A little knitted Christmas hat!
Just to give you some joy this Christmas, I recently made a hat for my Tyrannosaurus Rex. Here he is, just ambling along with his slight preference for going left. He’s got a turning circle of about 2 meters. There’s no pattern to the hat, just increased from six red stitches until it was wide enough and then added in a few rows of white fluffy stuff. I also made a tiny pompom for the top. I get a lot of joy from this little thing.
Enjoy your Christmas if you celebrate!
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.
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…)
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.
A little bit of glue, paper and ink; quite a lot of time and a free pattern. Out the other end comes a cute Idefix figurine!
Recently, a colleague of mine moved on to a new job opportunity. Sad to see him go, I figured he might just enjoy a departure gift. As he used to have a large collection of Asterix and Obelisk figurines in his office, I thought something in that category would work best. So I googled and googled for a paper statue of one of the characters and eventually found a free pattern for a paper Idefix (the little dog) on paperwar.blogspot.com.
So I downloaded and installed the special viewer that it needed (google translate Japanese and all), printed it out on cardstock and got to work. I finished the tip of the nose and found that the cardstock was too thick, it wouldn’t work. So I printed it out again on regular printer paper. After most of the day folding over tiny bits, gluing other tiny bits together and referencing the original about 3 million times, I had myself a finished Idefix! I got a clear plastic food container from the shop, added a bow to the top and called it a day.
I probably shouldn’t have started with a medium difficulty project, as there are some seams that are definitely wonky. But hey, I managed to get through it! For something that was just glue and regular paper, the thing was remarkably sturdy in that it could stand up by itself without any difficulty. I don’t think it would survive a trip in my bag without a protective casing though. Anyway, the colleague seemed quite pleased with it, so at least I had a double win. New craft for me, joy for the other person. I might just download another model in the future…
Dressing head to toe in red with white dots is going to be a staple around here.
So I was on the market two weeks ago, and saw a sign saying 2€/m on a bolt of fabric. The fabric had a white fluffy back and the front was red with white-ish dots. The market lady explained that some of the dots had red dye running in, so that’s why it was so cheap. I decided that I didn’t care too much and got myself two yards. Two laundry cycles and several bright red colour catchers later and I got to work. I’d decided that I wanted to make a sweater, so I layed out my Frankensteined pattern and found I had a lot left. Then I decided that I would try to see if I could also get some pants out of the fabric and create the ultimate stay-at-home-outfit.
Three hours later I had figured out a way to get all my pattern pieces bar one neatly onto the fabric. The patterns included pattern 44 from Simplicity Naaimode 24, aka Simplicity 1165, which I cannot figure out if I ever made before but I had it drawn out in my pattern stash. I excluded the waistband for that one. For the sweater, the shortened version of Lekala 4742 (flamingo-style here) and the hood from the Nelly sweater by Pattydoo. Only the hood-front needed to be pieced. I approached it in a similar manner as when I pieced the hood for the dinosaur coat. After finishing the pants, I learned that there was excess at the bottom and I might have been able to fit all the pieces on normally if I’d shortened the legs by 4 cm, ah well, live and learn.
Anyway, the first time I made Lekala 4742, here, the hood could fit at least two of my head in it. I didn’t feel like repatterning the entire thing so I stole the hood from a sweater I had been working on before; Nelly. I put the Nelly neckline on the Lekala pattern and adjusted it that way. This worked out wonderfully. Originally, the Nelly hood is supposed to have a lining, but I liked the fluffy white of mine so I just made a facing. I took the sweater in along the sides. And to combat hemming, I added a cuff to the arms and the bottom.
Then onto the pants, just sewed them up as I would normally. Then put them on and could fit a second human in the back. So I resewed the crotch seam, see the red line in my wonderful paint image for some potential clarification (?). In total, I took out 8 cm on either side of the center back. Then I added a waistband of the same cuff material as the sweater, threaded some elastic through it, hemmed the legs and called it a day.
