Recap #2 - More Baby Things

Two of Tall Hubby's cousins out in Colorado had beautiful baby girls earlier this year. It's an ever-expanding family, this one.

One was a decidedly pink-for-little-girls kind of family (which is completely fine) and the other family I made the executive decision not to ask. Looking through our local Michaels, I came across these really cool Caron Cotton Cakes in fun colors, one including a hot pink variety. 

Ain't they cute?

I liked that they were self-striping as well, which cuts down on the design work on my end. Both girls were due in the spring and as my new policy is to knit for 1-year sizes to maximize use, I was looking at summer sweaters. Cotton seemed like a nice weight and breathable material for warmer weather.

I also went with my go-to summer pattern, In Threes, so the self-striping would add some further interest to a fairly simple pattern. 

I like it.

The self-striping also ended at very advantageous points. 

This one is for Baby K and is waiting for ends to be sewn in and buttons to be sewn on. I do hate hand sewing, apparently. I've been procrastinating on this one for quite some time now.

Take #2, still striping into very convenient points. 

Getting towards the end.

This one is for Baby S and is actually finished as well. I sat up late and finished the edging, sewed in all 4 ends of both sweaters, and stitched on the buttons. I had them in the mail the next day without realizing I forgot to take ending shots of them. Whoops!
But they are done and on their way to their intended recipients. Yay!

Recap #1: Blue Ballgown

Good Lord, it's been a long time. So, what will follow is a series of catch up posts, starting with the Blue Ballgown.  

It turned out very well.

Clearly, my Sister C-2 and I made it to the Midwinter Civil War Ball, way back in February. I did finish the eyelets, it was a long slog, but it got done.

There was much dancing.

And everyone looked very nice. 

Aside from one incident where my drawers came untied in the middle of a dance and I had to dash to the bathroom to fix things, we had a very nice time.

These Things are So Effing Small...and Only Getting Smaller

As I mentioned last time, I have a big hand-crafting project to finish on a deadline. The 22nd Annual Mid-Winter Civil War Grand Ball is coming up and my sister C-2 would very much like to go. I have gone in the past in not appropriate attire and it was very awkward. I decided I no longer wanted to look inappropriate so my DDM and I set about working on a period-appropriate ballgown.

This one, with the lace on the collar and sleeves. 

In Felicity-ballgown-blue polyester silk and trimmed with black lace with beads. 

I got together with Mom to continue working on the gown. I put on the corset, stunned to find it still fit after a solid year, and put on the skirt and bodice, which had seemed a mess of issues last year. The skirt was still messily too long and needs to be hemmed, which will be a bit complicated as Mom is turning out to be a big perfectionist about this. We decided to try for a little bit of trim along the bottom edge as well. Then we turned our attention to the bodice. It still didn't seem to be fitting right. I stood still as Mom examined it. Suddenly her face cleared a bit, she reached out to the edges of it, gave it a firm yank down around my waist, and everything magically fell into place, right where the sleeves and collar and waist were supposed to lie. Jeez.
So we aren't as far behind as expected. Good. Great.
My next step became clear. I needed to start working on the closures for the bodice. To be accurate, the historical closings are corset-like lacings through hand-stitched eyelets. We would have just cut corners and done modern grommet placements, but our local store did not have black grommets. So I get to do this by hand, like they did in the 1850's. Great. Fifteen eyelets on each side, 3/4 inch apart, 3/16 inch around. Thirty total.
Thank God I have two more weeks, these are going to take gorram forever.

My first two.

Clearly I learned a few things between the first, down by the bottom edge, and the second. These two took me a solid hour and a half all by themselves. Making sure they're big enough for the specs is difficult; they're supposed to be 3/16" around, or 4.75-ish mm. That feels huge, but it's really not. My tools for making the holes were actually too small to start with.

My workstation (the keyboard of my laptop) is kind of a mess right now, anyway.

My scaling tools. 

