Not Every Idea is a Good Idea...

 or In Which I actually Use Some of The Yarn I Bought - Part 2

One of the many things I dabble in is designing knitting patterns. Most often I do so because I conceived of a desire for a garment and couldn't find an existing pattern that was exactly what I wanted. So I try to make my own.

In this case, I first bought yarn I didn't have a plan for (as I do), then attempted to find uses for all of it. It took some time, (as you may have noticed) but eventually most of that speculation yarn got put to (questionably) good use.

This deliciously soft pile of yarn took several turns on their way to an actual wearable. Much math was calculated, graphs were drawn and many stitches done and undone. Finally I came up with this:

It looks ok on the dress form, but it never quite managed to hang right on an actual person. I don't know where all my (totally correct, or course) math went wrong, or if it's just the way the stitches and yarn interact. Either way, I wore it once and now it serves well as a favorite sleeping cushion for my kitty.

My next attempt at stash busting went a little better, though was almost as complicated. I alternated the two almost matching skeins each row to make a ribbed vest with shaping inspired by a vintage sweater I had seen. It too was perhaps more complex than it needed to be, but I like the result regardless. I still wear this one and am working on writing it up in a way others can replicate.

Remember when I threatened to make a Frankenstein sweater out of all my single skeins of mohair? Well, I did, and I did it. The Hazy Day Vest is one of the successes from my compulsive yarn buying habit :)

And finally, this giant ball of mohair that was enough for a sweater all on it's own? Well of course I had to push that to be lacy  and coat tailed, with Copious sleeves. I lost that game of chicken. I ran out of yarn right at the last few inches and had to substitute another yarn to finish. 

Still, despite the last minute substitution and subsequent altering of the neckline, I really like how this one came out. It's very warm and only comes out in the winter, but it's very soft and comfortable. And I really enjoyed making a semi-fitted garment that is dead simple to customize to fit. As someone who has always struggled with getting knitwear to fit well, I try to make sure my published designs are as adjustable as possible.

And now on to my next yarn buying adventure! 

From Speculation to Inspiration to Sweater

or In Which I actually Use Some of The Yarn I Bought - Part 1 

One of the many things I dabble in is designing knitting patterns. Most often I do so because I conceived of a desire for a garment and couldn't find an existing pattern that was exactly what I wanted. So I try to make my own.

In this case, I first bought yarn I didn't have a plan for (as I do), then found a historical pattern that caught my fancy, then used that as inspiration to put a use to the yarn.

The five balls of K + C Willow inflated to two balls of each color when I realized I wanted to make a sweater from them. The colors suggested stripes to me, but that sounded boring on it's own, so I started dreaming up ways I could make make diagonal lines or something else overly complicated. The yarn sat for a long time, since none of those ideas really panned out (shocker).

Then I had a good browse of The Antique Pattern Library.  If you haven't visited that site before, go check it out, this post can wait. Seriously, it is a huge resource for historical, public domain patterns and instructions for just about every craft imaginable. I have found lots of great patterns there, including this one from Minerva Yarns Style Book Vol 30 (1933):

Now, I don't love everything about this pattern, but it sure does present a good starting place for finally realizing my striped sweater. I really liked the idea of alternating stripes of knit and crochet, though I did alter the stripe size and placement quite a bit. I kept the long slim sleeves and v neck, but I added a bit more poof to the tops of the sleeves. Because K + C Willow is a much different yarn that what was used here, I had to alter the stich patterns and counts a lot. Since I also wanted to size it for me, that meant making a gauge swatch and basically designing a sweater from the bottom up using this as inspiration. 

So to do that, I start with a sketch and begin filling in measurements. I wrote up a post going over the basics of measuring and customizing fit here. I was having trouble figuring out how to shape the armholes and shoulders with the crochet sections, as I am far less familiar with crochet in general. Then, my hubby asked if the shoulders were harder than the body, why couldn't I start there and get the difficult stuff out of the way? Solutions sometimes come from the least likely places, and this was a great one! I'd never done a top down sweater before, but with  few tips from my go to vintage books, it was definitely the easier way for this one.

And so I present the finished bistitchual sweater! As a bonus, it used up most of the Willow yarn, so I don't have to scramble to find something else to do with the leftovers!

