Sack-shaped

Terrible light, self-timer pictures, freshly washed (still wet, except for the blow-dried fringe) hair and bare feet... What's not to love about today's pictures?
I had wanted to take better ones but I also didn't want to put off posting about this new top I made. So, I had to make do and I hope you can still kind of see the clothes in these shots. 

A couple of years ago, I bought this fabric, a black cotton jersey with that 'loop' texture at the back and very little stretch, on sale. I made a top from it. It had kimono sleeves and a collar and it seems like I didn't blog about it or post it on Burdastyle. At least, not in a place where I can find it now. That garment was OK... The fabric was comfortable but its lack of stretch was less than ideal for this design. The leftover fabric just stayed in my stash for years. Until last Saturday, when I decided to deal with it once and for all. Using up just about all of it, I made this:

A loose-fitting sweater. The bodice is completely straight, with a wide but shallow scoop for the neckline. Its back hemline curves down by about 5 cm. The sleeves have a very low sleeve-head and they taper towards the hem. 
Simply said, it's a sack-shaped top.

I've never had many of those. There is usually plenty of wide stuff in RTW but most of my sewing is more fitted. It can be nice to have a bit of variety though. And I found myself struggling to make nice combinations when wearing my more fitted trousers (like these, or my new jeans). And most of all, this fabric is perfect for a design like this!

In my experience, the look of loose-fitting clothes can depend enormously on the fabric you use. My lovely twice-made wintercoat is very wide and that works because the wool fabric has quite a bit of body.
It worked the first time:

And maybe even better the second time around.

But there was also a time when I decided to use a striped sweater knit to make a cardigan with those same lines... A thinner fabric, with a softer hand. It didn't work at all. Where the coats with lovely pieces of soft sculpture, the cardigan with just a baggy sack. In the end I took it in quite a bit which made it wearable. It's not pretty but it is very comfortable which is why it still has a place in my wardrobe as a warm extra layer to snuggle up in on cold days.

You see, with "loose-fitting" anything, it's all about the interaction between the fabric, the design and your own body. The bulky fabric of the coats allowed them to have a life of their own, just hanging from my shoulders. 
This new sweater of mine has to play a more subtle role. Like a game of hide and seek with points and curves. In a thicker fabric, my body would end up really looking like a rectangle. And if I tried to make up this same pattern in a more stretchy and drape-y jersey, I would just repeat the cardigan fiasco... But for this fabric, I think I got the fit spot-on.

Some people wear shapes like this a lot. Sometimes to obscure parts of their body they are not happy with, sometimes as a statement. Sack-like clothes can be used to say things like "I don't do obvious sexy dressing, I'm more creative, more clever than that". A bit snobbish? Maybe, but is it really more so than the "if you've got it, flaunt it" approach? 
It was never my style but can't help but admire the look of confidence it has on those who wear it well.
So far, I could only ever make that kind of look work for me in coats. For a long time, it was my working theory that, with my A cup, there just wasn't enough there between shoulders and hips to make that game between garment and body work. Now, I'm starting to wonder if it is just all about the dimensions...

A new sweater

Last week, when my sewing machine had its little problem, I decided to try and knit something. On the knitting machine, of course.

I looked at some of my vintage machine knitting patterns but I always struggle to match patterns to the gauge I can knit to with the yarns I have. In the end, I decided to try and make a pattern myself for a very simple little sweater.

I used two of the really thin yarns knitted together: a red one and an olive/beige one with slightly irregular thickness and a bit of shine.

I'm pretty pleased with the result. I made a couple of swatches to decide on the perfect settings for this combination of yarn and the result is light and soft but not too loose. I used the right swatch for my calculations for the pattern. I tried that before, last year, but I guess that time I had over-blocked the swatch. The striped sweater ended up a bit more snug than intended and a bit shorter too.

I did very little blocking on the swatches this time and the resulting sweater is very close to the measurements I wanted (2 cm shorter, to be honest. The width is spot on).  

The design is quite simple: straight body pieces with the flat double edges which are easy to make on a single bed knitting machine. A dropped shoulder and a straight neckline which mean the pattern doesn't require any reduction of stitches except at the shoulders. And tapered, three quarter length sleeves.

The cable-like detail which decorates the front is actually made using re-hung stitches. It's easier than making real cables and you don't need rows of purl stitching along them but because it is made by pulling the material in, that piece of the knit-work becomes a lot less stretchy.   

I'll try to make an illustration about how this works next time I use it.

In the mean time, I still haven't decided on a Lutterloh pattern and I'm working on a top for my grandmother. It should be a fairly simple jersey blouse using a block I made for her last year. However, the design and fabric she picked don't really work that well together and I'll have to unpick the collar because I made the top of the facing too narrow. I'll show it later.

Designing knitwear is different

Regular readers of this blog will know that I usually design everything I sew myself and draft all the patterns. So, for me it was obvious to try and do the same thing with machine knitting…

I wrote about this before. I wouldn't have tried this without a book. It outlined the basics of muslining in jersey and then converting that pattern to one for knitting. As mentioned before, I decided on a simple fitted sweater with stripes as a first project. Not a difficult thing, but not the easiest either (the easiest thing would be a wide, un-shaped sweater in a solid colour).

