Sewing

Shorts weather

30th Jul 202230th Jul 2022 yorkiemouse3 Comments

For anybody who missed it, the UK had some rather warm weather recently. As a nation obsessed with weather at the best of times, I dread to think what the traffic on the Met Office website was like during mid-July.

A few weeks before the heatwave, I was researching shorts patterns for an upcoming holiday, having realised that I only had one pair of shorts. I had pretty much decided on the True Bias Emerson pants when Guthrie & Ghani released a “sneak peak” of their July Sewing Society kit. From the zoomed-in photo of the waistband, I was almost certain it was the Emersons. I decided to wait until the release date because a ready-made kit would be easier to buy than sourcing everything separately.

I wasn’t disappointed and snapped up an Emerson kit within about 3mins of it being released!

The kit

The kits come with everything you need to make a garment – fabric, pattern, notions and a label. The instructions aren’t printed which I find a little frustrating as I like a print out to scribble notes on. I printed the instructions from the file whilst waiting for the kit to arrive.

The kit fabric is a navy ramie, which is derived from nettles. It’s like a textured linen and is quite thick to work with, but feels lovely on. The Guthrie Ghani website explains that ramie is breathable, durable and anti-bacterial.

As always, I pre-washed my fabric (I’m a good girl) and set upon making a toile whilst it was drying. I added 2″ to the length of the shorts after reading a few reviews online that these were “short shorts”. I’m 5’2″ and the additional few inches make the shorts land just above the knee, which is perfect for me.

My wearable toile is from viscose linen (the obsession continues) from Lamazi, and proved to be perfect fabric. I was happy with the fit so cut out the ramie quickly.

Going rogue

I changed the waistband construction on my second pair of shorts for a neater finish. The instructions advise finishing all the seams together, which looks quite messy. My green pair look even messier because I went over twice with the overlocker due to a mishap with some topstitching!

For my navy pair, I pressed the seam allowance towards the wrong side and caught everything inside with some topstitching. This means there’s no visible hems on display, or scratching my back.

These shorts have seen Austria and been my “holiday uniform”. I’ve realised that I’m wearing a Sagebrush top in all of these photos. Other tops are available and can be worn with Emersons!

Thanks for reading. Stay cool :o)

Sewing

Gingham dreams

11th Jul 202211th Jul 2022 yorkiemouse3 Comments

Following my last post, I’m back with a more seasonally-appropriate garment today. Continuing with the 90s theme (see my Ninni culottes), I fell in love with this reversible gingham double gauze. Memories of pink and blue gingham school summer dresses, and the joy of not having to wear a tie* for a few short months were conjured up when I opened this fabric parcel.

* Lots of people I speak to are surprised we had to wear a tie at a state-run primary school. To make things slightly easier, we were allowed to wear one with an elastic neckband when it was a PE day!

The fabric is an Atelier Brunette double gauze of the non-crinkly variety. It has small gingham squares on one side and slightly larger squares on the other. I picked up 2m in Sew Me Sunshine’s remnant sale, and added a full price metre to my basket. As soon as I saw the fabric, I wanted to use the ‘reversibility’ to create a tiered dress, alternating small and large gingham.

After some internal debate, I opted to use the Deer and Doe Myosotis dress as the base. Having made a full-length version last year, I get a lot of wear out of it and it received a lot of compliments during Me Made May, so I knew I would make use of one in this smokey gingham.

As well as the fit adjustments I made to previous versions, I also hacked the following elements:

Collar-less hack by StitchOdyssey
Maxi-length with three tiers
Waist ties

Gingham is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to cutting. The slightest nudge of the fabric meant it could be knocked out of line and need realigning. Whilst I’m usually quite careful about cutting on the grain, gingham made me realise there’s definite leeway with other fabrics. However, being able to count squares made things very easy when it came to eye-balling the tiers. I also have a new measurement – forget inches and centimetres, this hem was 4 “ginghams”!

As ever, the devil is in the detail and I chose some of my many tiny glass buttons from Swagman’s Daughter. The label is a testament to how long it took to cut this dress out!

As with my other maxi Myositis, this is so comfortable to wear. I did compare myself to a gingham road-sweeper but I’m fine with that! Thanks for reading :o)

Knitting

Strange Brew Marshland

3rd Jul 20226th Apr 2023 yorkiemouse5 Comments

This labour of love was cast off just in time for a UK heatwave. Admittedly, all of my knitting projects are more appropriate for colder weather, but an aran-weight sweater could really have been started in August/September, rather than March. Despite the poor timing, I love my Strange Brew Sweater and it should make the autumnal nights easier to bear in a few months. Plus, let’s face it, with the UK weather I may get the chance to wear it in July.

I knew my degree would come in handy

In my three years as a university Maths student, one of the more enjoyable courses was modular arithmetic. Whilst not an exact match to knitting colour-work, there’s definitely a link that makes sense to me. I wonder if my brain knew it would come in handy “in the real world” when I paid attention in those particular lectures.

Strange Brew is pitched by the designers, Tin Can Knits, as a sort of ‘recipe book’ for sweaters, enabling the knitter to design their own. I chose to knit one of the ready-made patterns in the book for my first attempt – the Marshland. However, I did tinker with the pattern a bit.

My initial swatch brought about an interesting ‘phallic look’ around the neckline (much to our amusement), so I amended the first block. This involved research, graph paper and spreadsheets…yet again proving that those 3 years at university weren’t spent in vain.

Printing, or manually colouring in a chart in my chosen colours really helps me work with a pattern. I find it hard to translate from the colours in a pattern to the colours I’m using – e.g. remembering swamp green in the pattern is actually pink for me. Rather than risk muddling the colours, and make it much harder for me to knit, I use “my” colours in a copy of the chart.

Colour palette

Choosing which pattern to make was tricky enough. Next came the colour palette. I knew that I wanted to make an aran-weight sweater because my Flax Sweater is so cosy. Having the same yarn weight and pattern designer also meant I was more confident about sizing.

After much deliberation, I decided on Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran from Love Crafts. I knew I wanted purple to be the main colour so Blackberry was chosen early on. Several screenshots and collages later, I finally settled on the contrast colours – Mallard, Heather, Denim and Baby Pink.

Knitting it was easy after that

Maybe not easy, but the knitting part didn’t require any more decisions! I started this jumper in Spring when I was still in my 30s, knitted some easy purple rounds when I was ill with ‘the plague’, and finished it in a heatwave in my 40s. To say I’ve been on a journey with this knit is an understatement!

I’m quite emotional thinking back on knitting it under a quilt whilst feeling grotty and sad about missing my birthday celebrations with my family. To say I was grateful for the distraction is an understatement. I’m mainly thankful that I was up to the simple purple section because I don’t think I could have coped with anything more complicated than that.

Final thoughts

Blocking is important with any knitting, but especially colour-work to make sure the pattern is evenly set. After a quick try-on, I soaked and blocked my sweater over a warm few days.

To circle back briefly to the Strangebrew book, it’s an absolutely gorgeous resource. There are photographs of Iceland throughout, which brought back lovely memories of our honeymoon. The ‘recipe’ nature of the book means that the possibilities are endless.

Thanks for reading :o)