The smallest needle is what I've been using to part the threads of the silk, rather than punching through it. Then I go in with the metal and plastic yarn needles to make the hole larger, and finally go through with the wooden knitting needle to get the final gauge. It feels a lot like stretching ear lobe piercings, not going to lie.

Either way, these two are actually still smaller than they're supposed to be. I don't know how I keep shrinking them! Ah well. I'll just use the yarn needle to help pull the lacing ribbon through when I go to put the sucker on. 

But remember how I said these eyelets are small?

That's the whole edge of the bodice on my lap.

Can you see where I was working? Two down...twenty-eight to go. Whoo boy. 

(I should be grateful though, in the end. Chelsea over at "A Sartorial Statement" came in at sixty-six eyelets for her 18th century maternity stays. Yikes!)

A Finished Thing!

I finished another thing!
Remember I was knitting for Friend M's Baby O a while back?

That was this one, oh so long ago now.

It's the Wee Stripes Pullover, and I liked the color way and pattern enough to start a second, exactly the same version just a size up for Friend A's Baby M who was born in December. Last time we saw it, it looked like this:

Very sad.

Well...

It is in fact completed!

This one turned out just a little wonky; the tension at the bottom being a little tighter than the rest of it, and the seaming up being a little sloppy because I was in a hurry.

Button band and all.

I found these nice gray wooden buttons for both Baby O's and Baby M's sweaters, so they're super matchy-matchy. 

Look who came to visit!

I put the sweater on Tammo's level to take pictures of, making it part of his domain and so needing a thorough inspection. We also saw the new movie Peter Rabbit this weekend and so I thought a bunny photo would be appropriate. 

This was good timing, as I had another big hand-crafting project to finish on a timeline, so getting this sweater out from under me was a large weight off.

Oh wait, that's knitting!

Back to some knitting!
I'm starting to feel like the Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, when it comes to my sock knitting. At the start of this evening, I had 2 different socks on the needles using the same pattern. I like having a sock in my bag because when I'm not having to fuss about with provisional stitches for the heel, decreasing for the toe, or shaping for the heel, they're really straightforward knitting. The nice thing about self-striping yarn, or yarn dyed so as you knit it naturally forms horizontal stripes without you as the knitter having to change out yarns every stripe, is that it can look really fancy or interesting while just being plain stockinette stitch.
So I have this pair:

Pretty sure you've seen this one before.

This is actually sock number 2. I finished the main body of knitting on sock number 1, minus the heel shaping, and still needed something for my bag because I can't do heel shaping in the dark of a movie theater and we were going to see Darkest Hour, so I cast on sock number 2 right away, like a responsible knitter.

I'm actually already past the heel on this one, so this pair is moving along pretty quickly:

I didn't have any contrasting yarn, so that out-of-place variegated row is going to be the heel. 

I will freely admit to using the same sock pattern over and over again. The above crazy green/pink/blue/white pair is my third set of this pattern. My printed-out copy of the pattern is dog-eared and rumpled and stained from being in my daily purse for so long, but I know it well enough to barely have to look at it anymore. I know it's 60 stitches to cast on for my size and if I have another of the socks nearby for comparison I can tell whereabouts the heel row should go and when to start decreasing for the toe.

The real reason I started on the second crazy green socks is because I had picked up the heel shaping on my second pair of these socks. Remember when they looked like this?

It was like this for a long time, really. 

Well, now that sock looks like this:

Wow, a completed sock!

For some reason I decided the responsible thing to do with this pair was to fully complete the first sock before casting on the second. I really don't know why my approaches were so different between pairs, but there you go. As soon as I finished the main body of the sock I picked up the heel stitches and got going again. 

I found it amusing that it had a complimentary color scheme to my 2017-Christmas-present Smartwool socks. 

Nice little triangle heel.

This is the afterthought heel again, which is great for keeping the pattern of the self-striping yarn (mostly, you can see the grey-tan-grey stripe toward the left got a little lost on the other half). It also works well if you happen to find yourself running out of yarn at the end of the toes because you can just put in coordinating yarn for the heels and toes as needed. 

