Études in Jade

Two quick makes for Gaby out of cotton fabric I was gifted last year. Though the pictures don't show it, the color is very loud jade, which none of us liked much and I've been racking my brains what to make out of it. Then came carol's suggestion to try lekala.co and I was inspired to cut a pair of simple pajama style bottoms out of it for Gaby, to be worn at home.

The pattern is the free pyjamas pants, customized to her measures. I am absolutely blown away by the idea and I'll be definitely trying the site with more interesting and complicated patterns soon. As for this pair of pants, they came quite as advertised,  very easy and straight forward to make, they fit her well as for pajamas, probably just an inch short. I should have checked the length in advance, but I had so firmly decided to try the pattern as is, that I didn't take any of my usual preliminary measurements. There is only one piece of pattern, which is cut twice, no pockets, no waistband. As the front and the back are quite similar, I added a little red tag to the back to make putting them on correctly easier.

As I had some piece of fabric left, I decided to make a little top too. While the color is too loud for dressy pants, she reckoned a little summer top in this color could be wearable.
The pattern I chose is Easy smock top by lovesewingmag.co.uk, a free pattern, which I already made last year. It is another easy pattern, which comes out enormous, but I "hacked" it by adding elastic shearing to the waist. However, my first top was made out of soft cotton gingham, which gathered beautifully, and this jade cotton is much heavier and creates a bit too much volume. I should have reduced the width of the front and the back by at least a total of 8 cm, which I will probably do, if I decide to make this a third time.

Gaby wanted the top to be crop top, so I cut it just above the waist and experimented with the finishing by folding the edge in half and hemming the blouse with the same elastic thread as the shearing above. I was lucky to have a sewing thread in the exact color of the fabric. All my seams are flat felled seams and I did add a little red tag to the back of the blouse too.
I need to find a way to make my own tags real soon!

Burda #101 2/2011 Dress

The last of the things I sewed for Gaby this summer - a sleeveless dress with gathered skirt from one of my favourite Burda issues 02 / 2011. I actually finished the dress a day or two before her leave for Vienna, but we didn't have time to take modeled pictures of it, so here it is in a few flat photos.

The fabric is very thin cotton with beautiful floral print, which suits Gaby very much. However, I chose not to line it and the dress is a bit see through. And I'm not sure if it is the pastel colors or the gathered skirt, but she thought she looked like a kindergarten girl in it, so she chose to leave it behind when packing for her Austrian summer.

I made a few modifications of the pattern - the smallest size is 36 and Gaby is 34, so I downsized it and shortened it by 1 cm above the bust and above the waist. I also chose to place an invisible zipper at the back and not at the side, as is in the pattern.

I'm not very happy with the placement of the zipper, next time I'll put it a little bit lower and leave a place for a hook and eye closure. I've got still about 1.5 m of this fabric and I might try to make another dress out of it, lined and maybe sort of a shift dress. I'm thinking of the Copen dress, but we'll see.

Mitered Square Blanket Finished

Yesterday morning I finished the last stitches of the I-cord border of my mitered square blanket and took the blanket with us to photoshoot it on the meadows near Zlatnite mostove. The blanket is big - 190 cm long and 120 cm wide and taking a decent picture of it does require space :) According to my Ravelry notes, I started the blanket on January 6th last year, so it took me almost a year and a half to finish it, or rather to stop knitting it, as I had been considering it finished for the last month and then continued adding rows and columns of squares to it to enlarge it in length and width. And I could have continued doing so happily, but I ran out of yarn and I didn't want to spend any more money on this project. As Leonardo da Vinci put it - art is never finished, only abandoned (me being cheeky :)))

Although I didn't work on the blanket for long periods of time, it was always there as an easy project to revert to when I was feeling down on a current project or in between projects and I honestly feel somewhat sad and empty-handed having finished it. And for the first time in ages I don't have a WIP, not even an abandoned one - I'll have to think of something quickly, as I seem to have forgotten how to function without my knitting :)

The blanket weighs about 1250 g and is 24 x 15 squares, 35 stitches each. The yarn is YarnArt Jeans, 50% cotton 50% acrylic, about 90% of which is hand dyed. When I started the blanket I had just found cotton dyeing and I wanted to play with a few balls of this cotton acrylic blend I had in my stash. However, while knitting the blanket in winter I found that it was not very warm, not even close to wool warm. In terms of practicality it would be definitely wiser to choose wool, maybe some wool/nylon sock yarn. However, in terms of pleasure to knit and dye I would always choose this soft and easy to care for cotton/acrylic blend.

Pattern: Mitered square blanket
Yarn: YarnArt Jeans, 1250 g, hand dyed
Needle: 3 mm
Time to knit: 1 year 5 months

Purple Christina

A quick photo session of the purple Christina I knitted for my mother. My model Gaby is S and the cardigan is size L, so it is a bit big on her, but still I think it is much better presented on a living person than flat on the bed.

