Basic knitting

A bit of a break from vintage pattern projects and indeed, in a way, from sewing in general. Just in case you may have wondered why I didn't seem as productive as usual for the past two week, this is the reason. I've been working on this little cardigan. 

I made it on my knitting machine using two strands of very thin blue yarn and one of thin beige. The three together still make for such fine knitting that it would take me ages to do it by hand (I can knit by hand but neither well nor fast). 

It is a pretty basic garment, maybe the kind of thing that might make you wonder why I would bother making it myself. Well, I did because I can. And because I've been using my sporty cardigans a lot lately and wondered if I should add a knitted one to the collection.  

Long raglan sleeves, a back bodice, a front bodice in two halves connected by a zipper and fairly high collar. That's it. Not much different from lots of little cardigans out there. I'm still proud of it though. I made this pattern myself. Calculated how many stitches in how many rows would be needed. I've done this a couple of times before but I'm still pleased when it works out. 

The knitting itself went pretty quickly. It's the sewing together that usually seems to take forever but even that was OK this time. The thing that took a lot more time than expected was putting in the zipper. I had knitted a few stitches extra at the center fronts to sew the zipper to. I had decided to do that using the sewing machine. And I did. But unfortunately, I had stitched so close to the zipper teeth that the zipper didn't work. It would have been fine for a normal fabric but not for the more loose structure of knit work.

So, I had to unpick the entire zipper which was not a nice thing to do at all. I re-stitched it a bit further away from the teeth and then sewed the knitted seam allowance to the back of the front bodice pieces by hand. And then, I prickstitched the edges of the zipper tape to the seam allowance. Even after that, I did not end up with a finish on the zipper I would have been happy with in my sewing. And yet, I don't think I mind. 

The intermezzo thing

Because I've learned to be afraid of bias-issues with full skirts (some even stretch out again after the first time the garment was washed), I decided to finish E's cardigan first. I had time to go to the market on Friday morning and luckily, the market stall I usually go to for notion had exactly the kind of zipper I wanted. Which was basically the same as the one I already had, separating zipper, black tape, 'blackened' brass teeth, just 10 cm longer. And the new one even has a more fancy pull.

So, now I could finish the cardigan: Inserting the zipper, applying the rest of the bottom band and hand-stitching the facing in place.

I was pleased with the outcome, but of course, I didn't really know anything until E had tried it on. 

I made this thing based on the standard knit sloper from Winifred Aldrich's Metric Pattern Cutting for Menswear. I made that for him a while ago and both the t-shirt I made from it were a bit on the wide side (although in one case, the fabric was very thin and had little recovery and the other case included a failed attempt at raglan sleeves. Don't ask me why, because I can make those properly). Which was why I thought it might work well for a cardigan. I just made a long sleeve pattern piece and cut the front in two halves with seam allowance at center front, rather than on the fold.
I kept sleeves and body a little bit shorter to allow for the bands (I cut 4 cm off the body pieces and added a 7 cm band) but because this fabric has no vertical stretch whatsoever, both could have done with a bit more length. Fortunately, the cardigan is still quite wearable. 

I used rib knit for the collar, cuffs, bottom band and pocket edges. This is the synthetic stuff that is used most for this purpose and it's interesting. Very stretchy, obviously but it can be 'set' by heat and/or steam. This was quite useful for the pocket edges, which were distorting the whole fronts of the cardigan before I pressed them.

For a first try at a garment like this (for him, that is), I think E's new cardigan is quite successful. He rarely gets cold so the demand for items like this in his wardrobe is very limited. I may still make him more though. A more loosely fitted and longer one which can be worn over a shirt for example, or a sweater using the same basic shape. But I want to see him really wear this thing first.

Burdastyle

You are all familiar with Burdastyle, aren't you?
I've been a member for ages although I'm not as active there as I used to be. And I'm proud to have been a contributor to the first Burdastyle book.

Now, I've actually sewn something using a recent pattern from the site. A first for me!
But there's something else I want to mention first: I'd like to thank everyone who nominated my blog or voted for it... 

