Tweedy Textures

How is March almost over?!  It may officially be Spring, but one day I get to pull out my Summer wardrobe and enjoy an insanely warm day, and then there are gray, chilly days when I still feel like hibernating in a sweater.

And that is my excuse for still being allowed to post sweater projects to the blog that are probably going to be put away for the season very soon.  Or perhaps the weather will turn rainy and damp again (one can only hope for a little more precipitation or California is going to be in real trouble) and I will once again be living in tweedy knits and turtlenecks.  But it was in the mid-eighties a couple of days ago, so most likely the heavier knits will be tucked away.

But for now I am enjoying my hand knits.  I go through phases where I don't wear them for some time, and the next thing I know, I want to live in them.

Oh, and you may have noticed, those fabulous velvet platforms from the late 90s that I was wearing have suddenly disappeared.  Turns out, shoe glue gives out at the most inconvenient of times.  In this case, right in the middle of a photoshoot, I stepped right out off of the entire bottom of the shoe.  And a few steps later, the other one joined its mate.

They are still in a time-out while I figure out if I am going to fix them myself or take them to a proper shoe repair.  My Royal Vintage (now American Duchess) shoes filled in for the day, but I was rather irked at my fickle shoes.  Sure, I have had a heel cap pop off in a sidewalk crack or even in a lawn, but this was a little bit extreme, and certainly rendered the shoes unwearable for the time being!

In the last couple of years, short skirts paired with colorful tights have been bringing me joy.  I am even thinking about making myself another short skirt with more of a flared silhouette, but it may have to wait until the end of the year as the time for wearing tights in Northern California is nearing an end.

While writing this post, I am reminded that I haven't been doing any knitting lately, and I probably need to rectify that situation.

Of course, I have a few projects floating about that need to be finished, but I am also feeling the urge to jump into a fresh new project with some soft squishy yarn.

Or perhaps I should stick with my hand quilting for the moment.  I will have to see how I feel with my spare time this weekend!

There is a rumor that we may have a bit of precipitation this Sunday, so the knitting may win out.  What is it about a wet day that makes me crave sitting on the couch, drinking tea, and knitting the entire day away?!

Sweater:  Made by me, "Cherie"  by Kim Hargreaves
Skirt:  Made by me, Vogue 1247
Shoes:  Chinese Laundry / Royal Vintage "Greta"
Earrings:  Vintage

Embroidered Knits

There is something about a tweed texture that I cannot resist.

I really do love texture, and it doesn't matter if it is a nubbly hand knit sweater or a fabric I am using to make a dress.  That may be why I have such a difficult time finding solid fabrics that I like; solid colors with texture are difficult to find.  

This particular yarn is from KnitPicks.  I have a few different colors of the City Tweed DK yarn, and I find it lovely to work with.

Now that I have been wearing the sweater for a while, the yarn has pilled slightly under the arms, but once I pull off the offending bits, I haven't noticed many more nubs, and I am hoping that is the end of it.

But other than that slight irritation, this yarn is lovely to work with, and super comfy to wear.  I was actually wearing this sweater made from City Tweed today, and I am thinking that I may need another sweater in yet another style/color using this lovely fiber.  I'm not sure if it is the alpaca content, but it's so soft and warm to wear.

I wanted the yarn to be the star of the show, so I chose a simple pattern.  "Cherie" is from a beautiful book,  Vintage Knits by Rowan, which I highly recommend.  In so many cases, knitting pattern books have only one or two designs that interest me; this book has me wanting to find a reason to make almost all of them!

There is an issue with this pattern, though.  As written, the neckline will turn out as more of a funnel neck than a boatneck that is seen in the images and technical drawing included with the pattern.  If you want the finished sweater to look like the photos, the ribbing will have to start before stated (subtract the number of ribbing rows from the decreasing raglan portion of the front/back and sleeves).

And while this yarn looks fabulous in a plain old stockinette stitch, I decided to go a little crazy and add some embroidery.  As I did with my monogrammed sweater, I used a contrasting scrap yarn to give myself a path to follow, especially with the chain stitch!  It's difficult to see the forest for the trees when I am embroidering patterns and continually rotating the sweater.

I have never tried embellishing on a large portion of a sweater like this, so I decided to stick with the same yarn.  The look is subtle, but it's even more added texture to the tweed yarn, and I really do love the way it turned out!

A few embroidery motifs were initially placed along the neckline with the chainstitch, but since I was having so much fun, I just kept going with it. 

The design is very freeform, so for the set of three lazy daisies, I just gave myself a single mark to work around.

The process was rather meditative.  I think there will be more embroidered sweaters in my future!

I will have to remember to embroider the sleeves before constructing the actual sweater, though!  It was a bit of a challenge, but I made it work.  I am not even sure that I would have embroidered on the entire sleeve even if I had easy access to the entire length.

And back to that yarn . . . blocking makes it look even better!

I am loving how this project turned out.

And at some point I am going to have to come up with a design that uses some contrasting colors and go to town on another embroidered sweater project!

