pillows
A few things I learned while making the Hourglass Pillows pattern. Actually I was following #1, until the making of the pillow, which has reinforced it for me.
1. Keep a pair of tweezers in your sewing kit. They are small and it is annoying to go grab them from the bathroom. Cheap tweezers probably work fine, I’m using an old $5 drugstore pair.
2. When trying to decide between the 3″ doll/upholstery needle and the 5″ long doll needle to be used for tufting pillows pick the 5″. And grab a leather thimble while you are at the store.
3. Along those same notes, don’t try to attach said needles when your hands are sweaty. The needle will slip from your grip (maybe not if you have that leather thimble, I wouldn’t know). It takes a good amount of force to push through 2 layers of fabric and 8 layers of interfacing and you don’t have much leverage with several inches of batting in between those various layers.
4. If you try to simplify the method of attaching the buttons to the pillow you might just break the thread, even the heavy duty stuff.
5. When you tie the thread to the first button shank leave a tail long enough to work with later on. It is very hard to tie a single piece of thread into a knot on a button shank once said button is pulled close into the pillow. It is much easier to tie one thread to another – several times.
And now I have two new pretty pillows. I’m not sure if they will live in the living room or on the office futon yet, but yeah for pretty pillows. And thank you Amy Butler for offering the pattern for free. And thank you random person at the fabric store for suggesting her orange Bella fabric – I’m loving it more every time I look at it. Actually I often love large scale prints but shy away from using them. I was glad I bought extra fabric because I ended up fussy cutting the Bella fabric. Fussy cutting is a quilting term (my mom explained it to me last time I visited her) that I’m now completely failing to word a concise explanation. Basically instead of maximizing fabric you think about framing designs within the pattern piece, so you don’t say, cut off the bird’s head when you stitch up your item. I did good on one pillow and not so good on the other.
Just a warning, I did end up with a slight problem with the pattern piece for the front of the pillow. I think what happened is that it had a seam allowance added to the long edge and when you stitch it up your pieced square is about 1″ bigger than your pillow back. I ended up cutting a 17″ square piece of tracing paper, lined it up on my pillow front and trimming the edges before stitching the front to the back. Hmm, maybe I should try making another hourglass pillow with the mods I think should be made before declaring such an error? Or I can mention it and maybe, eventually get around to trying my mod. I know I would have felt better had I found someone mention it when I did my search for this issue.
Anna Tunic – Not a finished object
I put my Anna Tunic in a time out. Earlier this year I had measured myself and few spots on the pattern (hips) and traced the pattern onto some nice interfacing, easing the pattern into a larger size from the waist to hips. A month or so ago I cut out the Anna Tunic and then a couple weeks ago I sewed it up. Unfortunately you don’t really get to try on the tunic until the main body has been sewn to the yoke, and at that point I’d done a lot of clipping to get the yoke to lie smoothly once you sew the body to it (rounded curves and all) and so when I finally tried it on, after ironing the edge under on the yoke facing, I discovered that it was 1) too tight under my arms, 2) just a tad too big in the yoke width (in a knitted garment fitting workshop I learned my shoulders are just slightly narrower than average), 3) of course there was the fact that the tunic length (did I remember to make the petite adjustment?) was almost mini-dress length on me, and 4) the belt when tied still hangs to my knees.
Frustrated, I moved on to the flower. Bad idea. I’m not a fan of gathering via basting stitches, and gathering that long of a strip was just ugh – I let it sit on the craft table for a week once I’d finally gotten the gathers looking okay only to discover that I was supposed to iron it in half with the wrong sides together before gathering it. After fighting to fold a 3 foot gathered strip of 2″ wide fabric for some time I finally pulled all the gathering stitches out and shoved the strip in my scrap box – I wasn’t even sure I’d wear the tunic, why bother with the matching flower.
Today, I started poking around the Sew Mama Sew forums and found an Anna Tunic review, and discover that while it is given a glowing review, the tunic fits the reviewer/model at the underarms in a similar way as it fits me. And via the SMS forums I manage to check the flickr photos tagged with annatunic. When they show the finished object on people it fits similarly on most of them too. With this new revelation I think I can take the Anna Tunic out of time out and finish it up. It isn’t perfect. But I think it will be wearable. And at the absolute worst, I wear it once and cut up the fabric for another purpose. I do plan on retracing the pattern with some modifications before I try sewing another one.
