Yellow FIFA Sweater

It all started with my new noise cancelling wireless headphones. This autumn I've been obsessed with listening to audiobooks during my daily walks, and even on my trips downtown. The weather this autumn was very mild, even warm and if i needed a hat, it was my cap to shade my eyes from the sun. 

And then came late November and it became too cold to walk in the park for an hour, often longer, without a warm hat. The headphones work over a hat, but not as effectively as directly on the ears. So, faced with my tiny problem, and as stupid as it sounds, I googled images of hats and headphones and came upon this picture of Selena Gomez from Only Murders in The Building. I was absolutely fascinated by her look with the yellow hat and the yellow sweater. Probably this is the inspiration I've been waiting for all year long, for I immediately started searching for suitable yellow yarn and planning a similar look.

Just then the sales for Black Friday were happening and I settled upon a sale offer from a Bulgarian yarn company, that I have used before - Performance yarn. The yarn I bought is supposed to be 100% merino of fine quality, 250 m / 100 g - exactly in the range of thickness I was shopping for and in a delightful mustard yellow color. 

Even with the sweet 20% off from the BF sale, the yarn was expensive, within the price range of the Italian bobbin merinos I've been buying these last years. Maybe I've been spoilt, but the quality of the yarn did not meet my expectations, given its price, so I won't be shopping any time soon from this company.

But I cast on my sweater anyway. I wasn't planning it as a FIFA World Cup sweater, I even thought of boycotting the football cup because of Qatar's questionable hosting, but football is football and I simply couldn't miss the emotions I get from following the matches every four years. And thus for two weeks now I've been watching the games and knitting my yellow FIFA sweater.

The inspiration sweater is a machine knitted raglan fisherman rib sweater. I'm knitting mine in half-fisherman rib and so far I've done the front and the back up to the armholes and this evening, while my beloved Spain lost to Morocco :(((, I cast on one of the sleeves. I plan to knit the two sleeves up to the armholes as well and then I'll decide whether to continue the sweater raglan or with separate sleeves.

I'm also playing with the idea of adding small zippers at the hem sides of the sweater, but I'll think about it when I come to that AND if I can find suitable zippers. I hope I'll be able to finish the sweater till the end of the World Cup and if I have enough remaining yarn, I plan to knit the matching hat too.

Wine Red Hybrid Blouse

When I went fabric shopping a few days ago I came upon this wine red rib knit and immediately fell in love with the color - it is so much me. I bought about 1.2 m with no particular idea for a pattern, but such fabric length is usually sufficient for a simple longsleeve for me.

However, it turned out that the fabric is narrower than the usual 1.4 m. And as it is rib knit and very plastic and fluid, I wanted something not very tailored. But not too oversized too - I have an oversized RTW rib knit sweater, which I never wear. So, after much deliberation, I decided on Plantain. It is a simple free T-shirt pattern, fitted around the bust and slightly flaring at the hips. 

Plantain has a deep scoop neck, but from the very beginning I knew I wanted screw neck and, if possible, something like a turtleneck. So I also took out my Burda #112 10/2021 turtle neck top with bishop sleeves and modeled the neck of the front after the Burda blouse. Once I cut the front and the back, I decided that I didn't actually want 3/4 sleeves, like in the Plantain. However, I did not have a long enough piece of fabric for two normal size sleeves. 

And then I got the brilliant idea to make the sleeves like in the Burda pattern - bishop sleeves with long cuffs. I drafted a new sleeve, using the upper part of the Plantain sleeve, to fit the armhole of the body, but the lower part is from the Burda pattern. I cut the sleeves as long as I could fit them on my fabric and drafted the cuffs and the neckpiece from the last remnants of the fabric. The neckpiece is twice as shorter as I would have preferred it, but that was all the fabric I was left with. In the end I was able to use up the entire piece of fabric with just the tiniest cuts and scraps left - I feel weirdly über-satisfied when I am able to do this :)

Once I assembled the blouse, I became convinced that the bishop sleeves were actually its best feature - otherwise it would have looked too plain and pedestrian. I am definitely keeping the idea in mind and I want at least one more blouse with such sleeves.

Pattern: Plantain by Deer & Doe (body) and  Burda #112 10/2021

Size: 34, shortened, modified neck and sleeves

Fabric: polycotton rib knit, 115 cm

Time to make: 2 days

Chocolate Fisherman Sweater

It's been longer than a year since I showed you a finished sweater on my blog! I simply lost my knitting mojo and still haven't completely found it back. As I've noticed before, I am very much a one-hobby-at-a-time person, so it's now sewing, fabric shopping, pattern piling and very little yarn related creations.