Of course, knitting stripes is easy, both by machine and by hand. It's just a matter of keeping count. The problem with designing a knitting pattern with stripes, is matching them, especially at the armscyes. I spent quite a bit of time on that in the drawing-on-paper stage.

During knitting, I discovered several errors, both in counting (in my instruction, the point where you have to bind off the first stitches for the sleeve head didn't line up with the correct stripe, which I just altered while knitting) and in knitting machine logic (you can only bind off multiple stitches at the side where the sled is… I remembered that when writing the armscye instructions, but not when I got to the neckline). Then, I tried a new-to-me method of finishing the neckline (detail picture in the previous post about this project). It looked good but wasn't very stretchy. Less stretchy than the stockinette stitching it bordered, in fact. So, I had to re-think the neckline.

The piece I had started with, was originally supposed to be the front but its tight neckline meant that now became the back. Then, I knitted the other body piece with a deeper neckline. I considered making a V-neck but I learned that the neckline binding I used is only possible on round necklines. 

Even with the alteration, I still wasn't sure the neckline was going to be wide enough.

The sleeves were comparatively easy, apart from the counting error I already mentioned. 

Blocking was a bit tricky because of that neckline and I realized I might have over-stretched the stitch swatch just a little bit. When assembling the sweater, I learned something else which experienced knitter have probably known for a long time: Stitches which are tied off to create a diagonal edge form a rather un-stretchy edge. This made my sleeve heads smaller than expected. I was able to make them fit (by committing the 'sin' of easing the armscye into the sleevehead) but I know now that I should add some more rows in those bits next time.

All in all, I managed to put the whole thing together, it fit over my head and although it turned out bit more fitted than I had expected, that didn't make it unwearable.

I should learn not to take pictures on a bad-hair-day though. And E might have mentioned that…

Although I'm sewing again at the moment, I will try and design for the knitting machine again. I feel like I've learned things from this project and I consider buying another book to get some more information on the subject.

My holiday sweater...

Wow, how time can fly…
A couple of weeks ago, I started seeing the first on-blogging-vacation-for-the-holidays notifications and year-round-up posts on other blogs. And I thought there was no need for me to make either of those. Obviously, I would first finish my sweater, somewhere before Christmas, post about it and then get on to other stuff… Famous last words…

I mentioned before (previous post) how much work went into making those fair isle sections. Fortunately, when I was about half-way through, I got the hang of it. Stupid mistakes (which means in this case: forgetting to push a button before knitting a certain row) became rare and I could usually correct them. I also learned which steps in this design came with a risk of dropping stitches and managed to prevent some of those.
After that, I finished the plain knit front, back and sleeves in a single evening. I used the 'fake rib' from the manual for the bottom band and sleeve cuffs. 
At that point, just before Christmas, I thought I'd finish this thing rather quickly.
All I had left to knit was the collar, which starts with knit 2 purl 1 and then puts all the knit stitches together to form a knit 1 purl 1 rib for the top bit. Because I was a bit worried about the fake rib and the collar would be rather eye-catching, I decided to do that in a proper rib stitch, which can be made on my single bed machine by knitting the knit stitches by machine and then, by hand using a separate machine needle, creating the purl stitches in the spaces you've left open. But before I could even get to that, I already hit a snag: To combine two stitches into one over the entire length of the work, I had to take all of them off the machine, onto a normal knitting needle and then put them back on with two stitches on one needle (the purl-stitches-to-be are needles in 'rest' position and open spaces in the knit work at this point). And I only happened to have one set of knitting needles in my house: size 5, way too thick.
Fortunately, my parents were coming over on Christmas Day, so I called them and asked my mother for some thin ones. She brought me a set of size two needles which she doesn't need again any time soon.

Then, of course, social obligations took over and then a minor cold. And that making-real-rib-stitch-by-hand thing turned out to be very well possible, but really time-consuming. And when it was finally done, the resulting piece of knitted material was way too small. I had knitted the knit stitches on a higher tension than the rest of the sweater, like I was told to do for the fake rib. It looks like I should have used the same tension, or a slightly lower one. I might have been able to attach the finished thing to the yoke but it would never have fitted over my head. 
So, after hours and hours of hand-purling, it was back to the drawing board, or, in this case, the knitting machine. 
I had, by then, sewn up the sleeves to get a better look at that fake rib and I wasn't disappointed. The size was certainly good. So, I would have to try and make the collar in that way. 
It worked, even though the part I put on the inside (for fake rib, you knit just the knit stitches you need for the rib, for double the amount of rows and then you hang to first stitches on the last ones, doubling the whole thing), where I had to go from knit 1 purl 1 to knit 2 purl 1 isn't pretty. I had to pull on the work to get that done and add quite a lot of stitches in the middle so there are holes. But they are on the inside…

After that, A LOT of time went into sewing this thing together. All those yoke pieces had to be matched up with great care and sewing the yoke to the body pieces was no walk in the park either. Oh, and attaching the collar was rather fiddly as well.

