Sew Distracted

Thursday update

Where does the week go?

I have been busy shifting things around the house again, trying to move DH's office from one spare bed room to another and in the process scattering furniture, books, and junk throughout the house.  The new office is beginning to take shape, but the process is eating lots of time and leaving me much too tired in the evening to sit at my sewing machine and wrap my poor brain around actually sewing anything.  Even knitting is painfully slow as my poor tired muscles seem to revolt even at the weight of knitting and my brain process the idea of knit and purl as if it is under 200 feet of water.

I still have hopes that I might gain a fabric closet out of all the mess, and the prospect is encouraging me to be ruthless with the purging, but the prospect of winnowing down 30 years of professional stuff and a bunch of personal history and making it fit into one "personal home office" sometimes proves overwhelming for both of us.  There is a reason that we both dreaded going into the old "office", but we are also both determined that the new office will really promise a "new start".

In the meantime the January issue of Patrones arrived and there are some really nice patterns contained therein.  Between this issue and the December issue there are quite a few things I want to make, and there are still several projects that are waiting on the shelves and next to the cutting table, including a few UFO's. 

I can't begin to say how happy I will be when the house is finally  done.  Although some of that doing also includes a few piles of things in my sewing room that were moved in after the October Master Bedroom fire and never dealt with.

I am also playing with bits of the fabric collection as boxes of fabric have been evacuated from closets in the rooms that are being redone.  Mostly I just spend my time stacking fabric and my fabric index cards into pleasing combinations.  I am revisiting old favorite combinations and finding a few new favorites as well.  The process is also helping me find new ways to look at orphaned garments and fabrics and find new ways to work favorite pieces into a wardrobe that I will actually wear.

Once I sew it that is.

Sunday Progress

I had a bit of car-knitting time this weekend as we drove down to New Jersey to do a little shopping.  I have done most of the driving on longer trips lately so I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy just sitting in the car, watching the scenery go by, chatting and knitting. 

As a result I finished the back of Rage Management:

For the most part I really like the way this is turning out.

I am not fond of the rolled hem at the bottom.  Oh I know it is unblocked and unfinished now, but I find rolled hems are often somehow uneven and annoying.  I  "should" have thought about this before I started knitting, but now I am almost glad I didn't.  I can see that the rolled hem echoes the garter ridges at the top of the sweater and is therefore a nice design feature.  But I find it difficult to get rolled hems to lie just so and they always seem to be curling up or down or just looking unfinished, no matter what I do to anchor them in place. 

I started the front and I intentionally knit it the same way, so at the moment it rolls.  But I think when I am done I am going to unravel the bottom of both the front and back pieces and use the same pattern stitch that makes the ridged pattern at the top, knitting down from the body of the sweater, to finish the hem. 

At this point I think I will modify it slightly, making the final two or three rows seed stitch instead of stockinette, to combat that tendency to roll, but the actual technique will probably not be decided until I a actually knitting.

If had started the sweater differently, or changed the hem pattern before I started, I don't think this solution would have occurred to me.  Sometimes mistakes seem to lead to the best outcomes.

Geometric V-neck shell

After sitting on the cutting table for a couple of weeks, taunting me while I dithered and dallied with various other interruptions and distractions, the pattern for the Chico's tee finally got hold of my attention.  And lo and behold, there is a finished object to show for my efforts.   Even more amazing, the actual tee is actually everything I had dreamed and imagined it might be.  Now THAT is an accomplishment, even with a simple tee.

As I started laying the pattern out on the fabric Wednesday night after dinner I was having serious doubts.  I hadn't really thought about whether the pattern was suited the fabric or any of that, I just saw this fabric and immediately imagined this garment in my mind.

As I pinned the pattern to the fabric, being very careful to line up my grain lines and my pattern, I realized that here I was working with a very distinct geometric pattern with very clearly delineated straight lines, but the pattern didn't have a straight line anywhere.  The v-neckline has a curve to it.  There are no shoulder seams and the back yoke seams are curved.  The side seam is curved.  The bottom hem is curved. 

I wondered if I was setting myself up for disaster.

Yet it all worked out.  I can see the hem curves down from the side seams to the center front and back up again, but it looks balanced against the  print. 

Because of the way the front piece wraps around to the back, the back shoulder is on the bias.  I didn't even try to align this with the back seam, which is also slightly curved, adding a tiny bit of shaping at the upper back.   But it turned out nicely.  I like the play of th angles in the pattern. I also think the flow of the lines in and out around my curves makes it look like I actually have a waist.

The original piece was cut with a double layer of fabric in the front and a single layer in back.  As I was working with the garment, I realized that my fabric is somewhat thinner than the original, and the back was actually just a tad to thin so I cut a double layer in back as well. 

