dots – it went very smoothly.

The end result is a pretty sweet, two-toned standing rabbit. What I appreciate a lot about this specific pattern is that it instructs you to cut a hole in the bottom piece. This makes it so much easier to stick the last few bits together as you can just get your fingers in. The paper I used was 160 grams, but not the suggested Canon photo paper. This worked just fine, though. I look forward to making more of the Canon patterns as they have so many lovely ones available.

Graduation Combo

There is no clothing as fun as pants masquerading as a skirt!

A couple of weeks ago on Friday, the first in-person graduation at work took place. The first thing I made was a bit.. too much.. so with three or so days to spare, I set out on a new plan. On the original trip to the Rotterdam market, I’d purchased some plaid on white stretch something. I liked the colours and decided that would be the fabric for this outfit. The other decision I’d already made was that I wanted some sort of fake-pants. I’d made an attempt at the Petit Main Sauvage Culottes in 2018 and decided to give that a go again.

I followed the instructions for a knee length version and promptly went to cutting it out. While trying to get my pattern placement symmetrical, I determined that the fabric had the plaid printed, but that it was printed quite crookedly on one side of the fabric. That lead to some challenges with grain lines etc, but really, what did I expect from fabric that was probably 1-2 euro per meter. The culottes were cut from the ‘straighter’ side of the fabric while I waited for inspiration to strike about the top of the outfit I was trying to make.

In the end, I settled on a tried and mostly true pattern for the top. The Garden Party dress. I grabbed the tulip sleeve pieces that I used for the combo dress and got to work. A nice, somewhat scooped neckline, but not too low because of the 30℃ weather prediction, and no closures (I love stretch). The culottes had some added pockets because running a big event without pockets is not a good idea. The one thing I was left with was the waistband/s. I hadn’t made a plan for that yet. You see, I needed the culottes to be one piece as they needed to come off downwards and I wanted to be able to wear them by themselves. However, the total outfit needed to look like a dress, if possible.

I decided to draft a waistband with a point at the front for the culottes. After sewing it on, it gaped like no tomorrow. I hoped that the application of some laundry would help relax the stitches so I chucked it in the wash (it was Wednesday by now, 2 days to go). Thursday came, the outfit was dried and it hadn’t helped at all. So I unpicked the waistband from the skirt, turned it around and applied it to the top. That looked a lot better! I still had some black mesh laying around from the cover up attempt and made a thin waistband from that for the skirt with some added elastic to hopefully keep the skirt up.

All in all, for such an improvised project, I was very happy with how it turned out. I like the colours, I like plaid, I like how I managed to plaid match along the side seams of the culottes. The thing I should have done was applying snaps so that the top and the skirt could stay together, but I never got round to that, so on the day, I just tugged the culottes up and the top down whenever it felt like the gap was too large. I have no doubts that I will wear those culottes when the weather is good. They are comfortable, prevent chafing but allow a breeze. I’m definitely on team Secret Pants!

Dice-adjacent

Three projects based on dice.

While browsing though Pinterest a little while back, I found a paper calendar in the shape of a 12-sided die (d12). The one I found originally had weeks starting on a Sunday, which my brain can’t cope with, so I searched some more and found a calendar that started on Monday (here). I printed it out on craft cardstock, cut and scored on the relevant lines and glued it together. It now lives on my desk as an easy way to look up what day something is. I thought that would be that with dice shaped things for a while, but it turned out that it wasn’t.

The dungeon master of the Pathfinder campaign – a table top role playing game – I play in had his birthday recently. I wanted to think of a nice gift but he already has everything / my imagination was limited. So to harken back to our evenings filled with adventure, I decided to make d20 (20-sided die) pouch. I’d found a pattern from 2009 by Evil Mad Scientist (here) and got to work. I cut the 40 pieces almost entirely out of scraps and then had to add numbers to the faces. I did that by printing numbers on paper (font GoodDog Plain) and then cutting them out and painting in the holes. This worked quite well. Some interfacing was fused on and then the sewing started. There were so many mistakes, the interfacing was wrong, the sewing was inaccurate, the zipper was too close… I finished the outside and part of the lining and then gave up. It’s in the clothing scraps bin now and if I ever feel the need to make something like it, I will aim not to rush. However, this was not the end of the dice projects.

Because I then thought “wait, I can also make a d12!” It has less pieces, I can use the hexagon paper piecing that I’ve done before and I can sew it by hand to be more accurate. So I set out to do that. The original d20 pattern that I used, also listed a d12 pattern (here). I rejigged some of the pieces, found the fabric I wanted to use and chose a different fusible for stiffening. The same templates were used for the numbers, but I decided to add some ‘fun’ and made the 1 face out of a mouse fabric and the 12 face out of stars. The 12 face is the one that opens, but I only figured out a solution to keep the bag from losing dice everywhere after I’d already completed the outside and the lining. The closure was tackled by adding in a sleeve that can tighten down. The 12 face can then be buttoned on top and that should prevent accidental dice spills.

All in all, I had some fun with impromptu projects that I had not anticipated. I still have some other things that I need to finish (dinosaur coat v2, black sweater and graduation project) or start (graduation project if I can’t figure out finishing the original graduation project). So I’m not sure I should have made time for these, but well, sometimes when inspiration strikes, you need to follow its lead, right?

Norah Waugh’s 1901 Corset

The first steps towards a 1902 Wedding Dress in the collection of the V&A. The Corsets and Crinolines 1901 corset pattern.