Still, a couple of years ago I dyed three skeins of viscose yarn for my mother and gifted them to her to make a sweater. She did knit about half of the sweater, but her gauge was off and the sweater was coming out small and narrow. She was disheartened and gave me back the yarn to make something out of it.

And here it is - I unraveled her knitting and made a new sweater following my own imagination and calculations.

The stitch texture is 1x1 rib and half fisherman rib and the form is straight up to the underarms, with slight increase for the shoulders and slanted shoulders. The sleeves are knitted separately and sewn to the arm openings.

I made the ribbing for the back just slightly longer than the front and left the sides open. The three skeins were hand dyed and had variations in color, which are visible (less in real life, I think), but nothing too dramatic.

As I had only 300 g and absolutely no recourse if I ran out of yarn, I had to calculate very carefully the length of the sweater and I even had to unravel a couple of centimeters from the front under the armholes, as in the course of the knitting it became evident that the yarn wouldn't suffice for my initially planned length.

As I have made the sweater for my mother, it is a bit big on me, but I hope it will fit her right, as she is a larger size.

 

Pattern: Fisherman Sweater (personal pattern)

Yarn: Alize Puffy Fine, 100% viscose, 300 g

Needle: 3 mm

Time to knit: 3 months

A domestic rabbit, one of four, some guy had taken out for a walk in the park last Friday, when we took these pictures :)

Work In Progress: Chocolate Sweater

A sneak peek in my other project bag :)

This is a work-in-progress, a sweater, actually - I hadn't knitted sweaters this year since early February, when I finished my Chaika. 

The yarn is my own dye work, I have only three balls, 100 g each and the yarn has been long discontinued, so I have to make do with what I have. That is why I am knitting all parts simultaneously, keeping track of the amount of yarn I am left. The pattern is my own design, a simple boxy thing with grown slanting shoulders and added sleeves without sleeve caps.

Because the yarn is hand-dyed, as hard as I tried, I couldn't make it identical and the three skeins came out in different shades. It shows, less in real life than under the flashlight of the camera. Anyhow, I've decided I'll knit it up and live with the differences. I could have alternated skeins, but not only alternating is difficult and slow, but it also creates stripes and I was not sure I would have liked that either.

I have only one cast off element - one of the sleeves and the front is probably long enough up to the underarms. I hope I'll be able to finish it till the end of the year, but we'll see, I have many other ongoing projects as well.

And another sneak peek - I finished my skirt yesterday. Today was a rather busy, plus cold and wet day, but I hope to be able to take a few modeled pictures of it tomorrow. So don't forget to check it out :)

Navy Sweater for Husband

Hot off the sewing machine and the overlocker - a new sweater for my husband, which I only finished  last night.

The pattern is from KnipMode 05 / 2020, a Dutch sewing magazine, which has a Russian translation and I buy single patterns from it from time to time from the online shop of burda.ru. The sizing of KnipMode is a bit different from that of Burda, as they design for taller and more robust male figures, which suits my husband well.

My husband is size 52 according to their table, but I cut the sweater in size 50, as I read that it was a bit oversized. What I have found is that the sweater does not have a good balance of proportions - the width of the body is OK, but the sleeves are narrow and the neckline is too wide, even after I added a broader neckpiece to it.

My first finishing of a neckline with a Petersham ribbon - I love it!, it looks so clean and professional :) I'll definitely continue using this technique for finishing the necklines of men's sweaters and hoodies.

Instead of the decorative details, suggested by the pattern, I added two horizontal grey stripes to the front to bring together the grey ribbing of the neck, sleeves and hem. I am pretty pleased with the overall look.

Pattern: Sweater #4 from KnipMode 05 / 2020

Size: 50

Fabric: navy cotton double knit, grey cotton ribbing

Time to make: 4 days

 

Tweed Chaika

I finished one more sweater out of Natural Fantasy Condor - Italian bobbin tweed I was gifted by a FB friend. Instead of making another Hayward or other plain color stockinette sweater, I decided to combine the pink tweed with a remnant of the plum Natural Fantasy Condor tweed I used for this hoodie and make another Chaika. 

Chaika (sea gull) is a pattern recipe by Olga Kondratieva. Two years ago I knitted it for the first time for Gaby and it is one of her favourites, mainly due to the soft and warm merino yarn I used for hers. 

The pattern recipe is very easy to calculate and follow and the striped part is quite addictive to knit. I must admit I enjoyed knitting this sweater though I do not consider it a must-have and wouldn't have made it had I not had the gifted yarn - just now I have too many of these sweaters and no place to wear them - I prefer T-shirts at home.

Some technical details about the sweater. I calculated the yoke with little positive ease and knit it in the round, casting on with long-tail cast on and rolled hem at the neck. After the split for the body and the sleeves I shaped the V with short rows on every 3 stitches, until I reached the central stitch. meanwhile I slightly A-shaped the body by adding increases to the sides every 5 cm of length.

