Skulls and Bows

Sorry it's been so long.  We own a house in Upstate NY and our tenant turned in notice of leaving.  I've had to drive up there twice to show it.  We finally have a new tenant lined up but all the driving has left little time for any sort of craftiness.

First order of business is to tell you that I have NOT finished my shawl.  The reason I haven't is that I took it to a knitting/crochet group and promptly kept knitting in a circle rather than back and forth!  I now have 300+ stitches to tink back.  So, the shawl has been put in the naughty bin and I will take it out when it feels it can act better.

I have though been sewing.  I started the Mari Dress for A with some of the knit fabric I got from Girl Charlee.  I had read that sewing knits on a sewing machine can be a bit trying.  This is what I'm finding to be the case.  I don't know if it is my sewing machine, user error or what but if I'm within 1/2 inch of the end of fabric my machine won't feed the fabric through it just stitches in one place!  Very frustrating.  Until I figure out what to do about that I've put the dress to the side.

I have however finished a purse!  A friend had seen this great girl skull pattern in the remnant bin at Joann and picked it up for me.  I think it was 1.5 yds for $2.  Then the pink fabric is this woven stuff with Lycra in it so it is stretchy.  I picked it up from Feminine Touch Fabrics in Syracuse, NY for $1 a yd!!!  So this purse cost me maybe .75 to make in fabric!  It cost me a bit more in sanity.  The purse itself was easy I used this reversible bag pattern.  The pattern is very simple and I had no troubles at all until I came to the straps.  I just couldn't get them right for the life of me.  My top stitching is atrocious!  Anyway I ripped them back like 4 times and finally said enough they will just have to do.  So here it is in all its glory, my first purse:

Not horrible from far away.  Just please don't look too close!

Grrrr

Okay so I started on a new outfit for A.  It is basically the skull dress (seen below) made into a shirt with matching pants.  I figured hey, I've made the pattern once before, albeit with help, so it would be a perfect one to try by myself.



So I cut everything out:


And went to work sewing.  Everything went along pretty well, until:


Do you see?? Do you see that the seems don't match up by almost a 1/2 inch!!!  I had tried a different way of cutting out fabric and apparently made the back yoke WAY smaller than the front.  I'm an idiot.  I'm going to be honest now, I was going to let it go.  It's under her arm, who the heck is gonna see.  But I showed my husband and the first thing out of his mouth is "Oh I'm sorry you ruined it honey."  I was ticked off but he was right I couldn't put A in this.

So, today I took it apart (just the back) and went to cut out new pieces.  Somehow between where I keep my patterns and my kitchen table where I do the cutting I lost piece #2 which is the piece I needed.  I don't know where it went.  The Earth has swallowed it up.  So I then had to completely take apart the small yoke piece, lay it down on paper and add 1/4 in. around it to give me:



Thank goodness my math was correct because I only barely had enough fabric to cut two more yokes out and leave enough for pants.

I went through it all again and this is the result:


Not perfect but pretty darn close.  This is just with a basting stitch in to see if it worked.  Now I gotta finish this seam and then put in the zipper.  The dreaded zipper.

Finished picks tomorrow.  Though I don't think the pants will be done.

Addicted or How to Spend $70 at Joann's Fabrics

It's official, I'm addicted to fabric!  I love my yarn don't get me wrong but sewing fulfills that instant gratification that you just don't get with knitting.  Plus there is so many wonderful fabrics to choose from.  Today I headed to my local Joann's (which isn't so local, it's 15 miles away) in search of fabric for a Tinkerbell costume.  Well, $70, 4 patterns, notions and fabric, I really didn't need, later we left.

Here's the fabric for her costume along with the great pattern (for a mere .99!):

It's a ballerina costume but I think the first one will look just like Tinkerbell done all in green.  The top fabric is a green spandex that I scored on sale for $2 a yard!  The middle is some voile that was on sale for $3 a yard and the netting was just under $2 a yard.  I can't wait to put this together but it will have to wait until I'm done with PJ's for my son.  He picked out the money fabric below:


The other two fabrics were in the bargain bin.  The apples are a great summery gauzy cotton that I will save for next year.  The purple fabric reminded me of Dora, who my daughter adores, so I picked it up.  It's hand wash though so I'm going to make something non-wearable out of it.  No clue of what yet.  You can't forget the notions though I realize they are the boring bits:

Butterick patterns are only .99 at Joann's right now!  I couldn't resist.  Do you see I even bought a dress pattern for me.  But I think I'm too fat for it.  The PJ pants are 2 different sizes, one for the adults and one for the kids.  I'll make them later this week after I finish A's pant set.

So that's it, that is how you spend $70 at Joann's, and feed an addiction.

In Progress

I had a very busy weekend.  We own a house in upstate New York and our current tenant has purchased a home and is moving out.  I left our house on the outskirts of Washington DC at 6pm on Friday night.  Let me tell you that was not the brightest idea I've had.  It took me nearly 1.5 hours to just get to Baltimore.  Then I trusted my GPS and it took me the most oddball route that landed me paying $21 in tolls!  To say I was ticked off would be an understatement.  I didn't get to Syracuse til 1:30 am.  I'm an early bird and normally sound asleep by 10pm so it really was very late for me.