Mods to make:
- lower armhole
- decrease yoke width by a smidge
- shorten length
- shorten belt before cutting out
Sewing
I’ve had a bit of knitters block the last couple weeks. I’ve been knitting here and there, but nothing really feels like it is getting done. However I have been sewing. A couple Friday’s ago I bunkered down and traced one pattern, then cut it out, and then cut out another pattern while I was at it (both use pink thread so it seemed prudent). The new office-craft room set up works pretty well for working with a couple yards of folded 44″ wide fabric. And yes, I’m messy when I work. That would be the Anna Tunic being cut out, I bought the pattern and “wearable muslin” fabric shortly after the pattern came out and it had been sitting in my to do pile for way too long. Months ago I traced the pattern onto some spare sew-in interfacing, making adjustments for my pear shape (but now I don’t recall if I made a petite length adjustment). Then, it sat for another two weeks before I managed to sew it up. Right now I am nearly done and finally at the point where I can try it on (it only took like 4 -2 hour sewing session). And I discovered that the armholes are just a bit short. It is wearable, but I’m not sure it is comfortable so I have hit a wall. The yoke is basted in place just waiting for me to top-stitch it (originally I was going to hand-sew it, but now, not so much), stitch the buttons on the back and hem it. Currently the tunic is also really long on me – about the length of the mini-dress as shown on the pattern envelope.
Another long awaited sewing project is another pair of Hello Kitty pajama pants. IIRC the pink HK fabric was originally going to be my mom’s pants, but now that my sister is no longer in her anti-pink stage, and since she wasn’t going to be able to wear the blue HK pants we originally cut out for her, I made her pair in pink. I started with the pajama pant pattern we bought for my mom, and taking a cue from the knitting world decided to lay a pair of nicely fitting pj pants on top the pattern for comparison. My sister and I are the same height so I figured this would work.
You might notice the significant extra length at the bottom. And I had already taken out 1″ in length in the hip/crotch area. Do you notice the two parallel creases a few inches from the B&W HK print pant hem? That is what the petite-adjustment looked like, it was 2 inches. I marked the hemline on the pants and measured to find the difference.
then 
I drew new lines perpendicular to the grain that were 4″ apart – resulting in a 2″ deep fold instead of a 1″ deep fold. And finally I traced the pattern onto new white tracing paper (out of extra interfacing) and repeated the process for the other pant pattern piece. The second time went much more quickly since I just had to measure what I did on the first pattern and repeat the folds in the same places. The pants are sewn up (hem and all) and waiting for me to insert some elastic (it took a couple weeks to find my sister and mom at home at the same time so I could get her waist measurement).
Once I had the oomph of accomplishment of cutting out two patterns I went on to create this bag that has been dancing in my head ever since I saw a similar bag in a Japanese crafting book. I originally bought the brown paisley fabric to become a set of pillows for my living room, but alas due to a badly folded bolt my 1 yard piece ended up parallelogram shaped and just short of enough fabric for my pillows. Then I feel out of love with it and it had been sitting in my stash almost two years. But I thought, it just might work as the purse, (also it was one of the few pieces of significant size that I didn’t already have intended for specific projects), a second piece of fabric that never managed to be made into its intended project (the HK Quilt) became the lining, and my added pocket (note to designers: bags need pockets). Of course since this bag is just two pieces of fabric gathered onto wooden handles it doesn’t really stand up on its own or have any structure or security. (I was lazy and daring/stupid and used my zipper foot to machine sew the bag onto the handles, I nearly sewed through my finger in the process). So I am using it for a project bag, that is my elenka that you see in there.
Overwhelmed
Too much heat, followed by marathon “hello I can cook again” temperatures, followed by a camping trip followed by Sock Summit (the last two in the same weekend) have left me overwhelmed. I feel like I should blog, I’m certainly behind. I have so much to say I can’t manage to organize any of it. I have to finish a certain little girl’s birthday dress, except it isn’t done and there is no way it will get there in time, so I guess it will be a late present. I have piles of crafting stuff all over the office-craft room and it so isn’t ready for a show and tell that I’d like to do (plus the handful of projects that I think would make the space feel “done”). But all I really want to do is sit and knit. Which is at least useful on the birthday dress front, except then I get up to do laundry or dishes or water the plants I keep nearly killing or read a few more things in my RSS feeds.
