Black Basics

It seems I've been on a bit of a black basics kick at the moment - and I've been avoiding posting in here - so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and just do one post with all my black basics.

First up was a shirt.  I found this material in the sales bin at my local Fabric Place Basement Store.  Its a double layered, warm, snuggly material - no idea what it's made out of but one side is black and the other is grey, so of course I had to make something reversible out of it

Having said that my kids have told me a couple of times that I'm wearing my shirt inside out when I wear it grey side out so I may have missed the mark somewhere along the line. Personally I like the grey with the pop of black at the seamlines.

For a pattern I used my self drafted raglan shirt pattern that I used to make these two shirts, however this time I took the front piece and added princess seaming in so that I could get a closer fit through the front.  You can't really see the detail on the black side but you can on the grey,

To make the shirt reversible I sewed it with the black sides together, then on the grey side I stitched over the seams with a wide zig zag stitch and trimmed the seams off as close to the stitching as I could so you just get a line of black along each seam.

I played around with those front princess seams a bit to try and get a good fit and I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.  My one and only issue is that it seems to have shrunk a little in the wash since I made it - it's not too bad, just a little short through the body and the sleeves.  Technically there are very big hems at the wrist and the bottom which I could take out and lengthen, but could I be bothered????

 Next up is a pair of pants.  The idea for these came around as every morning I got out of bed and reached for my thick fluffy tracksuit pants - I'd then leave these pants on to take the kids to school.  I decided one day that what I would really like was a pair of pants that were as comfortable and warm as tracksuit pants, but that I could wear out during the day without looking like I just rolled out of bed.

The plan - make a pair of pants that are nice black wool suiting on the outside but are lined with fleece inside.  An elastic waist was required so that they were ultra comfortable.

Now here's where the plagiarism starts.  The basic concept behind these pants can be traced back through Lisa from Pattern and Branch  to Meggipeg  to a pair of ready to wear jeans. Whilst I never got to see the original inspiration, the two pair of pants mentioned above really appeals to me so I decided to take some of the style lines and apply them to my pants pattern.

I started with my basic pants pattern that I've perfected over the year, the latest version of which is here. I then widened the leg of the pants a little so that they were a bit looser fitting and cut the front piece right down the middle to get the seam up the center front of the leg and added in pockets to the outer front piece.   I really liked the quilted sections on the pants, but I didn't actually want to add any quilting - with the fleece layer underneath I didn't think I'd need any extra bulk in these pants, so instead I added lines of stitching holding the pocket lining to the front of the pants.  I did all my top stitching in bright green to really make it pop.

The fleece inners were made as a separate piece and sewn into the pants at the waistband and at the hem at the bottom.

Whilst I love the look of these pants unfortunately they are not as comfortable as I had hoped.  Despite using the same pattern as all my pants which fit perfectly the rise at the back of these pants is way too short and then pants are continually falling down. I thought about removing the waistband and adding in a back yoke, but I can't bring myself to take out the three rows of top stitching plus the stitching holding the waistband on - way too much effort.  Still they are getting a lot of wear.



Next up is another shirt.  This shirt was an attempt at a different sleeve configuration.  I've been thinking a lot lately about a shirt with a sleeve with a split up the outside. In order to get a pattern for this I started with my basic top sloper that goes from shoulder to waist with a darts under the bust.   I extended the shoulder line out to create a dropped sleeve on both the front and back pattern pieces, then created a skirt for the pattern flaring out gently from the waist  to the hips.

 For the sleeve pattern, I took my basic sleeve and cut off the sleeve cap by the same amount that I extended my shoulder line (the full height of the sleeve cap in this case).  I then split the sleeve up the middle and added seam allowance.  I then joined the outside edges of the sleeve together to eliminate the underarm seam.  When I sewed the sleeve into my bodice I just turned under the seam allowances at the shoulder and left the rest of that seam up the outside of my arm open.

After a bit of trial and error I decided to take the split sleeve to just below the elbow and then created a tighter sleeve from the forearm down and gathered the two sections of the sleeve together.

The neckline I kept as a very shallow V at both front and back and created a facing to finish the edges.