Then I had to decide if this would change the way I would construct the garment.  My natural inclination would be to hide all the seams between the layers, but I noticed that only the neckline seams were sewn this way.  In all the other seams the fabric was treated as if it was one layer, and the layers were folded under as one and cover stitched to make hems at the armhole opening and hem.  I realized that this was not only easier, it also provided more stability.

I got everything assembled but the hems on Wednesday.  Thursday I wanted to do the cover-stitching.  I was a little apprehensive because I hadn't really used the cover-stitch feature since I had tested it out shortly after purchasing the machine.

I needn't have worried.  It actually took me longer to read the instructions for setting up the cover-stitch than it took me to thread the machine and convert it to cover-stitch.  And my sample runs went pretty well too.  I had a little bit of trouble at the that shoulder seam, where I was actually stitching over 6 layers of fabric,  but it turned out well, and I think it looks pretty good for my first cover-stitched garment.

I was also unnecessarily concerned about the hem.  I was afraid that, since I would have to sew from the top, that I would not catch the edge of the hem in my stitching.  But it was easy to the feel the edge of the hem underneath the fabric and line the serger needles up with the fabric edge.

The top is not perfect.  There are a few glitches, but I am very happy with this.  It is exactly what I imagined it would be.

Lime

Words were running around in my brain all day while I frittered away the time with those tasks-that-must-be-done, whatever they were.  Chores are like that, things that are necessary to make our lives the seamlessly functioning things they are, and yet so completely forgettable.

Words of a less pleasant nature were running around my brain when I discovered that the extra sewing time I thought I had found was actually the gym time that I had misplaced. 

Words were swirling around while I sat in traffic at the construction site near my house waiting to come home.

Now the words are gone, but they revolved around the color green.

It struck me that I have purchased two pairs of athletic/sneaker type shoes in the last few months and they both have green accents:

These light bright yellow greens are not often found in my wardrobe but it has injected itself periodically.  I find that the bits of  yellow green make me unaccountably happy.  Will these two little sparks of green be it for me, or are they merely the first little trickle in what will eventually become a new color obsession?

Marfy

The new Marfy catalog arrived. 

I was so eager to look through it I postponed my plans to go to work in my sewing room and instead curled up on the sofa with DH and a cappuccino for a lovely slow look. 

I was disappointed.  The format has been changed and there is now only one catalog for the year:  this book includes both the spring summer styles and the styles for fall/winter 2008/2009.

Normally I like the fall styles far more than the spring, but not so this time.  This could be because there seem to be more spring styles, it could be because so many of the fall styles are very classic basics which I already have, or which I can easily adapt from something already in my collection.  There were few patterns I liked, even though I kept flipping through the book in some kind of desperate act of wishful thinking, as if by turning the pages I could resurrect my dreams and desires.

Here is what I definitely like:

There is another jacket that is interesting, Marfy 1639.  I am mostly attracted to the angled darts at the waist and I don't like the neckline, but that could be easily changed.

Easy knitting ahead

I apparently worry too much. 

The sweater is coming along just fine.  My gauge is consistent and right on target.  It just looks bigger slipping along on those circular needles that I tend to use.  I should know this by now.

The actual kntited fabric has a good bit more stretch than this piece of fleece and I don't think the fit will be a problem.  I did rewrite the instructions for the front of the pattern to add that extra inch on the right side, which makes the center front opening appear balanced on my body.  Any other tightness should be accommodated by the stretch of the sweater.  The sleeves also fit perfect.y.  I did increase the depth of the armhole in the front of the sweater by half an inch, but I did not change the sleeve shaping, easing that extra half inch around the front pulls the excess in around the sleeves, compensating for some of the forward roll of my shoulders. 

The fleece looks pretty good now.  I am happy I did this.  I have a good idea of how this will look on and I think the process of making a rough muslin like this is good when I am not sure about the fit of the sweater.  Perhaps sometimes I worry too much, such as in the case of this sweater, but I would still rather spend an hour or so at the beginning of the project working out the details than spend many hours knitting only to rip later.

Now I can move on to other things.

Japanese Pattern Book Update

Thank you Rhonda for inquiring about ISBN numbers on the Japanese books.  I have gone back and added the ISBN numbers to the discussion of the books in my January 16th post.  I will try to do that in the future whenever I discuss a Japanese book.  I know from experience how hard it can be to find a book I have seen on someone's blog without the ISBN.

New Knitting

It is time for a new knitting project:

This pattern was purchased as a kit from L'Atelier yarns in Redondo Beach, CA in October 2007. The yarn is Highlander  from Alpaca With A Twist in color Dark Thistle. 

I wanted to start this so that I could have it to knit on the train to NYC on Friday night, although I was actually torn between whether I should knit or read, as I am really wrapped up in my current book at the moment. 