So I will jump in with this. I went to Sock Summit. I am a lucky lucky girl. I even managed to take a class on my class-wish-list and make it to the luminary panel (oh wow). But I didn’t buy any yarn, which I’m now sort of regretting, but there will be more yarn, there will be more opportunities and I have plenty to keep me busy at home as-is. I bought a couple cardboard tube sock-in-progress dpn protectors (sadly they are very pretty and I didn’t see any pretty versions in the marketplace) and cute/witty pins for my knitting bag. TheHusband has declared that my bag is like a hippie car covered in bumper stickers (I always sort of had a soft spot for cars with oodles of bumper stickers even though I don’t want any stickers on my car at all).
And I won an afghan even though I never win anything. See, Larissa Brown of Knitalong organized (did someone else, I’m fuzzy on that?) a barn-raising quilt square along (7.5″ squares made center out from sock yarn) and managed to put together 11 blankets to benefit Doctors Without Borders. I actually stopped by and helped sew up a few squares (including one whole strip on the blanket I won, which I didn’t realize until I got home and was taking notes on all the knitters who worked on this blanket). After I helped sew up the squares, I was beginning to itch to make my own but now I don’t have to (even though I still sort of want to, it has now been pushed to the bottom of the “maybe someday” list). However I am contemplating knitting a border around the afghan, but I haven’t really decided yet – it is a back burner project for now. It is beautiful. I have a less pretty, but straight-on picture in which I will note where each square came from save a couple squares that either never had tags or the tags had fallen off.
size matters
Both of the above partial skirts are made from one skein of cotton-ease, the same number of cast-on stitches and the same number of decrease rounds (two, though technically the top skirt is one round away from the 2nd decrease round). The only difference is that the top skirt was knit on a US 8 needle and the bottom skirt was knit on a US 7 needle. The top skirt has 34 rows and is about 40 1/2″ in diameter unstretched while the bottom skirt has 40 rows and is about 37″ in diameter unstretched.
Knitters talk a lot about gauge and swatches. Some knitters are firm swatchers and others like to proclaim that they never swatch and it always turns out okay in the end. I fall somewhere in between, sometimes I swatch obsessively (like I did for my FLS sweater) using up a full skein before making my decision on needle size, sometimes I don’t swatch at all. If you are a new knitter and you hear someone say, “I rarely do a gauge swatch and my projects always come out fine” don’t believe them. Or at least question whether their opinion of “just fine” is the same as your opinion of “just fine”. My lack of actual swatching for Elenka cost me over 4″ in skirt diameter and 2 weeks of knitting time.
Not swatching for something that starts out by casting on 204 stitches was a bad mistake. As a rule, IMO, the smaller the project the less you need to worry about gauge. Also, certain projects are more forgiving: bags and non-wearable items are particularly forgiving, small diameter pieces like socks, gloves and hats are also forgiving. Of course those small diameter pieces are sometimes uncomfortable if the fit is wrong – and why put all that time into a hand knit only to have a bad fit?
When I started working on Elenka, I consulted older swatches I had made about a year ago to pick my needle size. I also used the knowledge that lately I had been going down a needle size for many of my projects. I figured the fit of a loose fitting dress for a young girl was flexible, I couldn’t be too off. But I was wrong. When I last wrote about Elenka I was in the middle of the 2nd of 3 skeins. When I measured it I realized the skirt diameter was significantly smaller than the size I was supposed to be knitting. I had a couple options, a) keep knitting and find a new, smaller recipient and b) swatch again to get gauge and reknit for the intended recipient. So I set the first Elenka aside, and swatched on a larger needle in-the-round and was almost spot-on gauge that time, more like 4 1/4″ for 17 stitches in stockinette instead of the 4″ for 17 stitches required. And so once I had the right needle (I only had a 16″ circ on hand for swatching) I cast on again, using that 3rd skein. I just finished up one skein on the size 8 and put both partial-skirts on enough needle cable (thank you 40″ circs) to lay them out flat and compare the size and drape of each. I’m going to stick with the US 8 this time. The US 7 worked piece is smaller, stiffer and heavier while the US 8 worked piece is bigger, drapes nicely and feels lighter (even though I’m handling both pieces knit with the same amount of yarn). Oddly enough my current measurements say I am knitting tighter than I did on my gauge swatch but I’m still happy with the resulting fabric – and sometimes liking the resulting fabric is more important than gauge – but it does require thinking more about the math side of the pattern.
goodies
I went ahead and made another swatch with that ball of yellow cotton-ease on US 8s in-the-round. And this time my pre-wash stitch gauge was spot on. But I couldn’t find the right length circ. Instead of driving all over town looking for one needle I ended up putting in a Knit Picks order (woo, book sale) and grabbed a couple more of their interchangable needles, and oh, hey free shipping, I might as well try a couple skeins of yarn while I’m at it. Today I got the package. Woo goodies! In addition to three needles (US4 and US8 harmony tips, a 24″ cable set, a 40″ cable set and one fixed 40″ US1 harmony), and the yarn you can see, I also got Custom Knits (wondering why I waited so long, though who knows when I’ll manage to cast-on for a project from this book) and The Harmony Guide: Cables and Arans.
