Ivy top finished (knitting)

This was a quick and easy knit. I finished it in about two weeks time (holiday season). Irony has it that it was finished on one of the coldest days we had this winter. So this top will remain in my closet for a while to wait for warmer days but I’m very happy with the result. 

The armholes are finished with a very narrow i-cord and the hem is double. Both are not as described in the pattern, but in knitting I do the same as in sewing: changing things to my preference or figure. 

I like it so much that a second one, not striped, is on the needles already.

Yarn used: the white and blue is Knitting for Olive silk, held double. The green is colourway "Dusty artichoke", 1 strand of silk and one strand of cotton merino. Earlier last year I made the Sylvan tee with this greenish colour. When I bought the yarn I had another project in mind that needed more yarn, so I ended up with quite a bit of that colour. Most of this used up now.

As this photo on mee is a bit too yellow (artificial light) below another photo on my dressform.

 

More knitting than sewing

In the past few weeks I’ve done more knitting than sewing. The sewing mojo was gone. A few reasons for it but the most important one is that I have been redecorating and organising my sewing room. Which has resulted in it being more messy than usual and not inspiring at all. Last weekend the painting was done and gradually I’m feeling I can do something again. 

My current knitting project is the Ivy top from Petiteknit. I’m using remnant yarn from earlier projects of both my daughter (who is an avid knitter) and myself. To get an idea of how to work the stripes I made a drawing of how it could look like:

The result so far is promising.

As the pattern is designed for negative ease, which I don’t like, I used a larger size than I normally would. Even then I added some extra increasess for the bust area. The top down knitting makes that you can easily fit during the knitting process and I think it’s okay. I’ll be ready for summer (which is still a long way off). 

A knitted shawl

This is a shawl I finished recently, the Iney shawl. The pattern is published inthe book 52 weeks of Shawls. Well, for me there is not enough time to knit a shawl in a week, certainly not this one. It took me almost a year, though I admit there were periods of weeks that I didn't work on it.

About two years ago I bought a kit for a cardigan from Christel Seyfart and after knitting the body I was not happy with the project. Which was pretty irritating, as at the time I had already countless hours of knitting done. This is a photo of the cardigan as far as I got. It is in a plastic bag, waiting for inspiration on how to finish it, if I ever want to do that.

I learned quite a few things from it though: fair isle knitting in the round, felting ends of yarn together so there is no need for weaving in the ends AND not to buy a kit as I like to do things my own way.

When finished there were only a few ends at the start and the end to weave in, while you can see there are continuous colour changes. I used a lot of the wool that was left for the shawl.

Pretty pleased on how my "floats" look (the strands of yarn at the back). 

Knitting a shawl in the round means that at some point you have to cut your knitting. This is called a "steek". Often described as terrifying, but it wasn't that bad. After cutting the edges were knitted, enclosing the steek stitches.

It was not the easiest pattern to follow, the instructions are full of abbreviations which make it difficult to read. As stated before, I like to do things my own way, so I changed a few minor details which made working for me easier. 

It's a very warm, comfortable shawl and I'm pleased with the result.

A sweater finished

I've quite a bit to show, it's been a productive few weeks :). Mainly because I enjoyed a lovely sewing week together with my sewing friends. This was the 8th time we did this and it's been so lovely again. It has evolved in a week that's almost as much about cooking and enjoying meals together as sewing. And of course chatting, sharing ideas, fitting help etc. Perfect "me" time for all of us.
Over the next week I'll try to show the sewing results, for now I'm sharing the sweater I made. It's a combination of a ziggurat pattern by Asa Tricosa, inspiration I found in another design and cables.

The cable is from the book "Knitted Cable Sourcebook" by Norah Gaughan. Very inspiring! I took one of the cable charts, flipped and rotated and came to this design.


  

I'm very pleased it worked, as this is more "free-style" knitting than I"ve ever done before. Something warm to wear during cold winter days.

Sweater with cables

Hello dear readers, nice to see you here again.

I've restyled my blog a little, not completely there yet but for the moment it's working. In my absence I've been sewing and knitting and will try to catch up a little. Quite a bit of what I did in sewing was basics like t-shirts, summer trousers etc. I'll skip those and in the upcoming posts I'll highlight a few more interesting garments.

This post is about a sweater (jumper in UK English) I knitted. Like the sweater I showed last year it's knitted with the ziggurat technique, developed by Asa Tricosa.
I simply love this way of knitting a sweater. It gives good opportunity to fit while knitting but most important: look at the way the armholes/sleeves are done. The definition of a seamline, but they are knitted (top down)  at the same time as the front and back of the sweater.

 


I incorporated the pattern Piper by Carol Sunday in a ziggurat (with a few minor adaptions). I loved combining this. Doing that is certainly keeping your mind of other worries!

A knitted sweater

At the beginning of August I showed you a knitted sweater in progress. I finished it a couple of weeks ago and I’m ever so pleased with it. The base was a pattern by Asa Tricosa, but my version doesn’t resemble the original much. It’s mainly used for the general shape, number of stitches, increases/decreases etc. Center front I added a cable from the book Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible: 260 Exquisite Patterns by Hitomi Shida. At the sides I repeated the small cable at the edge.

I love the technique that Asa Tricosa has developed, which she calls the “Ziggurat” method. It’s knitting top-down and with very clever techniques you knit the top of the sleeve in one pass with the body too. A way in which you can try it on in an early stage too and adapt for fit more easily. My fear in knitting sweaters was always that I would spend hours and hours (far more time than most sewing projects take) and after assembly would find out that it was not fitting. If you’ve been reading my blog for a little while you know I can be obsessive about fit . I’ve found a technique that suits me very well and have two more garments on the needles from her book. 