My blog is part of Burdastyle's "Best of blogging top 50"! It will be announced on the site later (after some upcoming change) but we are allowed to tell it on our blogs already. 
I'm very happy with this. When you are blogging away, like I do, you have no idea how many people really see and/or like what you do. Not if they don't comment, that is. Blog statistics are all well and good but they don't register appreciation. This does. So thank you very much and I will try to keep up the good work!

Now, on to the garment...

After all the excitement over the top 50, I went and had a good look around all those parts of the Burdastyle website which I don't visit that often (mostly, I just go to the "Projects" pages). And I quite liked this cardigan in the pattern store. And it was really cheap...

Judging from the technical drawing, I guessed this was a really simple shape. Probably one I could draft myself... But on the other hand, I love "object cardigans" and this one has that bulky shape and proper sleeves. At that moment, I didn't really feel like figuring this one out from scratch. Not when I could just go and get the recipe...

So I did. This a 'draft your own' pattern, so you don't have to deal with printing lots of pieces and taping them together. And unlike most tutorials you find online, it comes in two sizes (sort of S/M and M/L). 
There are a few things about this pattern I didn't like: 
- The dimensions for the pieces are without seam allowance. This is the standard in the Burdastyle magazine (at least in European versions, I don't know about the American one) but it doesn't really make sense for such simple pieces which you might draw straight onto the fabric (which I did, adding seam allowance as I went along).
- The drawings for the cutting lay-out and even the listed amount of fabric you need are for fabrics of 110 cm wide. Which, to me, seems like a really unusual width for knits. The vast majority of those are 140 to 150 cm wide, in which case you only need the length of the body piece plus the length of the sleeve (or even just the length of the body. If your fabric is 150 wide and you are cutting the cardigan in the smaller size, you should be able to cut out the sleeve next to the body piece).

- If you make the cardigan as described, the wrong side of the fabric will show at the 'collar' (which is really just the folded-back front edge). The instructions don't really warn about that. I noticed straight away, but a less experienced sewer might not. My fabric doesn't look good on the wrong side so I cut the front edge with about 20 cm extra on it, which I used as a facing. Worked just fine.
Oh, and the sleeves are long. Longer than they have to be. I shortened them just a little because, with the 'object' shape, the length of the sleeve on your arm depends rather heavily on how you wear the cardigan.

The fabric has been in my stash for a while and I thought the stripes would work particularly well with this design.

I was right about that... I really like the look of the back!

To be honest, it's the back I'm happiest with. Apart from the stripes, the shape is really interesting too. I'm less sure about the front. I've never looked great in longer cardigans. This one doesn't look bad at all but I'll really have to think about how to make it work in my wardrobe. 

So, there you have it, my first garment from a Burdastyle pattern in a long time.

Mostly rectangles

For years, I've been happy not to follow the low-rise skinny jeans trend. My earliest self-drafted trousers (as in pre-dating the blog early) all had either a boot-cut or even a mild 70's style flare. Although I changed the shape of each new pair, including a venture into even roomier styles, nothing major happened  until I tried tapered belt pleated trousers back in December 2009. I still have and wear that particular pair and I have come to like it so much I keep telling myself to make another one. That was the first time I tried a radically different silhouette. 
Then, in January last year I made my first pair of high waisted, fitted trousers. Like the belt pleated ones, those were hemmed at ankle length. I know a lot of people hate that trend but I find it lends a touch of lightness to the whole look. 

By now, I think I have just about any trouser shape imaginable in my wardrobe (leg-wise that is, there is nowhere near as much variation in rise. And I still exclude RTW's best-seller, the true 'skinny' which relies on huge amounts of lycra for its close fit. Oh, and I don't count leggings or anything derived from them as trousers). I like the variety and I've found that each style has its strengths and weaknesses when it comes to making outfits. For example, I've found that I prefer to wear my jackets with narrow trousers (hemmed at ankle length). In that combination, they don't look quite so serious or over-dressed. 
This winter, I was reaching for the belt pleated and narrow styles way more than for the boot-cut ones. Even though I only have a rather limited number of tops which work with them.