I finally finished the sweater on 1 January, but at such a time that there wasn't enough daylight left to take pictures. On 2 January, I had to go to work, so really, today was the first opportunity I had to take pictures. Fortunately, E was willing to help me with that.

The sweater turned out a bit wider in the body than I had expected ( based on the pictures with the pattern. My stitch swatch was a good match, so this should be how it's supposed to fit) but fits well. I was a little worried about the less stretchy horizontal seam where the body and sleeve pieces are connected to the yoke but even though they are there, they aren't that obvious after pressing and they don't bother me when wearing the sweater. It's actually really comfortable and, because of that thin yarn, not too warm either.
And I'm really, really pleased with my fair isle design for that yoke.
I'm not sure how much use it would be to anyone, but if you like, I could share it.

Right now, I think it's time to go back to sewing for while, even though I'm already thinking about other knitting projects. I might try and do a round-up post for 2013 after all, but really, if I don't get to that in the next week, it's not going to happen.

Happy 2014 everyone!

Warm and cozy

Tired of all the lingerie-talk? I have to say the addiction has kicked in but I did make something else last week.
On Monday, the day that spring actually started, carefully, here in the Netherlands, I made this nice warm sweater... Yeah, great timing, I know. In all fairness, I haven't been able to enjoy the nice weather because I've had a nasty cold all week (I shouldn't complain, I rarely have any health issues at all, and it was just a cold) and today, the weather turned colder again.

The sweater is very simple, but not a kind I have lots of. Last year, I bought a knitted sweater at COS which I've worn a lot this past winter. A navy sweater with white stripes. A simple, straight, semi-fitted body with slim sleeves. I thought I'd copy the shape and use it for a design of my own. 
The body of this sweater is made from a curious cotton/fleece blend I've had in my stash for years (I made another, fitted, sweater from it before but that one tends to be too warm and a bit too fitted) and the sleeves are in a thick-ish brick red jersey. To make it a bit more interesting in these plain fabrics, I drafted raglan sleeves. The band at the neckline is made from the same fabric as the sleeves. 
It was a very simple thing to make but I like the way it looks with narrow trousers (and it would probably be nice with shorts too) and it's quite comfortable. I'm sure I'll wear it a lot, eventually...

Wearable (machine) knitting

Did I mention it was working?
OK, I promise I will return to normal sewing related posting soon, but I just have to show you this first:

I've knitted something I can actually wear!
It's very simple indeed. It had to be, because I didn't have that much of this yarn. I knitted two rectangles (measurement based on an existing garment and the test square) in a sort of fantasy stitch with the same stitches skipped in every row. This sort-of functions like a rib stitch, making for a very stretchy end result. Because the sides rolled up quite badly, I made a bottom edge which is a double layer of in tricot or straight stitch. I knitted this seperately and I could have distributed it a bit better when sewing it on. I hope it doesn't show too much...
First, I just sewed the outer few stitches of the top together to form the shoulders. This seemed like a good idea but just serverd to create a neckline so tight that I could only get my head through at the risk of skinning my forehead. (the skipped stitches in the pattern make it hard to finish the final row of stitching loosely enough) So, I took those stitches out (I may have snipped an important piece of thread while doing so, one belonging to the upper edge itself) and, with needle and yarn, made improvised shoulder straps.

Although it certainly isn't flawless, it definitely seems wearable to me, so I'm calling it a win.
I hope to be able to buy some more yarn this weekend so I can get started on a real sweater.

Something warm?

First up, I would like to tell you that I realise my recent posts tend to concentrate on 'show-and-tell'. And to talk about things which I've drafted myself, making them impossible to recreate. I'm aware of this but, for various reasons (I'm not even sure all of them are clear to me) my time online seems to be limited lately. Which cuts into my ambition to create clever general interest posts...

Anyway, after that little disclaimer, here's another thing I've made:

My first ever loose fitting sweater. It's a look which I think only works for me with skinny trousers, shorts or maybe with mini skirts. With those, I like it.

I drafted a very simple pattern for this, basically just rectangles with some curves cut out. The fabric is a sweaterknit which is drapey and loosely knitted.

And, to make things more interesting, I decide to try and immitate a structure well known from real knitted stuff: a cable.

It's actually a braid made from tubes of fabric sewn into the front. It's a bit heavy compared to the rest of the sweater but I like the look. I considered using strips of fabric instead of tubes which would have kept the weight down but wasn't really an option with this knit (loose knits can easily unravel).

Oh, and the title of this post? The sweater is in fact quite cozy, though not so warm that it doesn't work indoors. However, I'm well aware that an outfit which includes shorts can never really give off that 'warm for winter' kind of vibe...

I hope everyone of you is doing well and I'll be back later this week with another kind of post, I won't promis but I'll really try ;)