The book has many projects with lovely details that have a huge appeal to me, like this double knitted hem. Isn’t it a lovely detail? It’s a bit like nice underwear: you know it’s there, even if no one sees it.

The annual sewing retreat in the UK with a group of friends is next week, I’m preparing a coat and a jacket to sew. Sewing projects will be shown here again soon .

A knitting project

I’ve been in doubt about writing about my knitting projects as my blog has always been about sewing and only very occasionally I mention other subjects. But well, as it is my blog I’d like to share my knitting projects too and if knitting is not what you like to read about, this post is not for you.

I learned knitting as a child, did a lot of knitting in the 80’s and knitted nothing for about 20 years after my children were born. I wanted to knit for them, but when a sweater was already almost too small when I finished it, I stopped doing it completely as there simply was not enough time to do all I wanted to do with young children around.

Fast forward to about 4 or 5 years ago. At the time I was offered a free Craftsy class as a birthday present (they only did it that one time), but it had to be a knitting class. I took a class on lace knitting and I liked it that much, that knitting was part of what I did again. Mostly shawl knitting. I liked the techniques, the more complicated the better. Is there a relation to my sewing?? And shawls had the great advantage that size/gauge/tension didn’t matter. It takes more time to knit a garment than to sew one and I was so afraid that after hours and hours of work, a sweater wouldn’t fit.

But…. after I knitted quite a few shawls the thought came up: how many do you need? So at some point I dived into knitting sweaters again. I haven’t done many yet but like the top-down method where you can fit as you go.

Currently I’m knitting Sweatrrr. The technique is top-down, with knitting the top of the sleeves at the same time too. It’s called the Ziggurat method. When I found this technique, I had to try it and even though this is my first sweater in this technique, I’m already so convinced that I bought the recently published book too. (disclaimer: I have no affiliation to the designer, have bought my own copy of the book, I’m just very happy with the result)

I wouldn’t be me if I would not change something, so instead of the squares in the front and back, I added a Japanese stitch pattern center front. The back is plain stocking stitch.

Can you believe that the top of this sleeve was knitted at the same time as the top of the body? Fascinating isn’t it? There’s still a little jog but that’s my fault, knitting this way for the first time.

It will take more time than the average sewing project, but I’ll show you the result at some point.

Miscellaneous tops

I’ve been sewing more than blogging, the way it goes from time to time. I’m working on new pants which I’ve drafted myself, more on that in a separate post. This post is mainly about the tops I made.

First this BurdaStyle top which is double layered. I had this fabric around which is a bit sheer on its own. I made the blouse of Vogue 1440 early summer, never got round to do a blog post about that one, but learned that it was too sheer to wear without underlayer. So this top was the perfect choice for it. Actually it was the pdf pattern I traced in my previous post, I did not have the issue it was published in (July 2013).  It’s a nice basic for summer, will have to stay in the closet for a while now as it’s getting chillier here.

Couldn’t be more basic, a white top based on an Ottobre pattern. Meant to be worn under a jacket or cardigan. I changed the neckline and made it deeper. Initially I made the neckline band using the technique shown in this video by Sarah Veblen. It’s a good technique in general but did not work for me this time. Probably because I stretched too much. In the end I measured the circumference of the neckline on the pattern and subtracting 20% for the length of the neckline band. Worked perfectly.

The Presto top by SavageCoco is very popular at the moment  and I jumped on the bandwagon. A lovely top. The inside finishing is very neat. The construction is described well, just do as instructed and you get a perfect finish of the neckline/shoulder area. I’m not often using the so called “Indie patterns”, often they are too expensive and/or too basic for my liking but this top was very reasonably priced ($4.99). Combined with the positive reviews on it, it was worth trying.

I sewed a medium size and it turned out to be too tight. Too much negative ease for my liking. But the fabric is sooo nice and soft that I hated to throw it away. It fitted my daughter very well, but she didn’t like it. As this will mostly be worn under a jacket or cardigan too I added a strip of fabric to the side. It goes from the hem at the bottom in one long strip to the sleeves too, as these were very tight as well. Next time I’ll trace the large size.

The last one I made yesterday, it’s StyleArc’s Gail top. After making this photo I hemmed it and am wearing it today, casual with a nice twist. The fabric was bought a few years ago and all the time I did not know which top I would make from it. Then I thought about this variation and I quite like it. I’m going to do some work on the pattern for my next iteration: take out a bit in the center front waist area and have the neckline cross a bit higher. Both are figure related problems, not a pattern fault. Though StyleArc’s instructions are confusing. One sentence says “sew together”, the next one “join together”. I was thinking I had to do something else than sewing together in the last instruction. Could be my English but it was confusing me. And as construction is not that obvious, I was referring to and needing the instructions. They could do better on that.

Three of these four tops were pdf patterns that I traced using the method described in my previous post. I really like to do it that way.

And to finish off for today (mainly for my own reference): another shawl finished:

Not sewing related (again)

As we are having an exceptional heat wave here in The Netherlands (and in most of Europe) I’m not sewing. It’s just too hot. That’s from someone who lives in a very moderate climate, I know.

I mentioned before I was knitting a mystery shawl pattern (Xanadu). It’s finished and I like it. It was a difficult knit with lots of cables (at least stitches that were knitted in a different order, which is how cables are knitted). I did not use a cable needle and love that way of doing them. I had a difficulty with the pattern, as in the knitting patterns I’ve done in the past two years a blank square means a knit on the right side and a purl on the wrong side. Not so in this pattern, it was the reverse, which got me confused very often.

During my holidays I had a finished shawl with me that I used regularly in the evenings and on the chilly days. They do give that little bit of extra warmth, I’ve come to like them a lot (though until two years ago I never knitted or used one).

 

Blocked and unblocked.