Time to change that. Narrow bottoms tend to require a bit more room on top but I don't want my upper body to be swamped either. 
This is the first new thing I've made especially to go with my narrow legged trouser styles. It is still a bit of a winter-y, but I plan on making a couple of roomier t-shirt type things as well.  

I started out with the basic shape (a rectangle with the corners folded in) as the one I used for this cardigan. I've always liked that one, but the fabric is a bit too synthetic for my taste. And I wanted something a bit longer this time. Its tutorial is here.
For this version, I cut away a curved section at the bottom and made a double, 20 cm long band to attach to it, creating the waist-to-hip section. These pieces were cut in a woven boiled wool (which is thin for boiled wool). I made the front edge/collar and the cuffs from a rather stable black silk. 

When worn, this cardigan is all roomy shapes and angles but flat on the table it shows it's true 'mostly rectangles' spirit.
I'm happy with it, even though it now looks like spring is finally here so I may not get to wear it for a while (although Dutch spring always has cold days as well) 

Blue like the sky on a clear morning

That's what I keep thinking when looking at this fabric. And, quite appropriately, we've had some very nice clear mornings, followed by dreary, cloudy, rainy afternoons this week. So, perfect time to introduce an easy, throw-over kind of cardi in this great colour into my wardrobe.

It wasn't warmly received in my previous post and I get that. A blocky top. Don't the pattern companies throw enough sack patterns our way already? Well, I guess they do. As you know, I'm no expert.

However, I do know that with loosely fitted garments, it's all about amount and proportion. You need to find the perfect balance between free-flowing fabric and showing some of the body underneath. It can be hit-and-miss, but it's quite do-able in a drapey knit.

This particular fabric is fairly thick but has a nice hand.

I designed it to be worn either loose or belted (although belts are always tricky for me. I love them on already fitted dresses, but I'm always hesitant about the cinched-with-a-belt look) and there are no closures. I think I may have to buy something like a little brooch, because I do like having the option of closing it in different places without having buttons or snaps on display when I wear it some other way.

I like how the proportions of this thing lend themselves to different, sometimes vaguely vintage-y looks.

Near Japanese minimalism?

Boxy 60's jacket?

50's leisure-wear?

This one is a bit frumpy to me, but somewhere half-way through the 20th century, mademoiselle might have approved...

P.S. Carolyn recently posted about how annoying the word-recognition gizmo can be, and how it discourages her from commenting. As an experiment, I've just turned mine off. Obviously, I hope to encourage commenting here. I'll wait and see if the spam-bots find me again.

Also, my email adress is now in the sidebar.

Work in progress

This is what I'm making from the blue knit I showed you earlier: a very simple, quite literally T-shaped, cardigan.

It is the shape I first made for my colour block top, almost a year ago. For this incarnation, I made the body 1 cm wider (it's more of a layering piece, after all) and lenghtened the sleeves. And obviously, I made it with a basic round neckline and an open front which extends 2 cm past the center front line.

Everything has been sewn together, the only thing left to do is to hem the sleeves and to tack down the neckline facing at the shoulder seams. I do the hemming on this by hand because I like the 'no topstitching' look. It's nice but it takes more time...

I think I'll be able to finish it tonight but I won't get to take pictures of me wearing it until Thursday.

As promised: the cardigan how-to

See, I still try to live up to my promises!

As I've said before, this cardigan or shrug (I guess it's technically more of a shrug because it doesn't close at the front) is very easy to make. It is a pattern for knits and it works best with light and drapey variaties. I've made mine on my serger, but lacking one, you could of course use the appropriate stitches on your sewing machine (just check which one to use first. A lot of sewing machines

don't like thin knits).