While I was waiting for that order I went ahead and finished the first Marigold Sock. I hemmed and hawed about turning them into knee socks for like a month before I decided to just finish the sock, this way I have a small chance of completing my annual pair of socks. And I cast-on (5 times, darn long-tail cast-on) for my sassymetrical. I don’t think I’ve been knitting very much lately but I still managed to get through a skein in just over a week. One skein gave me about 4″ in length. I don’t feel experienced enough to say I will have enough yarn but I am still hopeful since the original measures about 12″ neckline to hem.
stuck at swatching
The February Lady Sweater is still waiting to be blocked, at least I have some Euculan now. Since then I’ve worked on my marigold sock (almost done with sock #1) and swatching for a few projects.
Too much swatching. As much as I hate it I tend to get a little obsessive about it every since last summer’s sleeve fiasco on the Peapod Baby Sweater (in short, I had to knit two new sleeves since the first two didn’t fit the sleeve hole). I started by swatching with Berroco Comfort worsted weight first on a US 7 and then on a US 6 (see the dividing garter ridge?). It will eventually become a hat for a friend of mine (I think the hat IOU is about 10 months old at this point).
Then I dug into making a nice big swatch of Classic Elite Flame to help me decide between making Emerald Seas and Sassymetrical. That is actually the 2nd swatch of Flame, first I enthusiastically cast-on for a 12″+ wide swatch, two inches and four days later I lamented that I could have been done by now, ripped it, wound it and re-cast-on. This time the swatch turned out to be about 8″ wide (it used up half of my skein – which will probably be useful info at some point). Two weeks later I finally blocked the swatch and measured again. My gauge isn’t exact, but after some number crunching I decided it was close enough. Hopefully this weekend I will get around to casting on for Sassymetrical.
And the two black swatches Lion Brand Cotton-ease, they are from last summer, probably no longer entirely accurate, but provided a good jumping off point (one on a US 10, the other on a US 8). The yellow is also Cotton-ease, it was a swatch done in US 6, but that turned out to be too many stitches per inch for the intended project. I was going to re-swatch (just a little obsessive) on a US 7 but then decided I had a round about idea of what my gauge would be and just jumped into the project.
That would be the beginnings of Elenka. I thought it was cute, but didn’t have intentions of knitting it right away. Then I found LB Cotton-ease for a great price, so I bought just enough of the hot pink for my pink and purple loving S. And since S just became a big sister I decided it was time I knit for her again. Surprisingly I managed to get through the first skein in one week -that is good progress for me, but sadly that pile of yarn just above it is what I’ve been tinking all week. Of course I just measured it and I think I’m farther off on gauge than what I thought I’d be. Drats – the bottom of the skirt is measuring at 40″ instead of 44″… maybe I’ll have to knit that US 7 swatch after all.
5 years ago, more and less
Christmas of 2003 my mother-in-law gave me a “learn to knit” gift and I still look back quite fondly on that gift (even though it turns out I don’t like knitting on 14″ straight aluminum needles; she was not a knitter and 14″ straight needles are really quite iconic, and therefore quite understandable). I spent the first 6 months or so just trying to figure things out. Finally by that summer I was successfully knitting rectangles and I had a goal of knitting a hat for my boss, who was expecting her first baby. I don’t quite remember how long the pattern hunt was or when I discovered knitting in the round, but the first hat (and I believe my first decreases) resulted in a misshapen hat that only seemed to fit Dog. According to the file this was taken November 10, 2004.
Looking back at this picture (I recently added all my old photos from computer #1 and computer #2 to my current computer #3) I realized that it really wasn’t so bad at all. Sure it was too big around and too short, but it was just a test-knit to see if I could manage to do decreases and knit a good gift. The problem, that I was not about to document at that time, was the seaming. The pattern instructions went something like, “and seam the hat.” I’m pretty sure the book itself didn’t have an example of the mattress stitch and now I’m not sure why I didn’t check Knitty (turns out their great Mattress Stitch article was published in the Spring 2004 issue) or Knittinghelp.com – but the end result was that I never made a hat for my boss’s baby and I don’t have evidence of another knitted project until December 2005 (IIRC).