The material for this shirt is a nice thick knit material.

Last but no least is a lingerie set.    The bra is the same Bravo Bella Bra pattern that I used here and here.  I think I finally have the pattern down pat so I actually splurged and bought all the proper fixing to make this bra - Although the underwires I bought ended up being a bit too small I used them anyway.

The material I used is a black polyester/lycra material with this cool Japanese type print with cherry blossoms and dragons.  The pattern is very subtle, just enough to bring a little interest to this set.  The bra cups were lined in nylon tricot and the bridge and back were lined in black power mesh.

The only slight issue I have with this bra is the straps.  I knew the material was too stretchy to make the straps out of just the fashion fabric so I tried lining it with interfacing - however the material still stretched out and now just looks grey - but at least they're supportive enough.  The other thing is I changed the angle that the elastic from the straps attaches to the back of the bra and I think it moved the straps too far out on my shoulders so it often feels like the straps are going to fall off.  In order to combat this issues if it does arise I actually put little snaps in the middle of the elastic that I salvaged off on old maternity bra.  This will allow me to cross the straps over if I need to  and make it a cross strap bra.

The matching underwear is just made using my standard pants pattern and is finished with some flowery fold over elastic I had lying around.

Knitting odds and ends

Shortly after I started the crochet circular coat for my sister my best friend asked me if I would make something for her.  I had knitted her a pair of socks for Christmas and she wanted a pair as a present for her Mum who always has cold feet.  Now I love her Mum she's always been great to me - so I was more than happy to knit her a pair of socks.

The only problem was that I didn't have a pattern for socks her size.  The only socks I'd made were either too big or too small.  So I went on Ravelly to find a pair of socks in her size. What I found was that there is no such thing.  All the patterns would say vague things like knit till the length you want.  Well I didn't know what length I wanted so all I could do was look up some basic foot charts and using her shoe size knit to a standard length.  I assume that socks are stretchy enough that a little variation in size can be ignored.

The sock pattern that I decided on was the Fidelio Pattern.  My friend had asked for the socks to be pink but I struggled a bit to find pink sock yarn.  In the end I found a flamingo pink 100% superwash merino yarn at my local knitting store In the Loop.

The socks turned out great, though I'm not sure I like the top down knitting approach.  I much prefer to  knit my socks toe up.

The colour in these photos really doesn't do them justice though.

This is closer to the real colour.

Once I was finished with these socks I started on a pair for myself.  I had two skeins of The Kiwi Pop Studio fingering weight yarn in Lemon and Chartreuse (Aussie green and gold my friend - green and gold).  I went looking for a pattern I could use that would use two colours and came up with the Chain Reaction sock.  I knitted up a gauge swatch and found that my swatch was quite a bit bigger than specified, and since I was already using size 1 needles and didn't have anything smaller I had to do a few adjustments to the pattern to get my socks to fit me.

I do love these socks,  the pattern and the stripe underneath the foot, but they don't have great stretch or recovery, which is a bit of a shame and unfortunately after they were washed once, the green colour faded a lot so in these pictures the pattern is barely visible anymore.

Next up on my knitting needles was a pair of gloves for L.  I knitted her a pair of gloves two years ago out of a beautiful alpaca that I hand dyed to a pinky red colour, and she promptly went and lost one of them so I was a bit unsure as to whether I wanted to knit her another pair, but she talked me into it - she has promised not to lose these ones.

The yarn is one that I picked up at the yarn and fiber fair held at our local farm Tangerini's.  It's from FiberStash DyeWorks and is called Twinkle Toes Sock Yarn and has a  sparkly thread woven into the wool.  For the basic glove I used the Classic Gloves #616 pattern in a child's size large.  This is just a basic glove pattern with just a little texture added to the hand in the guise of a k1p1 row every three rows.   To provide extra warmth, once the gloves were finished I went back and added a mitten flap, picking up a row of stitches half way down the hand to attach the mitten to the glove.  I used the same basic knitting pattern, and added a ribbed cuff to keep the mitten tight around the hand.

I love these gloves (and even better they fit me too) so there may be a bit of fighting going on in our house over who gets to wear these at any given time...

