Tuesday, January 25, 2011

At long last -- Falkenberg!




Started back in the beginning of November, it's taken me until mid-January to finish -- whew!



Stats: Donna, a Hanne Falkenberg design in colorway 6. Shetland wool knit with size 2 needles. Knit in size L, and shown without (optional) buttons.



I'm thinking I could have knit this one a bit smaller -- it's not greatly over sized, but I think it would look better with a closer-to-the-body look. One thing I'll change will be to put the button loops and buttons on it to give it a more pulled in look. All in all, I'm pleased, but looking forward to starting something just a bit quicker!

Monday, January 3, 2011

Finally, sewing photos

More sewing, rather than knitting or crocheting, has been happening around the casa lately and here are a few photos of the results.








First up, McCall's 6208, view E. Sewn from a sweater knit from Gorgeous Fabrics. Very simple layering piece, but it hits every color in my fall/winter wardrobe, so it should be useful. Rated as an "Easy" pattern, and I would agree with that.




Next, a little experiment using Vogue 8525 as a launching pad. I had admired a jacket sewn from felted ready-made sweaters, but was unable to find any suitable felting candidates at our local thrift stores. Hah! That's no problem for a knitter -- so, I simply created my own felted (or fulled) fabric by machine knitting up some yardage on my handy little LK 150 using some bargain coned Shetland yarn I had in the stash. A few trips through the washer and dryer and voila -- lovely, thick felted fabric. I wanted something easier than a jacket to practice on, so I used this simple pull-on skirt pattern. I split the front and back pattern pieces so I would have front and back center seams to do a little hand stitching embellishment, and left the hem unturned (would have been much too thick) and ran some basic blanket stitching around it -- mostly for looks, as it doesn't seem to want to ravel. I used a sportweight, superwash sock yarn for the hand stitching. It remains to be seen how this will hold up in subsequent laundering, but nothing much lost (other than my time) if it doesn't -- I'm guessing that the total material cost was around $6 - $7?







And finally, a dress -- Kwik Sew 3658, which I have previously made as a top. Made from a rayon/poly/lycra doubleknit. The scarf is a quick project from Vogue Patterns magazine -- ummm, two issues past? Usually called an 'infinity' scarf -- simple to make in many different fabrications -- and they make nice gifts, if you are so inclined.