I’m not sure when I started my first scarf, though I know at that point I had bought the Stitch ‘n Bitch book, because I based my scarf on their simple garter stitch scarf. It was probably in early fall of 2005. I had a new winter coat and wanted a scarf to go with it, I found this lovely chenille-esque yarn at Michael’s in the right shade of green (Lion Brand Suede) and cast on. I quickly grew bored, I do remember it was rather laborious to move it stitch along, what with my new knitters snug dear god don’t let these stitches fall off the needles tight tension and the super grippy nature of the yarn. And the project did not grow at all and I quickly lost interest and decided my brown velvet scarf worked just fine. Finally we took a road trip in early December and I forced myself to work on the scarf, so between 6 hours in the car and an evening playing clue my scarf went from “too short” to “too long” suddenly it was slightly taller than me. I was incredibly happy with it though (failing to notice the wonky stitches and random loose stitches) and wore that scarf for two winters before retiring it. In early 2008 I was doing some closet cleaning and decided that instead of hanging on to it forever I’d just take a few pictures and get rid of the scarf. By the time I stopped using the scarf it had grown from slightly taller than to to twice my height!
Overwhelming
I have 349 photos from the week my brother came to visit me for his summer vacation, I’m trying to weed out the duplicates and fuzzy out of focus stuff (also my goofy shoes shots). Hopefully by the end of the week I will get them sorted into a mini-collage of the highlights. While I played tour guide, I wore my complete (but yet to be washed/blocked) February Lady Sweater out one rainy day. At one point during the day I looked down and realized that I had made 3 of the things I wore that day (sweater, purse and skirt), how cool is that? I had to take a picture.
Sea Baby
I’ve had two skeins of Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton in my stash for a couple years now. I bought it at a going out of business sale before I knew that 300 yards of worsted weight yarn isn’t a great amount for things, and cotton isn’t a great fiber for scarves when you live where it gets wet. But I also bought it because I had been considering using it for a sweater and buying one skein seemed sillier and at 40% off I was lucky to get two skeins in the same color and dye lot. Luckily if you look around and have friends popping out babies like crazy (this is year two of knowing at least half a dozen pregnant women) you can find baby sweaters that don’t take much yarn. But you have to be quick since getting a sweater out of less than 300 yards of worsted means knitting a smaller size and smaller sizes, I have heard, are notorious for being worn once before they are outgrown. Those growing babies, the nerve of them 
Anyways. I came across this Debbie Bliss baby jacket pattern on Ravelry and it seemed like just the thing for a quick knit (and a swatchless knit for the lazy). I decided to make the 3-6 month size which called for 400 yards of aran weight yarn. I thought worst comes to worst I buy a coordinating skein of BSA dyed cotton for the ribbing but my LYS knit night pals suggested waiting until I get to the ribbing as (IIRC) Debbie Bliss patterns can be overly cautious with the yardage requirements. I’m glad I waited to purchase that 3rd skein, because I still have 33 grams left (of course the sweater weighs in at 162 grams so either might be up to 5 grams off measurement).
I didn’t bother swatching (according to my Rav notes I did, but I think it wasn’t for this project), since the 3 month size starts with a cast-on of 48 stitches, and just decided if it looked off I’d rip it. The knitting was quick for me, this took me about 3 weeks (we will ignore the fact that it has been over a month for posting and I’ve yet to sew on the snaps). And at 28 cm wide and 25 cm from waist to shoulder it is within the realm of the pattern’s measurements (25.5 cm at chest and 25 cm length). I still haven’t measured it to check my gauge, but that number would be fairly useless since I’ve already forgotten which needle I used (it was a US 7, but was it KP nickle or Bryspun? wait, a WIP picture saved the day, I used my KP Options nickle needle). 16 1/2 stitches for every 4″ (24 rows for every 4″) of course this gauge measurement was taken the lazy method (the sweater still hasn’t been washed) and I just set the tape on the sweater and started counting, no precise needles in place or anything. Anyway, this was a fun quick knit in soft and luscious yarn (a tad expensive, but not bad for a 2 skein project) and hopefully I’ll soon figure out which wee one will best fit in the sweater.