I woke up at 6:45 am showed our house to a number of families (cross our fingers that one of them is a good fit so  I don't have to repeat this weekend again) and left town at 3pm, to arrive back in DC at 9:30pm.  It was a loooooong day.  I did bring my Multnomah shawl but it stayed tucked away in its bag never to see the light of day.

Today, my husband let me sleep in (which meant 8am) and then we went out to eat.  I made a trip to JoAnn's to look for fabric for a Tinkerbell costume that my daughter keeps asking for but the cutting line was so long I couldn't be bothered, I'll go tomorrow.

I did however find time to cut out a new shirt and pant set.  It's the same basic set as my first dress but the dress is cut for a shirt and pants are added.  Here's the cut pieces:



Funnily enough my husband picked out this fabric!  The pants will be made out of the pink material but I'm a bit confused by the cutting directions so I'm going to wait til I have a chance to ask someone if I'm doing it right.  I don't have enough of the pink material to make any mistakes.  I'll try to put the shirt together tomorrow with more pics to follow.

Back to Knitting

I have so many things on the needles right now it isn't even funny!  I have a baby blanket that I started in February for a baby who was born 3 weeks ago and it's only 25% done, a great pair of Malabrigo worsted mosaic mittens which are done but I can't show you til the pattern is released, a simple lace scarf from the Sock Yarn One Skein Wonder Book, a pair of convertible mittens I started for a friend before we suddenly moved to DC (my goal is to finish them for Christmas!), a purse that will be felted of my own design (but it's miles and miles of garter stitch and I just can't work on it for too long) and this:

It will be a Multnomah Shawl when it is done.  I'm making it with Shalimar Yarns Breathless in Byzantium and it is absolutely the most luxurious yarn I've even had the privilege to knit with.  I could just imagine laying in a bed of this stuff stark naked and I'd be a happy woman.  The yarn is made with superwash, cashmere and silk.  I know this sounds like a commercial (I'm getting nothing for this so it isn't) but if you get a chance to knit with this stuff DO IT!  Heck just buy a skein and keep it around to pet (much cheaper than a cat or dog I tell ya).  Anyway back to the shawl.  This is a super easy garter stitch shawl with a feather and fan border.  I've just gotten to the border and if I hadn't been caught up in all the sewing it would be done by now.  I can't wait to block the hell out of this thing.  I don't actually see myself as a shawl person, but for this scrumptious thing I'm going to make an exception.

And the Dress Died

Remember all those things I learned yesterday?  Well, I finished the dress this morning (quickly sewed on the straps after pinning them on Amelia).  I learned a few more things last night though!

1. Really think through your ideas before you start cutting!
2. It is IMPOSSIBLE to attach lining to a shirred dress AFTER it has been shirred.

I figured out a work-around with my lining screw up, it wasn't pretty on the inside but it worked, but the 45 min. dress took over 4 hours because I didn't attach the lining before I shirred.  Lesson learned.  

Anyway, back to what this post is really about!

Here is the dress in all its glory:

It really is quite cute if I do say so myself.  Perfect colors for her.  Shortly after this pic, Amelia goes running by me and I realize there is a lot of fluttering going on at the back.  I stop her and look at the back seem and she has completely ripped it right up to the top.  It's all frayed and there was no saving it, not without making it way too small.  In disgust I grabbed all the scraps and the dress and threw them in the trash!

I'm trying to find out where I went wrong.  I really think this light gauzy fabric needs the edges done up with a serger (which I don't own), but I'm trying to find out how else I could have reinforced the seam without one.

Anyone have a clue?

Things I Learned Today

1. Always check to make sure you are in fact sewing on the correct side.
2. Gauzy cotton (that's a technical term) does NOT like to have hundreds of stitches ripped out, it leaves holes.
3. When you only buy just enough fabric, if those things learned above happen, there can be issues.  
4. My daughter has great taste in fabric, expensive taste, but good taste.

So as you can see I learned another lesson today.  After learning that Brother sewing machines need tender loving care in order to do shirring properly after already inserting 3 rows, today I learned the above BUT I learned them after only one row.  I guess some improvement is good, right?

Anyway should have another cute sun dress done for A tonight.  Will have pics tomorrow of that dress as well as the first dress I sewed that I haven't shown here yet.

Not Quite Knitting

Okay so this is supposed to be a knitting blog, but I haven't been writing anything and today I have something else to share.  I sewed my daughter a dress!  From Scratch,  no pattern, yes it is just a big rectangle, but let's just skip over that.  Here it is:



I'll hopefully get a pic of A in it later but for now this will have to do.  It is just a shirred top, with ribbon shoulder straps and ribbon bottom trim.  I didn't like the ribbon on its own so I sewed baby ric-rac onto it.  Yes, I did that, which is why it isn't completely straight.  Here's a close up of the ribbon shoulders and the matching hair clip I made:



I am a bit worried that this may become addictive.  Knitting is fabulous and I love it muchly but there is something about having an entire dress done in 3 hours (it would have been less if I wasn't such an idiot) that does something for an ADD personality like me.