In this tutorial, I'm giving you the dimensions I used. Although this is not a fitted garment, different people would need different sleeve lengths and on larger sizes, this cardigan would end up sitting higher on the body, so size can matter. You can of course size it up a bit and/or change the dimensions. This would require cutting the body piece on the crossgrain and having two seams instead of one in the front-and-neckline band. In a fourway stretch fabric, that's fine.

These are your pattern pieces:

Just a bunch of rectangles (in case it's hard to read the print on the picture, both big ones are 140 cm wide, the top one is 62 cm high, and the bottom one 24 cm. The small pieces are the same: both 16 cm high and 18 cm wide).

Cut one of each with the straight grain as shown by the arrows in the drawing. Make sure to mark the middle of the big pieces and the top of the biggest one, make additional notches at 9 cm to either side of the center mark.

To make the cardigan, fold the biggest piece as shown and sew down along the top. Repeat this with the other side.

Fold the resulting object in half along the center line. Now, cut along the red lines: scoop out a back neckline of about 2 cm deep and cut off the points where they are at about 9 cm (better to do that for each separately, for accuracy).

Now, it's time to turn your attention to the smaller pieces. Sew them together along their vertical edges, fold the resulting tubes in half right side out and pin the big one to the neckline and front edge (with the seam at the back neckline and matching the center notches at the bottom) and the small ones to the arm. Each of these bands should be stretched a little to fit.

I hope this is clear. If there are any questions, please let me know through the comments.

As ever, everyone is of course free to use this tutorial for personal sewing (but not commercially). An if you make anything using this tutorial, I'd love to see it!

Onwards

Well, ehhh, I did sort of promise a post on slopers last week, didn't I? Well, same problems as before...

The good news is I have now printed the JJ sloper (which takes more planning than you'd think because my printer has refused service since I had its ink cartridges re-filled a couple of months ago). The bad news is that my mind is on anything but dresses lately... Bad blogger, Lauriana!

;)

In other news, I have been putting off posting about other things until I would have this draft-along thing well under way. I won't be doing that anymore. I still have every intention of getting on with the draft-along but not posting about other things makes this blog a lot more 'dead' than it has to be. So I'll have no more of that.

As a first, let me show you this super-easy cardigan I made a week ago. This really is a very simple project but I really enjoy the look. It is also a great use for those thin, sheer drapey knits which would never really work as normal tops.

I'll do a how-to for it this weekend, if anyone is interested.

Oh, and the fabric was this sadly mystery-fibre but interestly patterned loose knit of turquoise and blue (way more turquoise and blue than you can see in the picture)

More soon!

Cardigan snatched from the brink of defeat

Finally, it was a clear day today. So, in a little break from my 'obsessing over jackets' posts, I can show you the cardigan I made last week. The one which I feared would also be destined to fail. I think I kind of saved it though.

What can I say about it? Of course I made the pattern for it myself. And I tried to be quite clever about it. I wanted a round open front with nice draping, a normal set-in sleeve and a collar. The pattern I made has no side seams and just a small upper back piece. The rest, collar, front and lower back, is all one large curved piece. I made the sleeves a bit wider than usual so I would be able to wear this over things with sleeves as well as over tank tops.

As I was sewing it together, I found out the draping ended up much more on the side than at the front. I should have realised that would happen, but I hadn't. There wasn't really anything I could do about it at that point, so I just finished it to see how it would turn out. I ended up taking about 10 cm off the original length.

I'm Ok with it now. It may not be entirely what I envisioned but doesn't look that bad and it fits really well in colour plan. In fact, it really is the kind of colour which goes with almost everything in my wardrobe and instantly brightens up any outfit.

Last regular update for 2010?

Hi, everyone! I thought I'd just keep on blogging like normal, just in case you get the opportunity to read some blogs in this busy time of year ;)

To give you a bit of an update:

I made the shirt sloper for J (my younger brother) and, for the first time ever, it let me down. I think it may have more to do with J's skeleton-with-strong-muscles built, than with the sloper set-up or my rendition of it. Anyway, the sloper didn't fit at all, so I've got my work cut out.