I titled this post Head to Toad, that’s because I had planned to have this thing done for halloween and just be a mushroom for the day. That clearly failed as I finished it exactly a week later. However, when I was telling my colleagues about the plan, and showed them the mostly finished sweater, one told me I looked like Toad – now, this is not completely correct. The other one said I would be Head to Toe(d) in this mushroom suit. I thought the pun was too brilliant to pass up, so Head to Toad it is! I’ve been wearing the finished thing for the past 2 hours now, and I love it. I shall be a mushroom for many weekend days to come!
Making a cropped snow white sweater to go with my new replacement red pants or suspenders.
After finishing the replacement pants, I needed something to wear with it. Since it’s not generally summer anymore, I figured that if I wanted to continue to wear it, I’d need some sort of sweater. So I hatched an abbreviated plan…
The plan involved making a sweater that was shorter than all my other sweaters. One that wouldn’t bunch under my dungarees. A secondary purpose would be that I could also wear this sweater with suspenders, hopefully. While suspenders are awesome, sometimes wearing them over clothes is difficult because the item is too long. Then you get a lot of bunching and other less flattering situations. So I bought some nice and thick white yarn, and located an interesting pattern on Ravelry.
I settled on the 157-29 Virginia by DROPS design, and then heavily modified it. My gauge was off and I knew that I have no love for the enormously long armholes that DROPS seems to have, so I recalculated everything from the neckline down. I did keep the A.1 pattern intact as the raglan because that was the defining feature of this sweater and why I chose it in the first place. Once I reached the point where I needed to split for the arms, I decided that I wanted to continue some form of the A.1 pattern in the sleeves as well as the body. In the end I made sure to have two instead of three columns in the body and one in the sleeves.
The sleeves were the first to be completed as I wanted to make sure I had enough yarn to finish them. Then I continues with the body, in contrast to the pattern I only decreased a little but not increased. Then it came time to start the hem and I remembered a frogged project that had a split hem. So I put on a pair of my favourite suspender-requiring pants and determined where the splits were supposed to be. Two in the front and one in center back. By some miracle I managed to have numbers of stitches for all three of the sections that allowed me to do 2×2 rib with 3 stitches of knit at both ends.
I’m very happy with the way this turned out. I’ve worn it with both the red pants and suspender pants and it does the job I want it to do. It’s so nice and cozy and warm. Even if it is white and I did manage to pull a thread by getting stuck on something in my house at one point (luckily that was easily fixed). I haven’t yet managed to get spaghetti sauce or something else horribly staining on it yet, so that’s an achievement!
When I woke up for the third time in three days at 8 o’clock having gone to bed fewer than eight hours before, I finally decided to get my butt in gear and get some curtains. Clearly the roll-thing that was there was not sufficient. I’d previously tried to buy a curtain rod and fabric, but I kept on chickening out, unsure whether I could make it work. Well, Saturday, I decided that I could, so off to the store I went, keeping 1.5 meters distance from everyone as mandated.
I got 4 meters of a white fabric that should not let any light through and four meters of some outer fabric. Got some curtain tape, a pre-assembled curtain rod and went on my merry way. I used the lines on the outer fabric to iron hems and edges into place and then put the lining and the curtain tape on. Sewed it all down, installed hooks and it was good to go.
The before and after is quite striking considering it’s broad daylight outside. I don’t know whether it will have much effect on my sleep. However, the fact that I managed to hang up curtains all by myself (I used a drill and everything) is as much of a boost as getting more sleep will be. At least for now.
While Spring has officially started a few days ago, I got the itch to do something with snow at the beginning of March. This paved the way for the Snow Season sweater.
It started a while ago when I’d purchased the yarn for the Pocket Coatigan. I got some more in different colourways; 3 balls of blue and 2 of white. I’d thought about making some sort of dual coloured sweater. The exact plan was not decided. So I went off to scour Ravelry some more. I stumbled across a sweater called Scatter by Þórunn Vilmarsdóttir. While I liked the idea of a gradation in my sweater, I didn’t exactly like the execution. So I continued to search for a raglan base in the correct gauge, which I found in Mud Season by Elizabeth Smith.