Black and White Corduroy Pants

During our July Meetup of the Pattern Review group at Fabric Place Basement I found a material that I fell in love with.  Its a relatively thin corduroy material with just  little bit of stretch.  It's black with a white "wallpaper" pattern printed on it.   Not sure what these patterns are actually called - it's not quite paisley, but has that same scroll like, curlicue design pattern.  Whatever it's called I love it and therefore I love this material.

I knew as soon as I saw it that it had to be  a pair of pants, but in the middle of summer I wasn't really interested in sewing long pants so the material got set aside for a couple of months.

Finally last week I decided it was time to pull the material out and make it up.  I used the pants pattern I've been working on for the last couple of years.

I think I'm pretty nearly happy with this pattern now so there's really not much to say about these.  There's two back patch pockets.

Two front slash pockets, that extend right into the fly, and a 2.5" wide waistband closed with three snaps.

 I haven't had a great deal of sewjo for the last couple of weeks, so I decided to take this project slowly.  All seams are french seamed, there are no exposed edges anywhere in these pants which is fantastic.  I even remembered to interface the fly facing for once, and turned the fly around so that it opens on the right - its just easier that way.

I finished these pants this morning and have been wearing them all day.  They have a very 70s vibe to them with the fabric pattern and the flares, but I love a good 70s flare so I'm happy with that.

As I said earlier my sewjo has not been overly high lately and I've been doing a bit of soul searching around that and I've come up with a theory.  I think it's because I've been sewing a lot with other peoples patterns.  Now I have no problems with using patterns - it's great and at times necessary, but I've decided it's not where my passion lies.  I'm a engineer.  An engineer by degree but more importantly an engineer by heart.  I want to know HOW things work - WHY is a pattern the way it is.  WHAT happens when I tweak here. It's the design (and I'm not talking fashion design here I'm talking engineering design) that makes my happy.  I like taking an image that I have in my head and working out how to make that out of a flat piece of fabric.

So no more store bought patterns for me for a while - it's back to the drafting block I go.

A Circular Crochet Coat

I just realised that I haven't blogged any of my knitting or crochet projects for a while.  I have finished a number of things over the last couple of months.

Starting with my sisters coat.

At the beginning of August my sister asked if - for her 40th Birthday present - I would make her a crocheted coat.  She had a couple of pictures of things that she liked but none of them were perfect - she wanted a bit of this and a bit of that.  That's entirely the sort of thing I love doing so of course I said yes.

The pictures she sent me of basically what she wanted was this.

She wanted something about the weight and design of the first picture, with the colour and ruffles of the second set of pictures.

These were both crochet patterns but the first one was toddler size and in Russian, the second was too light weight, without sleeves and in German.

I decided to start with the first pattern and spent a night trying to translate the pattern from Russian into English.  Luckily about a week earlier I'd done a similar translation for a friend in my knitting group when her daughter asked her to crochet her something using a Russian pattern so this second translation wasn't quite so hard.

I then made up a toddler sized version with the same type of yarn as I was planning on using just to check that this what what my sister wanted.

This got the go ahead so I went out and bought the wool.  My sister wanted something that would be easily washable but still warm and snuggly.  I've used the Caron simply soft acrylic yarns before and liked them, and they come in great colours so this is what I got.

And so I started crocheting around in circles.  I used the basic increase patterns as set up by the toddler coat and kept working until it got to the point where the mesurement across the top third of the circle was the same as my sister measurement from shoulder to shoulder.  At this point I created a hole on each side for the armholes and then kept crocheting around until it was wide enough across to wrap right around.

I then went back to the armholes and crocheted sleeves in the round, tapering them slightly as I went.

In order to finish off the coat I went back to the pattern for the second inspiration picture and found the chart for the ruffle.  After translating it from German I them modified it slightly to fit the number of stitches that I had and then worked around the coat in this pattern for another 8 rows.

I used a 3 row version of the ruffle to finish off each sleeve and the coat was done.

To close the coat I wanted to find a shawl pin.  I asked around my kitting groups and one girl mentioned that she's seen them at a knitting shop about an hours drive away so I took a trip out there and found a beautiful pin that matched the coat nicely.