Star and Brick Stitch Jumper

This project has been in the making for a long long time now.

About 2 years ago (September 2016 is the exact date according to my old emails)  my mother in law told me that her favourite woolen mill - Bendigo Woolen Mills -  was having a sale and asked if I wanted any yarn as a Christmas gift.  Oh course I said yes and I chose 2 balls of  of the Chestnut Collaboration and 1 ball of the Peacock Blue Collaboration (these are no longer in production but they are basic worsted weight 100% wool).  When the wool arrived the chestnut colour wasn't exactly what I had been expecting, but I figured I had it now I may as well use it and got to work.

I decided that I would really like a jumper with a lot of texture.  In my Ravely browsing I had come across the Tundra Jumper which I loved   The combination of the star stitch and  the brick stitch patterns were really cool.

The Tundra jumper was going to take way more yarn than I had so I decided to just draft a basic jumper from scratch.  After some swatching to determine gauge I got started.  Starting with the chestnut colour I made the back piece, the front piece and started one sleeve before realising that I  wasn't going to have enough yarn.  I switched to the peacock colour to finish the sleeves, but that just used up all the peacock yarn too and I had nothing left to finish the collar and the bottom band.  OK back to the drawing board.  I shoved my half made jumper into the corner and basically forgot about it for a year or so.

Then this March my Mother in Law told me she was ordering some more wool from Bendio Woolen Mills and asked if I wanted anything.  I asked if she could get me some more of the yarn and she was able to - saviour!  I then just had to wait for her next trip to the US to get it off her.

In the mean time I realised that that small mistake that I had made half way up the front piece - that I had told myself at the time wasn't too noticeable - was in fact too noticeable, so the first thing I did when the new wool arrived was to start the front piece again from scratch.  I thought about just trying to rip out to the mistake but then trying to figure out what row I was on and decipher my hand written pattern was too hard so I just started it over again.

I then went and ripped out the sleeves back to where I had finished the chestnut colour and re knit those - so basically this jumper was almost entirely knit twice!  The only piece I didn't do twice was the back.

At the bottom of the sleeves and the front and back pieces I added a cuff in the brick stitch using the chestnut colour as the mortar and the peacock blue as the brick.  It just adds a pop of colour to an otherwise plain top,

I sewed up all the seams. Up until now I've hated sewing up knitting, it has never ended up looking good.  But after watching a few youtube tutorials I think I did a pretty good job with this one.  Some of the seams are barely noticeable.

The final step was the collar - to keep in line with the rest of the jumper I ended up doing this twice.  The first time I decreased too much and the neckline ended up being more rounded than I wanted and too tight so I ripped it out and did it again.  This time it's ended up a smidge too loose, but I can live with it for the time being.

The only other thing I wanted to mention was the shaping I did through the front piece.  The back I just added shaping in at the side seams, but for the front I tried adding in darts at the bust line and I was really quite happy with the way this turned out.  It gives a really good fit to the jumper.

When I finished off my jumper I realised that I still had quite a bit of yarn left over so I decided I would make a matching beanie rather than just stashing the small piece of yarn.

I thought about using the brick stitch again but then decided to see what else I could find.  After extensive Ravelry searching I found the Uljan Beanie.  For a change I just followed the pattern exactly as written. I really like the way this turned out.

I STILL had yarn left over so I figured I may as well have a pair of mittens too.  I decided I would use the same stitch pattern as the beanie and just made it up as I went along.  These ended up a smidge tight - I think I pulled the floats a lot tighter knitting these than I did the beanie.  But they still fit.

While there is still (amazingly) a bit of wool left over I've decided to skip the cowl for now!  maybe once I'm no longer totally bored of working with the same color combination I'll go back to it but for now I'll just enjoy my matching jumper beanie and mittens.

Finally a new Bathrobe

The last time I got a new bathrobe was just before my youngest was born.  He's now 9 years old so I think we can safely say that it's about time I had a new one.  I've been planning on making myself one for the last couple of years but never get around to it.

During out first cold snap of the year I decided it was time to stop procrastinating and get on with it.  I had a piece of black fluffy material in my stash that I had mentally assigned to bathrobe  but when I pulled it out I knew at once that there wasn't going to be enough material.

Oh darn now I had to take a trip to the fabric store.   I was hoping that there would be more of the black material but no such luck - so instead I bought 4.5 (or was it 5) yards of red and black buffalo plaid fleece.