Pattern: Christina by Kim Hargreaves
Yarn: Drops Muscat, 100% cotton, 320 g
Needle: 2.5 mm, 3 mm
Time to knit: 3 weeks

The yarn Drops Muskat is very beautiful, high quality cotton, very durable and with satin shine and it was joy to work with it. My dyeing job turned out well done, I alternated two skeins all over and I believe the final garment is pretty homogeneous in color. I washed all of the knitted parts, some twice and there was not a hint of bleeding, so I'm sure the dye is permanent. All in all - I'm very pleased with this cardigan, I hope it will get lots of wear from my mother this spring and summer.

I am actually so in love with this pattern, that I am tempted to knit another one for Gaby in a color of her choice. To me this is a timeless pattern.
Discretely peeking under the cardigan is Gaby's new shirt I sewed for her last week :)

WIP: Purple Christina

Last year in July I came upon a sale of bright pink Drops Muscat cotton yarn and I grabbed 8 balls of it and overdyed it in black to move the color to variegated dark purple. The yarn was intended for my mother, but as she is not a very keen knitter, she asked me to knit a cardigan for her, using the yarn. Years ago I had knitted two Joys by Kim Hargreaves - one for Gaby and one for my mother and she still wears her Joy with pride and erh, joy :). So what she had in mind was something similar, and my immediate idea was - Christina by the same designer. I love the pattern and I'm a little surprised that it has been forgotten - the last finished Christina on Ravelry is from 2017.

I'm well ahead in my knitting, with one back and two sleeves already done. I've blocked one of the sleeves and what a difference blocking makes to this texture! I can't even imagine how uninformed I was in 2012 - I didn't block my Christina and it shows in the blog pictures. Thankfully now I know better - not only do I block my finished objects, but I try to knit big enough gauge samples and wet block them before taking them into account.

Because the yarn is hand dyed, I alternate skeins, knitting two rows with one and two rows with the other skein. It slows me, but it does make a difference and provides a more smooth transition from skein to skein. The picture below shows the difference in size and texture between the blocked and the still not blocked sleeve.

I'm off to cast on the right front :). I should be able to finish the cardigan in time for the warm spring and summer evenings ahead.

Burda 6849 Striped Shirt

This is the third shirt I sewed from the Burda 6849 pattern and this one is for me. The color - dark stripes, is so out of my comfort zone, that everyone was (unpleasantly) surprised I had picked it out of the sea of fabric in the shop, but I was curious and tempted to have something different in my wardrobe. And I truly like it. My only concern is that the fabric seems prone to wrinkling. I ironed the shirt just before going out to take a few pictures of it in front of our building and was unpleasantly surprised to see the shirt was all wrinkled on the photos. And yes, we had our first snow in the city and it has been quite cold this week, well below 0C.

I sewed the shirt with my now usual modifications - added arrow patches to the sleeves, shortened to reflect my small stature, flat felled seams. I also played with direction of the stripes a little to add some interest to the shirt.

I bought one more piece of fabric - thick plaid cotton lumberjack style, which I intend to turn into a tunic length shirt for me. Sewing is a bit addictive :)

Blue Burda 6849 Shirt

I sewed I new shirt and I'm so proud with it! The pattern is Burda 6849 from their Autumn / Winter 2015-2016 catalogue. This is a classic fitted shirt from their young fashion collection. It is my first experience with a Burda individual pattern, until now I had only sewed from their magazines.

The advantages of an individual pattern are the much more detailed instructions, the easier copying of the pattern pieces and the multilanguage book, which included two of the languages I understand - English and Russian, instead of only German, as is in the magazine, which is sold here. Still, the instructions were not clear enough for an inexperienced seamstress as I am, but thank God for youtube tutorials! I learned so much about shirt construction!

The fabric I chose for my first try (there will be other shirts from this pattern, for sure) is plain plaid cotton, very easy to sew. Gaby has plenty of plaid shirts in the red range of colors, so she insisted on a different color scheme. I was not sure of my choice of fabric when I brought it from the shop, but now, that it has turned into a shirt I like it and I think it suits her.

I made some small modifications to the pattern - mostly shortened its length and added arrows to the sleeves, as Gaby likes to wear them rolled up and buttoned.

Most of the seams are flat seam - something new I learned with this shirt. And I also made my own buttonholes.

I love the fitted look of this pattern and I do plan to sew many more shirts from it.

Backpack Full Of Roses

My latest sewing project - a light city backpack for Gaby. I made it following this excellent youtube tutorial, which I highly recommend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqztCGuv8wg&t=20s&list=WL&index=18

For my backpack I used heavy cotton textile for the outer layer and ranforce cotton for the lining. I also reinforced the outer parts of the bag with fusible.

The model is simple, no bells and whistles, just a bag with lining, big enough for a few notebooks,   books and a purse:

 There's one big pocket for keys or a wallet, or maybe a phone:

It closes with a string and a magnetic clasp

And it also has a big enough handle to be carried around by hand, if needed:

Autumn is here, the school year began on September 15th for Alex and this week on October 1st was the start for the new academic year for Gaby. I'm not sure if this mostly white backpack will be suitable for her university routine, but it looks like a perfect bag for summer city walks. And I'm planning another backpack, using some old black jeans, I love recycling old jeans!