cosmicpluto knits!

more different FO

I’m work work working away at the store for a bunch of days in a row this and next week. I’ve been taking some of my giant tour de fleece bag, and I actually got quite a lot of spinning done today – I really like the woolee winder we’ve got on a wheel there! I’m still thinking that I won’t actually finish spinning it. Maybe I’ll revise to just spinning all the singles, and not include the plying. Did I mention I didn’t actually official sign up for the tour? Just a personal challenge, really.

(Speaking of spinning, I could use some more students for my drop spindle class at lettuce knit August 7 and 14, 6-8 pm. It’s fun! Call me to sign up – 416 203 9970.)

Anyway! Here’s the other FO that was peeking out from that ponchette photo.

I had a hankering the other day to sew up a wrap skirt, and this is what I produced. I didn’t really use a pattern – I started with a circle skirt and sort of forced it (with scissors) to become a wrap skirt. Then I made a waistband in a roundabout manner, my very first buttonhole on the machine, and a quite uneven hem, and I was done. This is what happens when you sew on the fly! I think the next skirt might be from a pattern.

I’m actually quite pleased with how it looks, at least! I really like the fabric – it’s just cotton from Fabricland, but it’s very light. Too light for a single layer skirt, which is why I went with the wrap. I got lots of compliments on it the other night, too. I know the dressform photos are kind of a cop out, but my old tripod can’t handle the dslr! I’ll figure out a way to take full length self portraits somehow – anyone got any tips?

At any rate, you can see it on me in the second photo from Megan’s shower – I gave megan that log cabin blanket she’s holding, knit from my handspun.

The skirt’s a little big; I need to make a second buttonhole a little further back. But then it’ll be perfect! I’m getting into the sewing swing; I want new clothes but don’t really have much in the clothing budget. Hey! Wait! What about all this fabric I’ve been hoarding forever? Could that become clothes?

Now all I have to do is start sewing my own tshirts and I’ll be all set!

box bag, berries and bobbins

Man, I don’t know where my crafting focus has gone these days. Well, I guess I actually DO know, I’m just impatient to get back on track with all my various projects! I’ve been a little all over the place with all my various crafts (sewing, cooking, gardening, spinning, and you know, the knitting) that I haven’t been able to focus well on any particular one, really.

I’ve got all sorts of fabric that’s come into the house…

(knits on the left from Wazoodle, organic cotton and some cotton print on the right from Tonic Living.)

I’ve been picking cherries from the sour cherry tree in my yard, although I haven’t done anything with them yet – I’m thinking pie:

A little bit of knitting, just plugging away on the pink Thermal. I’ve got a very new little cousin that I want to knit stuff for too, but I just haven’t managed to get started yet!

I’m feeling very scattered and unfocused. I’ve decided that this summer I’m going to try to take it easy on myself, although I know I might have some projects coming up that will make that difficult! I’ll be working in the store a lot more over the summer, between megan taking time off to have her baby, and denny going away on a couple fun trips. But one thing seems to be helping me focus? The Tour de Fleece.

When I started spinning today I was feeling a bit defeated by the enormous bag of fibre before me, with only one and a half bobbins spun – but I sat at the wheel for a few hours this afternoon, and have managed to up the count to three full bobbins and a bit of a fourth. I’ve got a couple movies recorded on the DVR, and I’m staying in all this weekend, so spinning here I come! I want to spin all the singles before I ply, but since I don’t have quite so many bobbins, I’ll need to wind them off on the ball winder as I go.

One more thing that I think will help me focus a bit? My new project bag – a super cute box bag by rachel m.! We hung out today and she was lovely enough to gift me one. I think I might start a new pair of socks just to keep them in here.

One more summer plan – more blogging. I’m working on it, really I am!

the dress, the dress

Ooops, I almost forgot to come back and post about it! Usually when I upload photos to Flickr I blog them right away – this time I uploaded photos then ran out of time to blog, time passed…and now here I am.

This dress is AWESOME. It was the first time I made it, and it still only took an hour! Most of that time was cutting and figuring out how things go together.

