Blocking nerves

I always get nervous when it comes to the final step in a knit project – blocking. Not so much the blocking bit, but the washing bit. So nervous that I usually skip the step entirely.

When you’ve spent so many hours working on something, the thought of it possibly felting, or otherwise going horribly wrong is quite nerve-wracking.

But, it had to be done, so after a couple of days procrastinating, I tried not to think about it too much and threw* it in the machine.

*carefully placed inside a mesh laundry bag, with nothing else in the machine, having checked and double checked all settings and the detergent, cross-referenced with all useful advice I could find in a quick Google search.

It emerged feeling lighter and softer and floppier than it went in, and has stretched out beautifully and so much bigger than I thought. I love it!

Can’t wait to get this packed up nicely and sent off to my friend.

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Jack-in-a-hat

This picture is roughly titled: Self-portrait, or Jack-in-a-hat.

Terrible photo, I know, but it shows the hat and not too much of me, and the colours are actually pretty good, despite the shoddy lighting. I’m very pleased to have finished this one. I’m not usually a huge fan of variegated yarns, but this one has worked quite well without much pooling on the main body of the hat and it’s pretty.

I had a bit of a down day yesterday, feeling a bit under the weather physically and mentally, so a finished project win today feels extra good. And I also got to indulge in a little retail therapy today, ordering yarn for the baby blanket I’ve promised to knit for a friend. I’m a bit behind the times as she’s due in the next couple of weeks, but at least I actually have time to knit now, since I’ve been furloughed from work for the foreseeable. Yarn should arrive on my doorstep later this week, so I’ll give you a sneaky peek then and share my plan.

Hope you’re all staying safe and sane and healthy.

Standing tall

The wedding was perfectly imperfectly beautiful.

The cake stood tall and beautiful, was cut by a beaming bride and groom and was shared with the guests; friends and family from far and wide – until it was all gone.

The shrug was seamed in the morning and finished and worn very briefly at the end of the day as the weather was so perfect it wasn’t even required!

I can’t quite believe I managed such an ambitious project in just two weeks, but it was a lovely extra contribution to a fabulous day celebrating two very special people.

Pokemon cake

Yesterday was cake day again. Pickle had his birthday in the Easter holidays, but had to wait til now for his party, and his fancy cake. This year he wanted Pokemon. We trawled Pinterest together for some ideas, and then I got to work and came up with this.

It’s my usual Chocolate mud cake recipe, filled and covered in chocolate ganache. I would normally cover the whole thing with rolled fondant icing, but it’s a job I hate, and get stressed about on cake day, and am rarely pleased with the outcome. One of my inspiration cake images used buttercream instead of fondant, so i went with that. Apart from not quite getting the colour I wanted, I find buttercream so much easier to work with. I use a scraper to get it really smooth and with nice sharp edges. The fondant motifs stick really well to the buttercream too, although it is a lot more messy when it come to cutting it and wrapping in paper serviettes for the party bags!

For once, I finished the cake with plenty of time to spare before the party. Birthday boy loved it – especially that he got a new Pikachu toy out of it!

Pant-o!

I made my first pair of trousers! Oh yes I did!

They were done in time to wear them for crewing the Panto at work, which was just as well, since my previous work jeans acquired some extra ventilation in the knee department a few shifts into the run of the show. For any non-Brits around here, panto, or pantomime is a very silly theatrical tradition, which is very serious business around this time of year. Personally, I’ve always hated panto, but I’ve seen it in a different light this year, and being backstage has been an absolute blast!

Anyway, trousers.

The Bryce Cargo pattern from Hey June Handmade was a great starting point. The PDF pattern was super easy to print and piece together, and the instruction booklet was excellent. Well laid out and easy to follow.

I made several modifications to the original pattern, including redrafting the front pockets from hip-slash to jeans-style, and changing the pocket bags to a pocket stay, omitting the pocket flaps from the back pockets (and the leg pockets, though I hadn’t intended to) and redrafting the lower leg to be longer and wider.

The finished trousers are not without their flaws, but are perfectly serviceable for the job. I now want to make a second pair and eliminate some of the imperfections of the first.

The front pockets are fab. I might be tempted to modify the depth of the pocket bags, but the redraft worked very well, the openings are a good size and the pocket stay gives extra structure to the front of the trousers.

The back pockets really don’t need a flap, but the jury’s out on the cargo pockets. I quite like them as they are without a pocket flap, but I think they may look better with one. I intended for them to have a flap, I even made them up, but sewed the buttonholes a little too small for the buttons and couldn’t be bothered to redo them. They were also quite bulky once folded over and possibly a fraction too short, and I thought the buttons might stick out a little too much and be prone to catching on things when shifting stuff about at work. At the stage that they were due to be attached, I was worried about the overall fit of the trousers – they looked like they might come up too small, so I wanted to get the leg seams at least basted so I could check the fit – so I thought I’d leave the pocket flaps and come back to them later. Of course, once I’d sewn the leg seams, it was then impossible to sew the flaps without ripping everything out again! So they got left off. I think next time I would cut them maybe 10mm longer than the pattern piece and try again with the buttonhole, or perhaps go for poppers instead.

The biggest problems with these trousers is the fit and the length. Both of which are my own fault. Firstly, I need to trust the seam allowances. That would go a long way to sorting out the slightly baggy fit at the waist/hips. I may also do a bit of a fit diagnostic on the rise before I go again. Secondly, I need to get someone to help me measure my legs as it’s very difficult to do it yourself. I added half an inch above the knee, which is about right, but I only added one and a half inches below the knee to take it from a calf length to a full length trouser leg. And I’m tall! I think an additional two inches would not go amiss, and even that is possibly too little. I think I’d also flare the leg out a bit further for preference.