Before and After: Mermaid Tunic

 Here's a glimpse behind the curtain, at the previous lives of the pieces that became my Erte inspired tunic:

I loved the petal like hem of the purple shirt, but I really wasn't a fan of the sleeves or neckline. Also I tend to like long waisted garments and wished I could lower that beautiful hem several inches. The turquoise top isn't a style I usually go for, but in this case it sang to me of possibilities. Together they make a fanciful side laced tunic that makes me think of something a mermaid might wear as she masquerades in the human world for an evening.

 

Inspried by Awesome

 If you've never heard of him, Erte was a 20th-century artist and designer in an array of fields, including fashion, jewellery, graphic arts, costume and set design for film, theatre, and opera, and interior decor. 

I absolutely love his elegant models swathed in drapey fabrics, and his illustrations have inspired a lot of my designs. Here are a couple more of my favorites, inspired by the awesome of Erte:

This fanciful Venus-like image tickled my imagination for a long time before I found the right pieces to put together to bring it to life.

The original striking black was replaced by mermaid colors of turquoise and purple, though I kept the side lacing and tasseled ties. This sassy tunic is one of my favorites, and was a lot of fun to put together.

The dress in the drawing looks like just swatches of silky cloth draped and tied with beads and braids. Completely impractical, and also completely wonderful.

I didn't completely abandon practicality in my recreation, adding a sturdy beaded halter style neck and sewn in slip, but this is still a pretty frivolous dress. I still love that draped fabric look, though!

This drawing isn't Erte's work, clearly. It's an old ad for petticoats, reproduced in another of my vintage craft book collection. The swirl of the ruffly skirt spoke to me in the same way though, and I knew I had to make a fabulous petti-skirt.

A trove of Dutch lace curtains at my local thrift store gave me the perfect material for my layered skirt. Big and ruffly and swishy, this skirt is a dream to twirl in.

Tale of a Stepsister Sweater

One of the many things I dabble in is designing knitting patterns. Most often I do so because I conceived of a desire for a garment and couldn't find an existing pattern that was exactly what I wanted. So I try to make my own.

When watching the live action Disney Cinderella movie for the first time, I fell head over heels in love with the honeycomb sweaters Anastasia and Drisella wear as they try to stuff their feet into a glass shoe.

In one of my many vintage knitting pattern books I happened to find this gem from 1952. Suddenly making a dreamy stepsister sweater of my own seemed possible. Altering the neckline and sleeves wasn't too difficult. The pattern was really easy to follow and adjust.

 Next I needed yarn. Luckily for me, my local thrift store always has 'good' yarn. I found 8 skeins of this shockingly chartreuse textured dk and bought it all without a second thought or even a project planned. Someday I would be making a hi-vis sweater and it would be glorious. When I found the teal and green variegated yarn at my LYS, I knew it was to be. 

So, with my newly altered pattern and awesome yarn, I got to work. My chief inspection officer 'helped' a lot in this process.

There's the finished project in all it's neon glory, and I even have 4 skeins of that yarn left!
 

Easy, but Awesome

Ok, I'm a little late in getting this up (as per usual) but here's the results of this year's comicon costume scramble.

This year I wasn't planning on making a costume at all. With Covid, I wasn't even sure comicon would be happening, and I had a lot of other things on my plate. And then I went to my local thrift store and found these:

A fancy red fedora, and a dark blue suit coat with built in shirt collar and cuffs? That's two thirds of an Agent Carter outfit ready made! So I really had no choice but to find or make the rest. 

The jacket was a little big on me, so I had to do a little altering to take it in, but otherwise it was perfect. I found a pair of nice pants in a similar enough pinstripe pattern to go with it, and quick altered them into a narrow skirt. I used the leftover fabric from those alterations to add a matching band onto the hat. And that was it. Far simpler and quicker than all of my previous comicon makes, but it was that kind of year.

My friends Ahsoka and Loki and I had a great time hanging out with fellow nerds and saying hi to all our variants :)

Too much? Nah, Never

One of the many things I dabble in is designing knitting patterns. Most often I do so because I conceived of a desire for a garment and couldn't find an existing pattern that was exactly what I wanted. So I try to make my own.

Ever since I first saw this pattern with the braided cables up the raglan seams, I knew I had to use that idea somewhere.

I really wasn't a fan of the big poncho-like shawl shape of the original pattern, though, so I had to find some other sweater to adorn with cabled raglan seams.