I really like the look of this sweater in the drawing, but I don't look at all like the illustration and I have some concerns about how this sweater will look on my own curvier body.  I don't want to spend a lot of time knitting it only to discover that it is a disaster.  So I had an idea, not an original idea, I am sure I read about this somewhere but I don't recall where at the moment.

I went to my local JoAnn Fabrics and picked up some plain simple cheap fleece -- whatever was on sale.

Then, using the pattern directions as a guide, and drawing directly on the fleece with a marker, I drew the shapes of the sweater pieces directly onto the fleece and cut them out.

Then I stitched them up quicky with my machine.  I used 1/4" seams.  I did not add a seam allowance to this pattern because the sweater is knit at 4 stitches to the inch with 1 stitch at each side as a selvedge stitch, which is the equivalent of a 1/4" seam.  If the seam had been much smaller I would have added a seam allowance to make it easier to sew.

Here is the result, without the sleeves:

Drawing the pattern on the fleece actually took longer than stitching up the pieces.  The pattern calls for 3 inches to be taken up at the upper back below the armhole openings.  In the pattern the decreases are spread evenly across the width of the sweater but I just took 3 tucks, which are actually kind of nice looking.  It is not exactly the pattern, but it gets the basic fitting issues across.

This pattern is not written so that the back and front are the same size.   In my sample, the back fits pretty well, as far as I can determine without the sleeves, but the front is too small, as you can see from this photo:

Actually, it is not too small through the shoulders, or at the hip, although I could get away with a little extra at the hip.  I think the knitted fabric is actually a little stretchier than this fleece, but not so much that I think it will compensate for this much pulling across the bust. 

It is difficult to see in this photo, and I was working under pretty tight time constraints so this photo will have to suffice, the front is actually much smaller on the right than on the left, and more snug at the right hip than at the left. 

So I need to draft a new front.  I seem to need about another inch at the left bust, and 2 inches on the right, tapering down to 1 additional inch at the right hip with nothing added at the left hip.  The shoulders should probably be left the same.

Once I have done this, I will need to alter the sleeve as the current sleeve draft will not fit the sweater once I am done altering the front pieces.  When I look at the sleeve pattern, as I have drawn it from the directions, I think it was going to need alterations anyway:

I don't think I like the really short, sharply angled sleeve cap, and the sleeve as written is both too narrow and too long for me.

But first, a new front.  And I haven't gotten back to the cutting table yet today.

I did start knitting last night although I spent more time reading than knitting.

I don't yet have enough length on the needles to actually reflect how this is going to hang but at the moment it looks a little big.  It is definitely stretchier than the fleece. So I might not need to add as much to the front as I originally thought.

First I need to knit another couple of inches and see if my gauge is the same as the swatch.  I must be tense when I knit gauge watches because my tension is often tighter than it is when I am actually relaxed and knitting.  Luckily I have the fleece pattern to use for comparison purposes.  Once I compare the knitted piece to the fleece, I will move on with redrafting the front piece, and perhaps ripping and restarting the back.

 

And so, despite all my good intentions I now have three projects sitting on the cutting table waiting for something to happen before they can progress. 

Butterfly Brain??

 

courtesy of  the Alexander McQueen Spring 2008 collection at Style.com

These Socks are made for Working

The socks are finished and they are perfect!

These were knit with ArtYarns Reality, a wool/acryllic blend, which I chose primarily for the colors.  I also wanted a thicker than usual pair of socks to wear with my steel-toed garden workboots.  The finished socks ended up being about the same thickness as the thick wool double-knitted socks that I purchased with the boots, but of course they are so much nicer because I knit them myself in colors I love.

I didn't really follow a pattern, just cast on stitches that I guessed would be about right for my ankle circumference, and worked from there, trying on as I went.

I looked at the pattern for  the pedicure socks  on knitty, because they were the basic inspiration.  I knit my pedicure socks using this yarn and love them so much that I needed another pair, with toes this time.  I didn't follow the pattern though, except for looking at the heel and heel gusset because I needed a little refresher course. 

The really neat thing was that the heel suddenly made sense to me, whereas before I had been somewhat mystified, having to look it up each time.  I haven't knit that many pairs of socks mind you, and most of them have had short-row heels, which I still think I prefer, but I suddenly "got" how a heel flap and gusset work and how to adapt the instructions to my narrow heel.  Now it all makes sense.  Only took me a couple  a few pairs of socks. 

I am glad I made the ankle portion as long as I did.  I wanted them to extend up past the top of the boot because my other socks don't (I tend to like short socks if I must wear socks at all) and sticks and things keep falling into my boot and driving me crazy.  These are just perfect.