This is a repost (mostly) from Restingmotion. As usual I don't know what I am doing, and there may be no point to this. But there may be reasons to keep sewing posts here. I say this only because I just finished copying knitting posts to purlsandmurmurs, where there is a reason for doing so. If this ridiculous, I bet your pardon.
I feel overwhelmed and like I have been frittering my time away, this is not exactly true.
There has been sewing, mostly simple.
Two cross covers, one in lenten purple, one in holy week red, for my church. These were additions to the set of each made last year, to accommodate a new processional cross.
And one simple garment for me, this a chiffon cardigan to wear to an event. The dress was already in my closet. The cardigan is red silk chiffon and is a fairly simple garment to make. I did use a pattern for this, Marfy 3303 which is one of the "free" patterns included with the purchase of the Marfy 2014/2015 annual catalog. The pattern picture is shown below:
There are two pattern pieces, two front pieces and two back pieces which are seamed at the center. You would think they are rectangles, but they are not, part of the genius of the pattern. Tucks are made at each shoulder, and there is a side seam, but it is in the interior of the cardigan, allowing the edges to float and flutter freely, as if the cardigan were simply a shawl. The clever cutting and seaming allows this to fit and flow on the body nicely, and also to stay in place when one is dancing. Always an advantage in my book.
I also made six baptismal towels, four in March, for Easter Sunday.
And two more two weeks later. Each towel is made by hand from ecclesiastical weight linen, with hand embroidery and hand hemmed. The entire process takes me somewhere between 8 to 13 hours, the variation depending mostly on the baby's name. the shortest of these took me 8 1/2 hours, and the longest slightly over 12, or somewhat over 70 hours total for the six towels, but less than 80 hours. I love doing this, and I am sure I could find a faster way, but at the moment this is still a labor of love.
There has been some knitting progress, but nothing has been completed. I am still working on the ribbon cardigan. As much as I love both knitting and ironing, I find that this project tests my patience. I may like to iron but ironing yards upon yards of rayon ribbon flat is tedious at best. I have just finished ironing the third 100-yard skein of ribbon. I need to wind it on a spindle, after which I can knit another section of the sweater. The knitting itself is also slow, fun, but slow. There have been evenings in the past month where one row of the twisted basketweave stitch is all I can accomplish of an evening. Of course, the body of this cardigan is being knit in one piece, so the rows are not short. Sometimes self-justification is all that keeps us going. I know that I will love this cardigan. I love the fabric that I am creating. But it will be a long time before I take on another ribbon sweater. I will be happy if I have finished this by fall, which is, realistically, as soon as I would wear this sweater anyway.
Greater progress has been made with "Murder of Crows". I finished the body of the sweater and have picked up the first sleeve. This too will be a fall sweater, although there are still early mornings in the garden which would be cool enough to wear this sweater, were it finished. I really like the way this sweater is turning out and knitting it has reminded me that, as much as I love complicated texture and color work, patterns that require thought, it is also very good to have a simple mindless project on the needles. Pardon the dark photo -- an unblocked sweater on a dark background, taken on a deeply cloudy day.
