A new project

I rewarded myself for passing my advanced exam by ordering new yarn for a sweater.  I've been wanting to knit a sweater for several weeks now, but I didn't want to start anything while I needed to devote all of my attention to studying.  I feel like summer is a bit of a strange time to start a big knitting project like a sweater, but it's been a long time since I knit anything bigger than a sock (my cowl doesn't count), and when I was in Denmark in April I found myself slightly envious of my mom's large, simple baby blanket project.  Anyway, we have air conditioning, and I'm not planning to work on this outside, so I don't see why the summer prohibition on large knitting projects should apply.

This sweater is in the Elizabeth Zimmerman style, knitted in the round from the bottom up, with the sleeves joined to the body at underarm level and a yoke (an unpatterned yoke, in this case).  The pattern is in a booklet my Aunt Inge gave me the last time I was in Denmark.  This little booklet has several gorgeous patterns I can picture myself knitting and wearing.  I chose this one because it looks simple (honestly, a bit mindless) but still has something interesting - a deep lace edging on the body and sleeves.  It also has some ruffles on one shoulder, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to leave those off.  I'm reading the pattern side-by-side with EZ's generic sweater pattern in Knitting Without Tears, and making a few modifications along the way.  The first one is to knit the sleeves in the round instead of back and forth.  This also means the sleeves have one less stitch than the pattern calls for, since I won't need the selvedge for seaming. 

I love knitting in the round.  I don't understand why you would knit the sleeves flat when the body is knit in the round.  In my view, it defeats the whole purpose of one-piece construction.

June FNSI Results

My shorts were successful!  This was my third muslin for the "Giraffe love" pajama shorts I'm planning to make myself.  The first muslin was my March FNSI project.  I never got around to posting the second muslin because I was discouraged that it didn't come out quite right.  This time, I re-drafted the pattern from scratch, with a deeper "J" on the front pattern piece.  I also made the back waist a little higher than the front, and I tried out little side vents at the outside leg hems (not visible in the photo).  It worked!  I think they fit pretty well: they are comfortable standing and sitting, aren't to tight across the rear, and the waistband is at an appropriate height all the way around!

Now I just need to wash the giraffe and polka-dot lining fabric, and I can make the real ones!

Head on over to Handmade by Heidi to see what other people accomplished last night.

A UFO crossed off the list!

This week has been pretty relaxed, and on Thursday morning I got out my sewing machine and hemmed this tablecloth that's been on my UFO list for several months.  Robert's Grandma gave me the fabric when we visited last summer, and a few moths ago I got as far as cutting the large piece down to size, but I gave up on hemming it because the linen (?) didn't seem to want to crease for the hem in a nice way, and I was afraid of ruining it with a sloppy hem.  And I hate pinning.  But on Thursday, I got down to business, turned my iron to its maximum heat and maximum steam settings, and started pinning away.  My fears were totally overblown.  I did pin about every two inches, but that was probably overkill.  I was interested to notice that the grain played a huge role in how easily the fabric took the crease.  The long edges creased very easily, but the short edges were more reluctant.  This is why I thought it would be so hard - last time I had been trying to start on a short edge.  Luckily this time I happened to start on a long edge.  My machine was so happy to be sewing on "normal" fabric and thread again.  I was remembering my denim skirt (which the machine really didn't like at all) and my workout t-shirts (which stressed me out because they're knits).  This sewed up like a dream, on all my normal stitch and tension settings!

Tablecloth progress, plus FNSI this week

I've been slowly working my way across my Aunt Inge's tablecloth.  I can get three little squares done in a 45-minute episode of the West Wing.  If you look carefully at the right side of the photo, you can see the center crease, so it looks like I'm almost halfway done.  I counted the squares, though, and I've done 57 and have 95 to go.  So not quite half way. 

I'm looking forward to the Friday Night Sew-In this week, hosted over at Handmade by Heidi.  I think I'm going to do the next pattern iteration of my giraffe shorts.  The fabric I've got for this version is lavender with little white polka dots, and I think it's really cute so I'm hoping they turn out well enough to actually use them (and of course I can't wait to get to do the real giraffe version!)