I hemmed the body with 2x2 split rib, which I cast off with purl over purls and knit over knits, to keep the hems elastic and not too wavy.

I knit the sleeves in the round, gradually decreasing every 9th round. Then I finished them with long 2x2 ribs and I-cord bind off.

 

Pattern: Chaika, based on Olga Kondratyeva's recipe

Yarn: Natural Fantasy Condor, 200g total

Yarn Content: 62% wool, 6% angora, 10% silk, 4% modal, 18% polyamide, 450 m / 100 g

Needle: 3.25 mm body, 3 mm hems

Time to knit: almost two months with other projects in between

As promised, winter returned with -16C and heavy snow. Last week I was out in a short-sleeved T-shirt and just a few days later it was freezing cold and sweater weather again. Luckily, the temperatures are expected to rise again next week. I think I had enough snow this year, so I'll be quite happy to see it melt and never come back until next winter :)

Black Grasser T-Shirt

My latest most favourite long sleeve! It is so soft, so warm, I don't want to take it off, ever :)

Recently I became intrigued by another Russian sewing pattern company - Grasser. They have a range of patterns in various sizes AND HEIGHTS, and their cut looks to me interesting and with a more modern vibe. I bought two patterns - a hoodie and a cowl neck sweater and in the end made their free pattern - the T-shirt :)

I had a piece of very soft and drapey brushed cotton double knit and I bought the cowl sweater pattern specifically for it, as the fabric had the exact characteristics for that sweater. However, after I assembled the pattern, I took out and measured my piece of fabric only to find out that it was smaller than I had remembered it - only 62 cm long, so it was only half of what was needed for the sweater. Still, it was a very nice piece of fabric and I was sure I could make something out of it!

And as I still wanted to test the new company, I downloaded their free T-shirt pattern. I chose size 40 (xs) based on my bust measurement and height 158-164 cm and I cut the top without any corrections for height as I usually have to do - such a relief! The pieces barely fit my narrow fabric and I had to make the neckband out of two pieces, as I didn't want to shorten the sleeves or the body and there was just not enough fabric to spare for the band. My only modification to the pattern - I made the neckband higher. I've never been a fan of turtle neck sweaters, but I like the high neck on this one and I think it fits the overall style of this long sleeve.

Pattern: Free T-shirt by Grasser

Size: 40 height 158-164 cm

Fabric: brushed double knit, cotton, 62 cm

Thread: black polyester

Time to make: 1 day

 

Pictures from my phone from our walk through the center of the city today on a bleak January Sunday.

Blouse Burda 129 01 / 2011

I hadn't sewn for three weeks, something unusual for me lately, probably because I was busy knitting. I've noticed that I am a serial hobbyist - if I'm really in the mood for a certain craft, I'm all in and don't have the energy and mojo for other crafts. However, as my piles of fabric keep growing (you know, buying craft supplies is a different hobby :))), I felt an urge to justify my purchases with some dressmaking. And I also had my new stretch twin needles arrive from far-away China and I hadn't tested them yet - so I made a new blouse.

This is one of the Burda patterns for knits I bought last month - blouse 129 from Burdastyle 01 / 2011. The pattern features an interesting square shaped neckline, formed by the elongated back. This piece of the back, which connects with the shorter front, creates the illusion of a bolero and it gave me the idea to color block the pattern - thus I could utilize fabric remnants and have a unique blouse - win win in my book.

For this fotosession I decided to try the culottes look I see everywhere. Erh, not sure I'm the culottes gal, not quite sold on the look.

To create the bolero effect I cut the back straight 5 cm below the arm opening and made the lower part in purple and the upper part in black. In the original design the front has a folded facing, but I decided to omit it - my purple fabric is pretty stable, with very little stretch and definitely did not need any facings. Instead I finished the straight neck line with a band out of the black fabric, thus bringing the two color blocks together.

If I make this pattern again, I will reduce the available smallest size 36 to 34, as I am quite petite and Burda 36 size is a bit big on me in my upper part. I did reduce the width of the front neckline by 2 cm and raised it by 1.5 cm and it is still a bit gaping, so evidently some additional decreasing is still needed.

The back and the front black parts connect under the arms. To finish the neckline I cut 1.5 cm seam allowance, overlocked it and then folded it and finished it with a twin needle. It is not visible on the black fabric, but next time and especially if I was using lighter fabric I would do the same for the seam on the back - one continuous finishing line with the twin needle to further the illusion of a separate bolero, created by the color blocking.

Pattern: Burda 129 01/2011

Fabric: cotton knits, remnants from other projects

Size: 36, modified

Time to make: 2 days