They fit pretty well, just a tiny bit short along the length of my foot and my usual problem of large calf muscles that taper quickly to my ankle, so without a lot of 1x1 ribbing to hold them up (which I don't like the look of and is boring to knit) or decreasing/increasing along the leg for the same purpose (which I never remember to plan for or write down so I can duplicate it), I just have to deal with some bagginess at the ankles/leg bits.

I also managed to tidy up the gappy bit at the corner of the heel shaping. Yay!

Overall, I still like this pattern (clearly) and it's well on its way to being a staple of my knitting cycle, especially as I keep leaving sock yarn on my Christmas list, so my in-laws keep getting it for me :) Not a bad way to go.

They clearly know my colors. 

Still Not Knitting

So for my second fancy napkin, I decided to up the ante to "Varsity" level. This meant doing a double rolled hem with mitered corners and topstitching. I'm told it takes less thread and looks much, much neater overall.
It's pretty simple too, minus all the pressing. You fold the hem over a certain amount, press, repeat. Then you miter your freaking corners, which is not as easy as it sounds, then sew it down. Like so:

Oh so neat and tidy!

The thing about mitering double rolled corners though: I think this lady's instructions are stupid and make no sense.

She says do all the rolling and pressing as instructed. Then open it up and draw a line diagonally with the center at the 2nd pressed line. Fold the first pressed line in. Well, in that case you can't see the freaking line you just drew as a guide. I folded it back as instructed, lined it up as best I could, sewed it, clipped it, folded it back as instructed, stitched all along it. And you know what?

Bleh.

It looked like garbage. I'm willing to put some of it down to user error, but I want to clearly state that the whole process seems flawed. What is the point of a guideline you can't see to guide you?
So I scrapped all of that and started playing with other ways to miter these corners that might give me a better result.

Meh.

Not bad!

I think with that last one I nixed the first fold over before mitering and just turned the whole corner in? I've already forgotten, but I have six more napkins to practice with, anyway!

But at this point I had to take a hard stop from making napkins and move on to the next project: Picnic Placemats. 

Does that sound a little silly and useless to you? It did to me. But then I realized it could A) be a knitting needle holder and B) could be modified into something else I needed. 

My brother-in-law requested nice drawing pens for his birthday, and I was happy to oblige. However they came in a plastic baggy that was disintegrating by the time Amazon got it to my door. I needed a better solution. Why not a modified 'placemat' with channel stitching for the pens? 

But the pens are narrow and this pattern looks big and bulky with wide binding. What if I tried to modify it more to be more like my professionally made knitting needle holder without having to bind edges and it might make the profile smoother and more user-friendly...

Nope. My mother and unofficial sewing mentor said nope. She said do it the way they tell you to first and THEN you can get cocky and think you can make all these adjustments without preplanning and minimal skills. 

I hate it when she's right :)

I had already cut out the materials for a by-the-book 'placemat', so I wouldn't be wasting materials. 

So I basted, turned over the pocket, and got started on how to miter 3 inch binding. The first one went about as well as you'd expect. The second however...

See the lining up of all the horizontal bits? That's what's supposed to happen. 

So I bound my fuzzily cut out binding strips to the base fabric without much incident and a minimal to moderate amount of fudging the corners. 

Huh. I think I pivoted too soon?

This is the back or wrong side of the binding. Not as big a fan of how this looks. 

This bit looks pretty good though. 

I also was not a huge fan of the way you bound the folded-over bottom edge. I didn't think it looked that neat and definitely took a lot of fudging.

Meh.

But I also realized that I don't think you see a lot of properly bound edges on fabric things much anymore. We all seem to like double rolled hems instead.
 Anyway, I finished up that sucker by learning how to stitch the ditch, which is apparently the fancy way to bind things and do waistbands on work trousers. Amongst all the other ways to do waistbands, I guess? As my first time stitching the ditch (which means to stitch over a previously stitched line on one side of the fabric to catch fabric in the back side without having another line of stitching on the front) and having poorly cut materials, I missed the back edge of the binding frequently and had to do more fudging. There's only so much fudging you can do before you pull the binding all out of whack and it gets funny diagonal wrinkles. I don't have pictures of that, of course.
So, there was my 'placemat', all bound and pocket-ed up.