And I should get started on that sooner rather than later because I will see him again on mum's birthday... tomorrow.

I have been sewing, but am still not very productive. Maybe I should stop reading history books, but I'm enjoying that too. And E being off work this week doesn't help either, of course ;)

I have made a well-considered cardigan, and found something to do with the 'too small for a t-shirt, too big to throw out' bits of jersey.

The cardigan requires a bit of explanation. Last year, and the year before, I have made some cardigans in interesting shapes from various thick knits (I think there are 4 in total). They usually started out more as shape-experiments or just as 'this would look nice in that fabric'. Rather than to fill an empty space in my wardrobe. Because it looks nice, many had short or three quarter length sleeves. Nice, but not very practical in thick knits...

I found myself liking them, but mostly wearing a rather plain short black cardi which was refashioned from a V-neck sweater ages ago. Just for sleeve length in what is still, despite the fact that the snow is now melting slowly but steadily, a rather cold winter.

Finally planning, I made this cardi from a woven cooked wool from stash (Oops, the pictures turned out a bit blurry). I've had this stuff for a year and it was dangerously hovering on the edge of 'I don't dare to cut into this' territory. As a woven, it doesn't stretch on the straight grain, but at any kind of angle, it does. I cut the cardigan on the biais which makes this fabric behave like a similar weight knit (of course, all plain weave fabrics will stretch when cut on the biais, but usually they shift and stretch in a way which is hard to control and makes the fabric very drapy).

It's a pattern I made myself. It has kimono sleeves, a deep V-neck and a waistband which is higher at center front and closes with three buttons from grandma's button jar. It is nice and warm and will (because of the roomy sleeve shape) work over tank tops as well as over tops with sleeves.

The solution for jersey 'not-quite' scraps is to make camisoles. Using fold-over elastic for the edges as straps, and stretch lace to make them look cute. I know panties would use up much smaller scraps, but right, I need these more.

And finally, I guess I should do some sort of end-of-year round-up or at least react to some very useful comments and try to reach a conclusion on the issue of the stretch velvet dress. I haven't forgotten, but I have yet to decide what to do...

Useful autumn sewing

Are you getting sick of olive/brown jersey yet? I hope not because here it is again.

I made this raglan sleeved cardigan in thickest fabric in this colour I had in my stash. No crazy shape experiments this time, just a useful piece for my autumn/winter wardrobe. And doesn't it look lovely with my new favorite colours?

In fact, this is more experimental for me than it might seem. I always thought long, wide cardigans didn't work for me. On a small busted girl like me, those from the shops look like sacks. However, I'm still very pleased with the look and fit of last year's coat... So I thought I could apply roughly the same principles to a cardigan.

I thought about using the same sort of square set-in sleeve, but decided against it. Actually I sort of free-handed these raglan sleeves. Definately NOT recommended in most other circumstances, but I figured I sort of know what I'm doing and knits are very forgiving...

I also added a sort of kangaroo pocket (I normally don't often do patch pockets at all and certainly not on knits) which is really cozy. The sleeves could have been a little longer, but they're OK. Neck and sleeve bands were stretched to fit, the bottom band wasn't. The closure is with jersey snaps.

I'm fairly pleased with the overall result. As I suspected: with a shape like this, it's all about proportion.

I also like the fact that it can be worn in several ways: not just open or closed but also belted and there's even a strange thing where close the bottom snap behind you back which looks nice (sorry, no pictures of that).

Seeing all these new olive/brown things, I realised they would look really good with and extra added pop of colour. So, from a scrap of red cotton (plain woven cotton), I made this little camisole. I just used the top bit of the pattern for my not very succesful bias cut pinstripe dress.

Bias cut panels with side and center front and back seams, bust darts. Self fabric bias tape around the top edges and ribbon shoulder straps (because by the time I got to those, I had run out of fabric).

The cotton will get a bit softer after being washed a few times, so I think it's OK. Yeah, autumn/winter colours!