Cowl finished

I finished my cowl week before last, but between going to a wedding last weekend and studying like crazy for my oral exam  (I passed today! yay!) last week, I've pretty much been taking a break from my life.  Blogging, housekeeping, crafting, even exercising ... everything took a back seat.  But now I'm done with that, and I have BIG plans:

• rearrange some furniture in the living room
• do laundry
• start a sweater (which means I get to choose a pattern and buy yarn!)
• sew my shorts (I think I'm going to start over with the pattern, so I can fully use the knowledge I've gained from the first two muslins)
• sew my damask skirt
• hem the tablecloth that's been sitting in my half-done project pile for months
• sew a muslin for a sundress (I've already got the fabric for the real version - it's beautiful)
• work towards finishing my embroidered tablecloth
• start a quilt (I've got fabric and I drafted a 12" mini-Swoon block)

About the cowl:  I like it.  I enjoyed working with the beads, even though they were kind of fiddly.  I'm not wild about the yarn (Kidsilk Haze).  I think it's good for a small-ish winter accessory like this, but I wouldn't want to use it for something large.  I think the only time I'll get to wear it in the foreseeable future is during orchestra rehearsals, because they air condition the rehearsal hall like nobody's business.  I don't think I'm going to block it.  I probably should, but I'm really just too lazy, and I feel like once I've worn it a couple of times, the blocking will have "worn out" and I'll just be back to how it is now anyways.

May FNSI Results

 Last night I sat down and altered 8 of my old workout T-shirts!  All of these were originally size medium, and some of them were pretty stretched out, too.  These days I'm wearing size small - with my iPod nano clipped on to the hem when I'm working out, it really bothers me if there's enough room for the shirt to flap around. 

Here's one of the shirts before I did anything to it.  I turned it inside out and smoothed it out completely flat, and used a size small t-shirt that I like as a template.  I turned the small shirt inside out and smoothed it out, too, and then used my chalk marker to trace where the new side seams should be, up to where they meet the armhole seams.  Then I turned the line 90 degrees and went out to the sleeve hem.  I pinned along the line, sewed along it with a somewhat narrow zig-zag (using a "stretch" needle in my machine), and cut off the excess fabric with pinking shears.

Here's the result.  A much better fit!  After I knew that the first one worked, I did the others assembly-line style.
Now I have a bunch of refreshed work-out shirts!

The Friday Night Sew-In is hosted by Crafty Vegas Mom this month.

Denim Skirt

One of the MANY things I did this weekend (along with going to Robert's brother's graduation, helping Robert's brother and sister-in-law move, cleaning my oven, socializing with friends who no longer live in the area, giving said friends a ride to the airport, going to church, and baking a birthday strawberry-rhubarb pie for Robert) was to convert a pair of jeans that didn't fit me into a skirt. 

I bought the jeans earlier this spring on super-sale from L.L. Bean.  I knew there was a good chance I wouldn't like the way they fit, but I only paid $7 for them and the shipping was free, so I figured I didn't have anything to lose.  When they arrived, they fit in the waist, but the butt and legs were quite baggy.  I was going to give them to the thrift store, but then I decided I could make a skirt instead - I used to have one that I made from an old pair of jeans, and I liked it so much I wore it out. 

The first thing I learned was that L.L. Bean makes really good quality jeans.  The inseams and crotch seams both had several lines of stitching and were much more difficult to pick apart than I remember the seams being on the last pair of jeans I did this to.  When I started to re-sew the seams, I had major tension problems.  My machine really didn't like to sew with the heavy duty orange denim thread I bought to match the thread the  pants were sewn with at the factory.  I ended up having to buy a special 110/18 denim needle, and even so I had to crank up the tension higher than I've ever had it set to on this machine to avoid loops on the bottom of the fabric. 

When I cut the legs off, I measured and cut as little off as possible so that the remaining leg and the inserts from the cut-off legs would be roughly the same length after I sewed the front and back seams.  The jeans were "talls," so that resulted in an unhemmed skirt that was well past my knees.  Then I put it on and had Robert mark the tops of my knee-caps with chalk.  I measured the distance from the marks to the top of the waistband (23") and extended the line all the way around the skirt - I decided to make it 24" long in the back.  Then I cut about a half inch below the line, zig-zagged around the very edge, folded it under at the chalk line, pinned it, and sewed two seams to try to imitate the original hem that you see on pretty much every pair of jeans. 

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  It's definitely way better than the jeans I started with, and the whole thing only cost about $15, including the thread and the special sewing machine needles!