Huh.

 Overall, not bad.
By this point I was again at the 'screw this, I need to get going and I want this done' point in my day. So I quickly decided on 8 pockets, divided up the width, and merrily did channel stitching to create pockets within the pocket.

See, that's how it's done. 

And you know what? It looks pretty good. 

And you know what else? It is absolute rubbish as a knitting needle keeper. ABSOLUTE. RUBBISH. It is not to scale, the pockets are either too wide or too deep or too shallow. Everything keeps slip-sliding around and it is driving me bonkers. Bah humbug. 

Not Knitting

As my family was growing up, my mother would always make us the most amazing costumes for Halloween. She was also smart about it so she tried to talk us into long sleeved or heavier fabric for costumes because we tended to live in the frozen north. I don't have any good pictures online unfortunately, but my sisters and I became things like Robin Hood in felt, long sleeved Jane Austin heroines, a knock-off Queen Amidala in heavy robes, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and so on. All were beautifully made and functioned in our hard-used dress up box for as long as we could fit into them.
I've never quite grown out of dressing up. We can debate the merits or concerns about that at another time, but suffice to say I enjoy what has become known as cosplay (def: costume play, a costume and accessories to look like a specific character), historical reenactments requiring historically appropriate attire (NOT costumes, my sister C-2 would like to assert), and renaissance faires which tend to be more in the fantasy realms.
Just like with normal day to day clothing, two points arise. #1: while you can get by with one outfit for a lot of these events as (in theory) they are special events rather than day to day wear, it is more fun to have options. Think having a uniform vs. business casual. #2: if you want to have multiple outfits, you can either buy the pre-made outfits or you can make your own.
All of this is to lead into my latest project: I want to learn how to sew properly, both to be able to make options for my different costume things (especially since some pre-made things either don't exist or are prohibitively expensive) and to eventually make costumes and clothes for my own kids.
My dear darling mother (DDM) was on board to help with this, but our process was a sorry one. The plan was originally for me to learn through doing with her guidance. Unfortunately, the first project I needed or wanted done was this:

Yeah...

That is a Civil War-era ballgown, to be worn with Sister C-2 to the Midwinter Ball. We were also on a little bit of a time crunch as we started in November for the ball in February. First problem we had was cutting out the wrong size pieces for the bodice. Not by accident, we just didn't realize how different the proportions were. We got fairly far along, but by the date of the ball we still had a lot of tweaking to do and so we set it aside as we were thoroughly sick of blue silk.

It's going to be gorgeous when we do go back and finish it.

Next I decided it was time for a cold or poor weather look for my renaissance faire character. My main look was a peasant costume:

I was the designated shield-herald-person for a knight, who picked me out because of the drink in my hand. :)

As you can probably see, it is great for sunny and warm weather, but really cold if it's anything not that. Mom was again on board for helping with a new project and we picked out this pattern:

Cute, right?

In true sewing fashion, I set about changing a whole lot. We did the base gown in green and I decided I didn't like the pumpkin sleeves (still debating with those). I did all the cutting out for both pieces, but as soon as we got into the construction of the top of the dress, Mom pushed me away from the sewing machine and I was relegating to pressing duty. The sleeves on the overdress turned out to be the biggest pain in the tuchus and we were running out of time again, so I won the debate (for now) and we left them off in the final product. It turned out really cool. Tall Hubby made me tip-less arrows with coordinating green fletching and I felt so badass.

The only hiccup was I HAD to wear my new outfit, which if you recall was made for cold weather conditions, and the weekend turned out to be perfectly sunny and in the 90's. Tall Hubby in his leather armor and me in my long sleeved silk-like dress were VERY warm. Worth it though, and now it's in my repertoire.