Just the Facts:
Pattern: Infinity Dress
Fabric: unknown mixed fibres (probably something like cotton/poly/lycra), stretch, $2.99/m from Fabricland, 3.5 m

After reading the entire thread on Craftster about this dress (warning: it’s over 120 pages long!) and seeing all the fantastic versions that people have made, I took the plunge and headed out to my local Fabricland. I found this fabric as a discounted end for just $2.99/m, so it was a great steal. I’ll admit I wasn’t totally sold on the print when I bought it (but hey, it was cheap) but it’s really grown on me and now I love it!

This was my first time sewing with stretch, but it was surprisingly easy – I used my normal machine and zigzag stitch and was just careful not to distort the fabric while sewing. This fabric wasn’t super stretchy or slippery, so everything went quite smoothly. And no hemming, because knit fabric doesn’t fray!

The dress is super simple and is just composed of a skirt, two long straps (each of which is wide enough to cover a boob) and a waistband to finish the back of the skirt. You can make the dress with just one seam if you have enough fabric – I made a circle skirt out of two half-circles, so my dress has two extra seams in it. But this is seriously the easiest, best-fitting, and most flattering dress I’ve ever sewn. Okay, so I haven’t made many dresses, but that’s mostly because when I do and they don’t fit, I get discouraged!

To wear the dress you just pull the skirt on up, however high you want, and use the straps to wrap around you any way you want! For many, many more photos check out that Craftster thread – you can click on “images only” to see just the posts with images (more than ten pages’ worth!). This is definitely my favourite way to wear it, I think, because it’s got some sleeve going on and full coverage in the back.

It’s super comfy too! Ask Dr. Steph, we swapped clothes at knit night this week because she wanted to try it on The straps can be a little fiddly, but it’s really fun to try various ways of putting it on! I’m sure at some point I’ll try actually wearing it out with a more…shall we say risque look.

I love this dress so much, I’m already planning on making more. Starting with one in black…

P.S. Sadly I did not take any photos during WWKIP Day/Stephanie’s Birthday party/Franklin at lettuce knit. But Amy’s got some great ones!

thumbs down, thumbs up

After the success of the top and skirt, I decided it was time to tackle a dress. I’ve made a couple before, but they’ve never really turned out right…and this was no exception.

I used Simplicity 3835 again (the same as for the top), view A. What’s wrong with it?

Well, I laid out all my pieces and started to cut…and then realized that I’d mixed up two of the pieces. I was able to salvage the fabric and cut out the pieces, but the dress ended up a little short as a result (I want things to cover the back of my knees). It hasn’t been hemmed in that photo. The whole cutting out thing should’ve been a sign, maybe.

The sewing went…medium. The sleeves and body were fine, but my darts were a little off from one another and then there was the zipper. Oh, the zipper. The first side went fine, and then the second side didn’t really match. I ripped and resewed three or four times and finally managed to fudge it in, but….not so great.

And then there’s the collar. I should’ve realized it earlier, but it’s really tight. Like, chokey. (You can see if more here.) Sigh. And after all that work in gathering the neckline so it would fit.

I decided to give the dress another try, with my own modifications – a livelier print (Alexander Henry), no zipper, and the neckline from the top, which is just gathered with elastic. Much better. And from start to finish in 2 hours!

I cut the dress a wee bit longer, too (probably 1.5″) so that it would be the right length when hemmed. My darts were much improved, too. It’s a little shapeless, I suppose, but works well with a belt or a fairly structured over-layer (jacket). And of course, it’s super comfy, so that kind of outweighs some other concerns!

So that’s the dress. I think I might stick to skirts and tops for awhile – I find it pretty stressful to sew up a whole dress. But I do have other patterns to try, so I’m sure there’ll be another attempt at some point soon! I’m thinking something with a more structured bodice and flarey-er skirt. We’ll see.

Oh! And I almost forgot – the pattern for my skirt from the last post is Butterick B4136, view A.

Knitting updates will resume shortly!

more with the sewing

Following the success of my Built By Wendy top, I figured next up should be a skirt – I’ve made quite a few skirts, mostly pretty simple ones, some with zippers, some with elastic waists. I had three yards of Chocolate Lollipop “galaxy” print (ordered from Cia’s Palette) ordered just to make a skirt with. I’m a fan of circle skirts, but it turned out that I didn’t really have enough fabric – and I didn’t really feel like messing with letting the skirt hang before hemming, etc.