 

The pattern that I used for the bathrobe was one I had in stash - Simplicity 1562.  I bought this a while ago and made my Mum a bathrobe for the birthday.  As I found at the time the sizing on this rob is VERY generous. According to my measurements I should have made a size L.  However I made a size S for my Mum and even this was huge, so for my bathrobe I cut the shoulders/neckline/arm hole to a XS extending out to a M under the arms.
It's still huge on me - Whilst I want my bathrobes to be big and fluffy this is just excessive.  3  sizes below where my measurements put me and I still feel like it's swimming on me!

I cut the sleeves to a size M and added about 3 or 4 inches to the length.  When sewing it all together  I turned the end of the sleeve under 4" and then turned back 2" to form a big cuff.  I thought about adding some elastic to the cuffs to keep them snug after reading a review of this pattern where they did this and liking the idea, but for now I'll stick with the cuffs.  I love that these are extra long and my hands can stay warm tucked up inside the sleeves at all times.

When I sewed the bathrobe together I did a mock flat fell on all seams.  sewing the seam with right sides together, trimming down one side of the seam and turning the remaining side over the cut side and stitching down again.  I then trimmed any excess off that seam making a nice neat finish inside.

I also stitched down the facing in the same way.

I cut the bathrobe to the pattern length and then didn't hem it to try and keep as much length as possible for extra snuggliness I like the full ankle length of the final robe.

I also didn't add the tie loops to the side seams as I hate ties that can be removed.  Instead I stitched the tie to the robe at the center back.

The bathrobe has huge patch pockets on the front which I love.  I didn't bother trying to plaid match or anything just popped them on with a double row of stitching.

I'm loving wearing this bathrobe around.  It's so warm and snuggly.  Now I just need a new pair of Ugg boots to go with it.  These one's are over 10 years old and getting a bit threadbare!

Red and Black checked winter dress

OK so this is way over due - I made this back in October last year, but I just wanted to catch up with my blogging.

This dress was created in my quest for that ultimate winter dress.  Something that's warm comfortable and easy to wear.  Did I succeed?  Well.... no.... this dress definitely didn't live up to my expectations, plus I made a really stupid sewing mistake which is really annoying when wearing this.  I'll see if you can notice it!

I started from the point that I wanted a long dress with long sleeves.  I contemplated making another Kielo but decided I wanted something with a fuller skirt.  After sketching out a couple of designs I decided to go with a full length shirt dress with a button band right down the front.  I used the bodice and waistband that I drafted for this interview dress, added the sleeves from my plaid shirt pattern and used whatever fabric I had left over for the skirt.

The bodice and waistband pieces I fully self lined for extra warmth, since I was running low of fabric and wanted enough for a big skirt I went with a black poly fleecy material to underline the sleeves.  I played around with adding a fleece underskirt as well but that was going too far and I ended up taking it out.  I will just have to wear it with leggings to keep the bottom half warm.

The bodice ended up being a bit too big so I  put an extra seam down the center back through both layers of bodice and waistband which is a bit bulky but the best I could come up with without taking the whole thing apart.

Of course I added pockets into the skirt - I had to piece together lots of little pieces to make them but who is ever going to see.

I played around with a number of different skirt styles pleats vs gathers, small pleats vs large pleats and decided on two pleats in front and two in back lined up with the darts in the bodice.

I finished the dress and tried it on for a day and felt - well - frumpy!  everything is just so covered.  It needs a deeper neckline - or a shorter skirt, but either would defeat the purpose I was going for.

I've played around with adding a couple of gathers up the front of the skirt which gives the whole dress a bit of a steampunk vibe which I quite like, but the gathers keep coming out in the wash.

So has anyone spotted the mistake?  Yep somehow I managed to put the placket in the front on one of my sleeves rather than the back.  Still not sure about how I managed that - but oh well.  and since the sleeve is underlined it would be an absolute pain to try and fix - I would have to go out and buy more fabric and start the sleeve again - and I'm just not sure I love this enough to do it!

As it is this dress has been sitting on the end of my bed for a couple of months now.  I don't want to waste precious wardrobe space on it, but I'm not quite ready to toss it either.  I keep thinking maybe I'll chop off the skirt...Maybe one day I'll actually get around to it.  In the mean time maybe I should just start using it for what my husband reckons it is - a bathrobe!