Mini Me

Now that February weather has turned frigid, I am going through more weather appropriate photos in the backlog of projects to be posted to the blog.  In the last couple of years I have found myself drawn to easy to wear long sleeved sweaters that fall at mid-hip.  The only issue is, whatever shall I wear with these sweaters?  Actually, this is a common problem for me . . . I spend many hours making a sweater that I love, only to discover that I don't have a matching skirt to wear with it.  Whoops!

So when I started working on this sweater, I decided that I would also make myself a new skirt, thus eliminating the problem of finding a matching one.  

My pattern of choice was Vogue 1247, made with fabric that I had initially purchased to make drapes.  I love the fabric, but since completing my quilt, I felt like there were too many patterns in the room to add yet another busy print, so the drapes were put on hold, and the fabric put to the side.

My challenge for this project was to use what I had on hand - no purchasing new items for this skirt allowed!  For an underlining, I rummaged in the bin that holds solid colored cottons and found this maroon sateen. 

I also had a suitable invisible zipper on hand, and plenty of seam binding to finish all of the raw edges.

I have since found a few other separates that work quite nicely with the tweedy top, but I am also excited to have an excuse to pull out some of my colorful tights to wear with these new short skirts that have been added to my closet in the last couple of years!

Scrappy

Today, we have the case of the never-ending scrappy quilt.  I suppose most larger quilt projects take a fair amount of time, but this one has been going on for YEARS!  I started hand piecing the quilt top somewhere around 2013, which may account for why it has taken so very long - there are no sewing machines involved in the making of this quilt.  That, and I often get distracted by all of the other creative projects that run amuck in my home.

While I love this quilt because it has so many leftover scraps of old projects, it is not my absolute favorite quilt top.  I think that my hexi quilt probably holds that title at the moment.  But I didn't think that it was a good idea to learn how to hand quilt using my favorite quilt top.  Because while I feel pretty darn confident with my hand sewing, this is a horse of a different color!

It has actually been rather frustrating, in many ways.  The process feels like re-learning how to hand sew, because it has very little to do with what I consider to be hand sewing.

But I am sticking with it!  

I am not sure exactly what I was expecting.  It wasn't a logical mind that thought that I would have perfectly even tiny stitches from the get-go with a technique that is entirely new to me.  But somehow my stitches look enormous and nothing like the vintage quilts I have seen.

But I came up with a basic idea for the quilt design and jumped in.

Some of the blocks have an outline stitch around each square, while other have a diagonal line running through them.

Of course, I never thought about the fact that crossing through the seam allowance at those corner joins might not be such a great idea.  So those stitches are even more uneven than the others due to the added thickness.  I have also been struggling with thimbles, and what to do with the finger that feels for the needle underneath the quilt.  I tried using just my finger, but that didn't last long.  Next up, I tried using a variety of thimbles (even though they are not suited to the task).  I found a plastic one that did an okay job, but as you can see from the photo below, it didn't survive the journey.  But it's a process, and I am slowly learning what works and, perhaps more importantly, what doesn't.

My practice scrap came in handy when I reached the binding stage.

It often feels tedious to take the extra time, but I figured I might as well make sure that I liked the width and double layer method of binding before attempting a queen/almost king sized quilt.  I got lucky the first time around with this one.

Methodically stitching down a binding by hand is my idea of heaven, so this portion of the quilt felt like coming home after struggling through the quilting.

This will never get old for me.  I know it bores some people, but basic hand stitching is so very relaxing to me.

Quiltmaking by Hand by Jinny Beyer was a great resource.  This book is so beautiful!

Because of the size of this quilt, I also had a few more hand sewing opportunities while piecing the back layer together.  And my goodness, it is challenging to find 9 yards of a quilting cotton that I like.  I spent hours at a quilt store and most of my bolt choices did not have enough yardage.  I didn't feel like risking an online purchase only to find that the cotton was stiff, seeing as I would be hand quilting through it.  This particular print was not my first choice, but I have come to the conclusion that it was meant to be.

I had previously purchased a different backing without taking photos of my quilt along for comparison, and was disappointed to discover that the nine yards of fabric just didn't play well with the quilt top.  But since those nine yards turned into a beautiful dress, the folly was rewarded.

The ironing stage was a bit of an adventure, mostly because of the size.  Why exactly did I choose such a massive quilt for my first project?!

But eventually, I got there!

Many of these fabrics are from previous projects, so it really is a trip down memory lane to look at the quilt top.

Next, it was time for the quilt sandwich.  I struggled with my choice of batting for some time, and finally settled on wool, specifically, Hobbs Heirloom Wool Batting.

I knew that I wanted something that would needle easily.  And while there is a multitude of information on quilting out there, the majority relates to machine quilting.  Finding information specific to hand quilting is challenging, and most of what is out there is basic overviews, not in depth knowledge.

I decided to splurge on the wool because I heard that it was lovely to hand quilt.  And it was, for the most part, although the batting is perhaps slightly more lofty than I anticipated.

A few thousand stitches later, and there are still miles to go!