Man, I totally am tending to like chunky yarn over thinner yarns. These legwarmers were meant to fit smoothly under pants, so I wanted them to be thin yet warm, so I chose a sockweight cotton. But holy crap, they’re taking a long time. I’m just now halfway through ONE of the legwarmers.
I was sewing up bags for this weekend’s Natural Living Expo, and decided to go ahead and make up my two bags while I was at it.
The one on the left is corduroy, the one on the right is fake leather. Both have shorter handles to enable me to carry them without them dragging on the ground.
This is the fun lining fabric for the corduroy bag.
My current bag that I use for carrying stuff around is starting to fall apart, so now I have two new bags to replace the old one. I think I’m going to add an external pocket to them both, since I failed to add any internal ones.
I’ve been wanting a toddler-sized doll for a while, to use in babywearing demonstrations. After reading all sorts of complex directions on how to turn a regular doll into a toddler-sized doll, I decided to just sew one up from scratch. I don’t need realism, just something that’s the right size, has some weight, and has jointed arms and legs.
So I used a pattern for a Raggedy Ann doll, made it completely out of muslin, then made a little dress and pants. I added a do-rag to hide the doll’s misshapen, bald head, lol.
But instead of stuffing her with just stuffing, I made little muslin bags to fit inside the doll’s legs, arms, head, and torso and filled those bags with old aquarium rocks. I surrounded those bags with layers of quilt batting to make the limbs and body soft on the outside, then stuffed the little rock-and-batting packages into the doll.
She doesn’t weigh nearly as much as I had originally planned – rocks are not the most efficient way to add weight to something – but she has enough weight in her to make putting her into slings fairly easy.
So, yay, another item crossed off the list!
Sometimes you just feel like a simple skirt with nice, clean lines. And you don’t have a whole lot of fabric. This easy skirt is perfect! You’ll need two times the length that you want for the skirt. (So if you want a skirt that’s 25 inches long, you’ll need 50 inches of fabric, or about 1.5 yards.)
Fold the fabric in half, with the selvages together. Then fold it again so the cut ends are together. You should have four layers of fabric, with a big fold at the top, selvages on the right, two single-layer folds on the left, and four cut ends at the bottom.
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To use even less fabric, you can use the fabric’s width as your length, then you’ll only need enough to get around your hips plus however much more you want for fullness at the hem. If you’ve decided to go this route, when you first lay your fabric out to fold it, the selvages will be at the top and bottom, with the cut ends on the right and left.
Once you’ve gotten the fabric folded, sketch out your skirt. Or, if you’re like me, live on the wild side, forgo the pen, and start with the scissors! The important part is the waist – measure your waist and add 2 inches, then divide by 4. This is the hot pink line in the drawing. The other two lines are pretty forgiving – the purple line should be as long as you want the skirt plus a few inches for the hem. The blue line just goes from the end of the purple line back to the fold.
You’ll also want to cut yourself a waistband – I like to make it about three inches wide and as long as my waist measurement plus two inches.
Now sew the two panels of your skirt together, right sides facing of course, using 1/2 inch seam allowances. Leave room on one side to add a zipper. Sew in the zipper, then sew on your waistband. Add a button or snap on the waistband. Hem. And you’re finished.
These skirts usually take me about an hour, all told.
Now, I have a very uncurvy frame. There’s about ten inches of difference between my waist at its narrowest and my hips at their fullest. If you have a curvier figure, the straight side seams of this skirt might not be flattering on you. In that case, consider cutting the side seams with a bit of a curve to match your hips like this:
I particularly like this pattern in a vertical stripe, because the way it hangs makes the stripes look like they angle in on the sides.
Feeling a lot like a joiner these days, I’ve decided to join Sew Retro, too. Of course, here the idea is to sew something retro and in keeping with the current theme. Feb and March is “Something for the Upcoming Season” and I’m trying to decide if my planned pantsuit is, in fact, for the upcoming season. I’ll have to look at the fabric I bought again.
I have decided to participate in Project Spectrum. Basically, the idea is to notice and create with the colors around us. There are color groups for each month or two, and the goal is to create something using those colors.
February / March
Blue, White, Gray
April / May
Green, Yellow, Pink
June / July
Red, Black, Metallics
August / September
Brown, Orange, Purple
The good news is that my February project – Wally’s legwarmers – are blue!
I found these linens in a storage box in my basement, brought over from my dad’s house when he died. Turns out, they were made by my dad’s grandmother as a wedding gift for my parents. My mom didn’t want to use them, a fact which annoyed my great grandmother, as she was not the type to want to save pretties, but to use them.
So we’ve decided to use them.
OK, I think I’m finally done for real. The scarf was pretty easy. I did it with two rows of knit, then two rows of purl. The color stripes are actually in kind of a code using dates that are important to our family – birthdays, anniversary, etc. Kind of cheesy, but kind of fun.
The hat was done following a free pattern I found online and have since lost, sorry. I hate doing that. I altered it quite a bit to make it long enough to cover my ears completely.
The mittens were originally made using Bev’s THE Mitts pattern. But I found that the increases for the thumb started way too early and were too gradual to fit me well, so after trying a few things, I ended up cutting the mittens apart just below the thumb, and reknitting starting at the top of the ribbing. I did NOT increase right away after the cuff, but instead knitted 8 or so rows in stockinette without any increases, then added in about 7 stitches on the next row, to join back up with the rest of the mitten using kitchener stitch.
And after all that, I realized I could have just simply left out those 8 stockenette rows, and simply joined the ribbing directly to the top part of the mitten and saved myself some work. But oh well.
Well, for the time being, pretend that the knit mittens progress bar to the right instead says 75% complete.
I did complete them, but they were disappointing during their first wearing today. They kept sliding down my hands, making it hard to do anything with my hands. They are just too wide at the wrist. I know what I would do differently if I were to make them again, but I’m not about to start all over.
So…my first attempt to correct the problem involved removing 6 extraneous rows between the base of the thumb and the top of the ribbing. Helped some, but not enough. So I think my next step is to cut out/remove the side seam up to the base of the fingers, then re-stitch it, bringing it in several stitches as I near the wrist. This will make it tighter at the wrist and, hopefully, keep it on my hands.
Of course, a smart person would have discovered this problem before knitting the second mitten but, well, it’s hard to really test out the fit of a single mitten.
Wow, well, I have completed my first knitting projects – a matching scarf, hat, and mittens for me. Here is the hat, which caused the most trouble. I followed a pattern I found online, and I can’t remember which one, I’m so sorry. But it called for about 5 rows of k1p1 ribbing, and after I got the hat done, I found it just wasn’t enough. Plus, the hat kept sliding up my head because it was too tight and cone-shaped. I blocked the hat over a balloon, and that helped the sliding problem, but the ribbing still was not satisfactory. I like hats that cover all of my ears, and this hat left my lobes out in the cold.
I ended up knitting new ribbing – this time k2p2 and about 10 rows. I cut the old ribbing off the hat (scary) and then attached the new ribbing using kitchener stitch. I’m very pleased with the end result.
Wally took this picture. The mittens are drying on the radiator this evening, and I will photograph the whole set tomorrow.
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