My next challenge to Mom was investigative and reverse-engineering sewing. My friend A wanted to go to a convention as this character:

I had to find a picture in a suitably action-filled pose.

It's Princess Yona from the anime Yona of the Dawn (or Akatsuki no Yona if you're into the original). There was much debate and decision making and everything.

Friend A on the left and my DDM (dear darling mother) on the right, setting out the fabric for the obi.

Friend A hard a work.

It was also decided that I should go as Lili, Yona's friend from the Water Tribe that is in the existing manga but not the anime yet. She looks like this:

Isn't she cute?

Question for you sewers and sewists out there: how do you get fabric to drape along a lady's frame without apparent seams and enough volume at the bottom to be able to walk?

Answer we came up with: you don't. We did pleats at the top for volume at the bottom, a few princess seams to make it a little more form-fitting and then added a not-image-correct waist sash so I didn't feel like I was wearing a purple choir robe. Here are our final cosplays:

Friend A as Yona

Me as Lili of the Water Tribe

With sister C-2 as Yun, the Boy Genius

We had such a great time at that convention, despite the convention not actually being that great.

SO that's all my sewing adventure so far, and I did...maybe 40% of any sewing actually done? Great for my costuming wardrobe, bad for me actually knowing how to sew. I decided something needed to be done. None of my upcoming cosplays needed any further sewing, so I could actually knuckle under and learn how to sew. From the beginning. 

I found this book in my DDM's stash:

It's an older code sir, but it checks out...

It's really well designed and put together, taking you through key core sewing techniques with a series of projects that build on the skills you learn in each project.

Project number one was "Fancy Napkins". Now, a part of me that likes to cut corners said, "But you've made a quilt before, and sewn a simple skirt, and surely you can skip something so basic." The gung-ho part of me replied, "Shut up, you! We are doing this properly for once, no matter how stupid it seems or how not-useful these projects are. Start to finish, we're doing this book!" And that was that. My new house would get some new fancy napkins for all of the super-fancy dinner parties we throw (absolutely sarcasm). 

I bought quilting cotton fabric as directed: 

Our plates are all bright turquoise, so I wanted something with a pattern in a similar color.

Used high school geometry and a fair amount of fudging to cut it out, along with the pieces for project #2:

The striped fabric and darker blue is for Project #2, coming soon-ish.

And sat down at my station to start sewing. 

No matter how good your intentions, a crafter's workstation is never truly tidy.

Or, I wanted to start sewing. What actually happened is I spent 45 minutes arguing with my machine.

I'm looking at you, Singer!

My DDM didn't want me ruining her good machine with my feeble attempts to learn this craft, so we went in together on this model. So I had to figure out tension and stitch patterns and why the gold thread I had picked out was NOT a good idea and all sorts of things. Fun.

Anyway, I was finally on to sewing. First, over-stitching. Using zig-zag stitch to edge the fabric to keep it from fraying. Some of it went well:

Look at the nice neat partially rolled edge.

And some of it did not:

Look at the gappy mess. 

My name is Inconsistency. But it was also my first napkin. Then we moved on to mitering corners. Some went well:

Nice, neat, looks even, right?

And some did not:

Yeah, that didn't quite line up, did it?

Moving right along, next we sew down the edges just behind our over-stitching, pivoting at the corners. Some went well:

Fairly square, nice point, fairly even lines, I guess.

And some did not:

I don't even know what happened here. Actually, I do :/

By this point I had been working on a single napkin, from cutting to figuring out the sewing machine to actually sewing for nearly three hours. I just wanted to complete ONE FREAKING NAPKIN before I had to leave for a previous appointment. Things started getting a bit messy, obviously, but you know what?

It's done. And I did all of, from start to finish.  

I have seven more to do, which will help with the consistency in edging and straight lines and pivoting. Practice makes perfect, or at least better, and I know that I will actually be making strides because I will be the one properly doing all of it. Pretty cool, huh?