The next bit of inspiration was really what got the ball rolling for my pattern design.  I adore the sleeves on this dress from 1927.  I was a little intimidated by the complex colorwork at first, but I have yet to meet a knitting technique I can't muddle my way through.

As you can probably guess, that dress pattern uses a ridiculously small gauge and tiny needles.  I am a decent knitter, but I am not that patient. I knew if I was going to make colorful sleeves like that I would have to adapt them to a larger gauge.  Also I had no real intent to make my sweater a full tunic length.  The keyhole neckline wasn't really doing it for me either.

So now I had two design elements I really wanted to use, and still no full sweater to attach either to. Then it hit me; why not combine them? I liked the color contrast on black of the dress, why not add contrasting raglan cables as well? Would that be too much, too busy? I thought about it for all of a second or two. Nah, no such thing as too busy or bold with sleeves like that :)

I found some nice yarn at my local craft outlet in black, blue, and purple. It was meant to be. I picked out a nice textured stitch for the body, to give it a similar look to that first inspiration.  I worked the body and sleeves in the round with provisional cast on for nice smooth hems. The colorwork was challenging, but in the good way.  The color cables on the raglans looked fantastic. All was turning out lovely for my sweater, until I reached the neck and realized I had no idea how to finish it.  Oops, kinda forgot about that part.

Well, I found one more bit of inspiration that saved the day.

This lovely cabled jacket uses short rows and grafting to turn the cables around the corner and continue into the collar.  I just so happened to have a bunch of cables converging on the neckline, could I turn them using short rows and add a collar to my creation?

Yes, yes I could. I undid a couple of rows on the front so I could introduce a new cable in the center, and using that and the two from each front raglan I was able to make a collar of the three cables that looked so perfectly integrated into the rest you'd think I planned it from the start.

So there you have it, the haphazard mess that is my design process. I can't wait to see what elements I can throw together next time.

If you'd like to knit one of your own, you can find the pattern here or here :)

Knitting Tricks: Charting a Color Pattern

I am an avid and primarily self taught knitter. I learned most of the techniques I know by trial and error as I worked a pattern that was probably too advanced for me at the time. Collecting these tricks and techniques into one place is hopefully as helpful to others as it is to me.

There are a multitude of charted patterns for multicolor knitting available on the internet. Chances are you can find one already made for just about anything you want to knit up. But what do you do when you can't find just the motif you need?  Fortunately, making your own color chart from a printed design is pretty easy.

This is a page from a book filled with Japanese border designs. For this particular knitting project I chose the one in the middle.  I scanned the book page and used my tablet as a way to enlarge the design to the size I wanted and traced it onto graph paper. You can pretty easily just skip the tablet step and draw the design directly to the graph paper if it's a simple enough pattern. Or if you need it resized you can photograph or scan the book page and use a computer to enlarge and print it out.  Either way, the next step is to get the design drawn onto graph paper.

If you have a repeating pattern like this, all you need is one repeat. If you're having trouble figuring out just how much is one repeat, try using tracing paper to put sections of the motif next to each other to see how they line up.

The top motif is the one I traced. I did a bit of cleaning of up of the design to make sure it was symmetrical and balanced.  Then I sketched in extra grid lines along the lines of the motif. You'll note since it is symmetrical I only needed to do one half.  The bottom is my draft chart. Using those extra sketched in grid lines, I filled in the graph squares whererever a line of the motif crossed the grid. There are visible marks from an eraser as I made adjustments.  You'll need to step back and look at your draft, make sure the lines look like curves where they are supposed to, and are straight where they need to be.  Double check that both haves of a symmetrical design are the same, that a repeating design matches itself on the edges.

Once you have a draft on paper, I find it very helpful to make a digital version. Using any spreadsheet program you can recreate your paper chart by filling in the cells with different colors.  This will help you count how many stitches and rows your chart is, and you can copy and paste the chart beside and below itself to check if it all lines up when you repeat it.  From here you can also print more copies if you need.

And that's pretty much it. Whatever project your chart is for, just knit it up following the chart and you should see your motif taking shape. I used a variegated yarn for my main color, so it has that stained glass look, but it works just as well with a solid color. 

If you'd like to make one of these neck warmers yourself you can find the pattern here or here :)

Swatch it Up!