Sometimes I find an image and just think: I want to have it. That was the case with a 1902 Wedding Dress by Houghton & Dalton that I found in the collections of the V&A. Of course owning the original isn’t truly something I would want, but I have started thinking about how to replicate it based on the seven images from the V&A.

1902 Wedding dress by Houghton & Dalton, at the V&A.

The first steps included finding fabric and starting work on the underpinnings. Those underpinnings are the topic of today. I decided that I wanted another early Edwardian corset because the Black Snail one doesn’t really feel like it allows enough room for the displaced fleshy bits to go. I’d looked at Norah Waugh’s Corsets and Crinolines before, and the 1901 corset in there seemed like it would provide more space. Then I remembered that Ralph Pink had a free hip curve corset available that looked an awful lot like the Norah Waugh one, so I used their pattern pieces.

I’ve made a mock-up before and decided to lengthen the top by 2 cm and shorten the bottom by 2 cm, but those were the only changes I made. For the first attempt, I used a curtain fabric that was the later also used for the pouf. This stuff did not iron down well at all and with the ridiculous amount of seams going on in the corset, it made some weird bumps. So I tried again, cut out all the white coutil, and then found some off-white silk in the local fabric shop that I decided to splurge on. Having never used silk before, I was happily surprised by how much flatter it got than the original fabric I tried.

The boning channels were guessed at (that diagram in C&C makes very little sense.. there are some bones that are differently placed on the front vs the back view) and then created by sewing the two layers together. Next, I had a hell of a time putting the bones through because there were so many seamlines crossed. Some real curses were thrown out. Lastly some vaguely matching bias tape was sewn to the inside and whipped to the outside. From the last corset I learned that hand sewing through coutil is a real pain in the butt, so I did it in reverse.

This part, the corset stage, is now mostly finished. Couple of things that are still bugging me a bit. Should I have added the garter things to the front? Is the busk not stiff enough? It is a bit bendy now. And lastly, did I make it too big, it almost closes in the back, which I did not expect. It does definitely require some more wearing before it’s truly comfortable, I think. For now, I’m going to gather the courage to actually start making the pattern for that V&A wedding dress. Hopefully that’ll manifest soon!

Scrap Pouf

When the collection of scraps gets so large that you make a thing to hold them all.

Lots of my projects have leftovers. Bits that are smaller or larger and might be of some use at some point in time, but not right now. As I don’t particularly like throwing things away, I decided to follow the example of a recent YouTube video by Enchanted Rose Costumes to create a scrap pouf. Her version was based on the free Closet Core Pouf pattern, with some modifications. My version also has some modifications from the original pattern and I basically only used the pattern to verify the height of the pouf.

When looking through the hoard for suitable fabrics, I found this 20 cm long, 140 cm wide piece of Tropical Mannequin leftover that I really loved. That needed to be the top of my pouf. For the bottom, I found a scrap of the mock up corset fabric that was dark green and sturdy and therefore seemed to fit. Neither of these were large enough to make a pouf, so I set out to find a third fabric. I settled on some white curtain stuff with a vague pattern on it, that I’d tried to make a corset out of but failed miserably.

The white and tropical fabric were interfaced in fusible cotton, the green was fine by itself. Since the tropical fabric was not very long, I figured out the largest possible circle I could make out of it by attaching three strips together. The end result was 48 cm in diameter. Next, I cut out two half circles (one with some overlap) of the dark green fabric for the bottom and put in a continuous zip with a leafy zip pull. For the sides, the circumference was divided by 12 for each panel, and 10 sections were cut from the white, while two were pieced from the tropical fabric. Then the outside was sewn together and the pouf body was finished.

The scraps came from three different locations; the bag of scraps I’ve kept on top of a cupboard, the bin in my sewing room and the ‘in use’ box in the living room. All in all, I collected 7 kg of scraps and started stuffing. The good thing about having a zipper is that you can put some power behind it and compress more scraps inside compared to an open bin. There is even some space left, so I have ‘room to grow’! For a project that only took a day (and some years to gather the insides), it looks pretty good. I’m not yet entirely sure where it will live, but I’ll find a place.

Enormous Paper Penguin

Making a gigantic paper penguin that defied size expectations.

After the dinosaur, I felt like playing around with some more papercraft. The pattern I chose was the Penguin (standing) by Methakura. There were three penguins available and I chose the standing one for no apparent reason. Looking back, that dancing one or the belly glider are very cute too. This papercraft requires thicker paper (200 gr/m2) in three colours: black, white and pink. I have accumulated black, white and ‘kraft paper colour’, but no pink. Therefore, I decided to print a large, vaguely orange (I hate pink) rectangle and print the pattern on the back of that. This worked out fine. I was pleasantly surprised that I could even sort of read the black lines on the black paper, magic I tell you.

Putting it together went perfectly well until the last 3 steps, but that’s what usually happens in papercraft, the end is the hardest. What did surprise me halfway through, is how epically large this thing is. For some unknown reason, I was convinced it was only going to be like 10 cm high for most of the construction. Even though the front says it’s 29 cm high and it required 7 pages and the pieces I was cutting out were over 10 cm by themselves. Somehow that denial was going strong for too big a part of the process. The one change I made was to not add the eyes, I’m not sure where to put them exactly and therefore I’m leaving him blind. I do think he’s cool and I want to find him a nice new home. That size though..

I mean.. He’s making my dinosaur feel small!

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