The cast on was on March 2 (this is the project description), and this was a very quick knit with size 5.5 mm needles and quite thick yarn. Just below the division for the arms, I started incorporating some white yarn. There was some vague rhyme and reason to the design but the plan was to make it look random. At some point I decided to reverse back to blue and did the whole snow storm again. For the arms, I wanted to end those with the white too, so I snowed the bottom. Once it was finished, I wore it for a day and the sleeves shrunk by at least 5 cm. So I took out the ribbing, added more white and then redid the ribbing. I’d already taken pictures, so just imagine more white at the bottom of the sleeves and it’ll be fine. Funnily enough, the length as I wear it is now exactly the same as in the pictures. It’s just that it doesn’t migrate to above my wrist when worn for some time.
So far it’s nice to wear. I like the little holes and it just makes me happy. Once I finished the original, I cast on the same pattern again. Now in grey. I hope to incorporate some of the changes that came out of the first version and then we’ll see if I can get this one finished in less than two weeks. With the travel time to work reduced to zero, there may be some options..
At some point in the past, I bought between 4 and 5 meters of some thick red fabric. Vaguely wool-esque, but probably mostly poly-something. I’d planned to make a coat out of it, and some time in November, I finally started on the project.
I found the pattern in Knipmode 9-2019, pattern 15 – Robe Manteau. It was never going to be that simple though. Changes and alterations would be needed. First, it was going to be shorter than the original pattern, mainly because I’m short. Next, the neckline was going to be altered dramatically, because I’m always cold and therefore having such an open neck was not an option. I settled on this type of neckline, and used the scale model to figure out how to make my own collar. Cue pieces of paper stuck to other pieces and pins everywhere! I also wanted a hood and stole the pattern from Simplicity Naaimode 14 model 51 (also known as Simplicity 2056) but reduced in height.
It took me forever to decide on all of this, and then I started with an old tablecloth to see if the pattern even fit me. It did, mostly. The only change to the original was in the back center seam, where I took out a lot at the top and added some in around the waist; and reduced the length of course. Then I started cutting out the outside and the waterproof and stitched them together around the outsides on almost all pieces. The only ones where I varied that were the center fronts, where I didn’t want to have 5 million layers, so I settled on using the waterproof as lining, and the pocket flaps.
The pockets are lined with the super soft white plaid fabric used for poppys. That was the start of the project. Then loads of pushing really heavy fabric through my sewing machine to sew the outside together. Once the outside was complete (apart from the hem), I needed to puzzle the lining together. The lining was an off-cut of fabric with white flowers, teal and red. There were practically no left-overs once I finished cutting out the lining.
The lining was hand sewn in because it was just easier than trying to wrangle 26 kilos of fabric under my machine (perhaps that was a slight exaggeration, but you get the drift). The zipper is two way, the hood can be detached with another zipper and it’s got elastic pulls. I’m quite fond of it, even though it started pilling about 10 seconds after I first put it on. We’ll see how damaged it gets over the course of this winter. The fun thing about a new coat is that I have an excuse to make new hats and scarves, so expect some black knitting in my future.
Next to the spit scarf from last post, I also made some more baby stuff. A colleague is possibly interested in sending something to a recent born, so I got myself to work to increase my already sizeable baby-junk-pile. I started with making another Poppy, similar to the other plaid poppy. The main difference is that this one is slightly smaller and has a smaller head in comparison. It’s still cute though.
I followed it up with a simplified poppy. This was just two squares sewn together with a stuffing filled pantyhose for a head. Since this head was already in a point, it didn’t even need a hat. He is still really quite cute, if I say so myself.
All in all, I’m still surprised to have so many things for babies when I’m not the greatest fan of them. Who knows, perhaps someone will like these things.
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