One of the many things I dabble in is designing knitting patterns. Most often I do so because I conceived of a desire for a garment and couldn't find an existing pattern that was exactly what I wanted. So I try to make my own.

Last year an off hand comment from my cousin about wanting to learn how to crochet lace so she could make a snood that fit her hair sent me on a spiral of pattern designing that still continues long past the original impetus.

                  

 

She got me thinking about lace, and about how I can't crochet very well.  But I can knit with some degree of skill and I knew knit lace was a thing, so why not knitted snoods?

Patterns searches got me to one lack luster knit lace snood, and from there the fire was lit. I could take that pattern base and come up with much better lace than that.


And so began the great swatch production. Every cool new lace pattern I could find or think of got worked up into a swatch.

I did eventually make my cousin her snoods, but along the way I made a few for myself, a lace tank top, a sweater with lace panels, several Barbie dresses, and most of a lacy beaded jacket. I'm still not sure I'm done with lace just yet, there are a few more plans percolating in my brain. A patchwork piece out of all my swatches is indeed one of them!

Best Mom's Closet Find Ever

When I was in high school my mother decided she needed to clean out her closet, and she asked if I wanted to see if there was anything of hers I wanted. Based on what I saw my mom wearing day to day, I wasn't sure I'd find anything worthy of my delicate teenaged sensibilities, but agreed to help.

Little did I know that my mom had kept nearly everything from before she and my dad had even met.  Back then it was cheaper to make clothes than buy them, and she had made nearly her entire wardrobe herself. Being a bit of a sentimentalist, she had kept most of it long after it no longer fit. So I got to take my pick of wonderfully handmade, deliciously retro 1960's and 70's vintage clothing.  I was ecstatic. Until I realized almost none of it fit.

See, I take after my grandmother shape wise, and am long legged, small chested and wide hipped.  My mom is almost the complete opposite. 

There was one pair of bright cherry red bell bottoms that I could just barely squeeze my hips into. I let out the hem as much as I could, and wore them for a few years. Then my hips filled out some more and that was that. I still have them in my closet, though I have no idea why. Like mother like daughter I guess.

The only other thing I kept from that closet cleanout was a halter top made from the absolute best fabric I have ever seen. I have kept it and hoarded it, building up my knowledge of fabric and sewing until the day I felt confident enough to try to alter it.

It's been almost 20 years since that closet cleaning. When I recently told my mom that I had dug out the halter top and was finally ready to try altering it,  she dug around in her craft room a bit and found the remnants of the original fabric.  I have never been so grateful for her hoarding tendencies. Armed with my own sewing experiences by now, and a backup stash of fabric, I got to work.

So here it is, pinned and ready for the final sewing.  I don't have a before picture, mostly because I forgot to take one.  Just imagine it sized for a much bustier figure and hanging loose on my flat chested dress form :)

Before and After: Inspired by Erte

If you've never heard of him, Erte was a 20th-century artist and designer in an array of fields, including fashion, jewellery, graphic arts, costume and set design for film, theatre, and opera, and interior decor.  

I stumbled upon a book of his fashion illustrations in a thrift store, and immediately fell in love with his elegant art deco fashions.  I wanted to be the models in his drawings, draped in swathes of rich fabrics.  Inspired by his sweeping lines, I tried to recreate a few of his pieces in a more modern mode, from all upcycled materials.

 Taking the basic idea of two squares of fabric joined to a triangular top, I updated the drawing at left to produce a ruffled and lacey dress.  Folding the squares gave a two tiered look, and the lacy dangles of the scarf turned bodice accented the drape and flow.  A strappy sleeveless look gave more freedom of movement than the original, and a good backdrop for accessorizing with a shawl or shrug.

 Repurposing a tank top into the bodice for this dress smoothed out the gathers and sleeve accents of the original, drawing all attention to the dramatic swoops of the skirt.  I kept the rings, but eschewed the tasseled cord in favor of cute velvet ribbons.  Most of Erte's drawings are only available in black and white, but I like to imagine them in rich tones like this.

 Erte came up with some fabulous accessories too.  Instead of stripes of ebony and orange, I appliqued a vintage doily to a panel of black velvet.  The dark fabric shows through the cutwork in wonderful contrast.  The cord and tassels became a black and silver chain, zigzagging through loops of satin cord.