Both of my female colleagues have admired them and even requested a pair already. I’m sorely tempted to oblige them, as i know women’s workwear is hard to come by, but I’m definitely making myself a second pair first.

 

Here’s a llama, there’s a llama

Well, I seem to be on a roll. I’d not been allowing myself to start any other projects until my Crazy Stripes cardigan was finished, but I had plenty of projects lining up in the wings.

You may remember this little pile of goodies from this year’s Knitting and Stitching Show.

Well, in just three days, and with the help of my shiny new Singer overlocker, that llama fabric has become this.

I added about an inch in length to the body at the tracing stage. Otherwise it’s the same as my previous pink one from the same pattern, though I possibly used less of the seam allowance as I was nervous about the overlocker blade slicing too much off the edges. I wpuld potentially attempt to alter the neckline so it’s not quite so wide, were I to make this top again. But in general, I’d say I’m pretty pleased with this make.

Now, what shall I make next?

Finally finished!

Please forgive the utterly dreadful photo, but I just couldn’t wait to show you this. Its been about 2 years, and an awful lot of procrastination in the making, but today I finally knuckled down to sewing in the last few ends and attaching the buttons.

Loooooooook!

It really needs blocking, but I’m so pleased it’s done that I’ve just thrown it on and started wearing it. I’ll block it when it gets washed.

Now I can allow myself to move on to other projects. Hooray!

What’s the longest you’ve worked on a project for?

Toothless flies again

Those of you who have been around for a while may remember the Toothless cake that I made for Pumpkin’s birthday a couple of years ago. He still loves How To Train Your Dragon, both the books and the TV series, so of course, having been Hiccup last year, he requested to be Toothless for this year’s World Book Day.

Despite him giving me plenty of notice of his character choice, I of course left everything to the last minute and was only saved by the snow which caused the dress up day at school to be postponed by a week. In the end I still cut it ridiculously fine, sewing in the morning while the boys ate breakfast and pinning the wings on him as we went out of the door!

I bought a plain black hoodie and jogging trousers as the basis for the costume. I marked out and cut a straght line up the back of the hoodie to insert the dragon spines.

I drafted pattern pieces on paper for the spines and cut them out of some leftover black jersey and used a bit of iron on interfacing to stiffen them a little.

For the head of the dragon, I drafted the ears/horns on paper and again cut them from black jersey and padded them a little to get the right shape and make them stand up a little, and hand-sewed them in place on the top of the hood.

I found some perfect green cotton fabric at the Knitting and Stitching Show to make Toothless’ cat-like green eyes. I googled to find out the best way to do the pupils and hand-stitched them using black embroidery thread and a satin stitch and was very pleased with how they turned out. I edged them with black jersey to help define the eyes and make them a bit more 3D and stand out a bit more and then sewed them onto the hood.

The tail was the tricky bit. I didn’t want it attached to either hoodie or trousers as I thought it would get in the way, so I made up a simple belt using some fabric tape I had in my sewing box and a couple of hook and eyes. The tail itself was a long triangle of black jersey. I considered adding some spines down the tail but decided it was a bit fiddly and probably unnecessary, not to mention I was rapidly running out of time. I had just enough black jersey left to make one of the tail fins and cut up an old red T-shirt to make the other fin. I pinched a bit of fusible fleece from my lovely bestie to give them a bit of structure and filled the tail out with toy stuffing.

A pair of wings was hastily chopped from a bin bag and safety pinned either side of the spines. It was a quick fix but they actually looked quite good, giving a bit of different texture, and I wasn’t worried about them getting snagged on things during the day.

With more time I probably could have improved on it a bit more, but as it was, I was happy and he was happy.

Tricky sewing

My nephew’s Christmas list this year included an apron. I’ve been keeping an eye out for one in the shops with no joy, so when I spotted this cute fabric whilst buying black jersey for my sleeves, I decided to make him one instead.

It’s a pretty simple make and I just used Pumpkin’s apron as a template. The challenge was in dealing with a rather tricky fabric. The shiny vinyl surface sticks to any other smooth surface which makes it tricky to keep it moving through the sewing machine. I used a little washi tape on the under side of the foot and a piece of fabric wrapped around the bed of the machine to help keep it from sticking.

The fabrics also can’t be pinned as they leave puncture holes. I just creased the edges as much as I could and hoped it would stay in line when I sewed.

Overall it turned out pretty well. Hope the nephew agrees!

Tip top!

I made a top!

Finding that pile of patterns inspired me to just get on with it. The pattern is New Look K6230. I dug out the pink flowered jersey which I bought as an offcut earlier in the year for practise sewing. I thought an entire top in pink would be a bit much so I investigated a local fabric shop and found the black jersey for the sleeves, which cost me as much for just one metre as all of the pink flowers and the blue flowers fabrics together! I did manage to cut two sets of sleeves and neckbands though, so they’re ready for making another top at some point.

Having not sewn with jersey before, I warmed up by reading a couple of blogs on the subject and referring to a helpful leaflet from Guthrie and Ghani that came with the sewing machine jersey and stretch twin needles I bought at The Knitting and Stitching show.

The pink was quite difficult to sew as it is such a floppy fabric. It was hard to keep it in a straight line without stretching it out. Fortunately the black is much more stable and most of the seams included both fabrics. The top stitching around the neckline was a bit wobbly so I unpicked the front section and had a second go. The most difficult bit was the hem. I had to try various settings on my machine to get the right stitch length and even then had to unpick a section or two that were very untidy.

The end result though, is something that fits and feels pretty comfy to wear and looks half decent! I’ll call that a win!

What new skills are you keen to learn but apprehensive about?