The next pattern I tried was a yoked one that looked really cute. I cut out all the pattern pieces, but then alas – the skirt pieces didn’t fit on my fabric. Turned out that the fabric was only 42″ wide rather than 45″, so there was just a little chunk of pattern hanging out! So that pattern got shelved as well.

Turns out third time’s a charm!

This one was made from a pattern (can’t remember which at the moment, and the envelope’s two floors downstairs) which has the front and back being made up of three panels each. So since the panels are narrowish, they finally fit on the fabric!

The skirt has a side zipper (which I put on the wrong side by accident) and just a waist facing, which I wasn’t such a fan of. I decided to do my own thing and sewed down the whole facing to the inside, making more of a waistband. My shape is a little bottom-heavy, and I like to wear my skirts fairly low on the hip, so the size 18 that I cut turned out just a bit small for my liking. It’s fine, and the cotton will stretch a bit, but that’s why I usually go with elastic waists!

I didn’t bother to try to match the patterns across the seams – the panels are angled, anyway, and there’s enough going on in the dots so that you really don’t notice it. One thing I did do, though, isn’t even visible from the outside:

I don’t have a serger, and I’m pretty lazy when it comes to sewing (hence the sloppiness that sometimes ensues) so I usually just zigzag stitch along my seam allowances to finish them. With this one, I love the fabric so much that I was compelled to do a little more. When I pressed the seams open (all eight of them) I turned the allowances under by half and pressed those down, then sewed down along each and every one. I could’ve done it as a topstitch-type-thing where the stitching shows on the outside, but I’m too messy a seamstress for that!

Anyway, the skirt turned out really well and I love it. Next up, the dress debacle.

And completely randomly, some food stuff.

I love asparagus. I had a craving for it the other day, went to the fridge and there it was in the drawer! (One of the perks of living with people who buy food, aka, parents.) We usually have it plain, steamed, which I can eat a ton of – but I wanted a little more something, you know? I roasted them up in the toaster oven (I love toaster ovens for these little tasks), dotted with butter and sprinkled with parmesan. It was in at 400 F for probably 10-15 minutes – I tend to follow the “it’s done when you can smell it” formula with stuff like this.

And a lunch from the other day -

I cooked 2 cups (or so) of penne in 2 cups water, 1 cup milk and a pat of butter until the pasta was done and the liquid mostly soaked up, and added frozen peas and some spinach near the end. Once the pasta was done, I mixed in a whole bunch of 6 year old aged white cheddar and a good helping of parmesan, black pepper, and a sprinkle of nutmeg (I love nutmeg). Serves 2, or y’know, one me over the course of the afternoon. Simple, easy, and totally yummy. Mmmm.

Can you tell I’m not afraid of butter and cheese? Hee!

sniffle. guh.

It would seem that I have a touch of the hay fever today. Sniffle, sniffle. Ugh. Just took a Benedryl, in the absence of anything non-drowsy, so we’ll see how long I last before I need a nap! I suppose it isn’t the ideal time to start cutting pieces for a dress, but oh well.

Yes, I’ve actually been sewing!

(Can I say how glad I am that the light has returned? Hurrah for better photos.)

I proclaim my first sewn top a success! Pattern is the fabulously easy and wearable Simplicity 3835, a Built By Wendy pattern that everyone’s been sewing up for ages in blogland. I did the top in size 14, with the slightly longer sleeves of Dress A, minus the sleeve elastic. It fits great and is super comfy – I’m definitely going to be sewing up a few of these for the spring and summer!

The fabric, pictured in my last post, is Chocolate Lollipop “Cartoon Flowers”. A little loud on its own for me, maybe, but with some jeans and punk-ish accessories I think it’ll do me just fine.

Did I mention that it was really easy? Oh, one other thing I did – I cut out a little patch of the fabric, and sewed it to the inside of the back neck so I can tell which way is which.

I think it’s really cute.

Upcoming: more sewing, knitting, rather tardy book reviews, and more. I’m really feeling inspired these days – maybe it’s the return of spring, the snow melting and having my window open. I love it.