Monthly Archives: April 2022

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ivory madou

22/04/2022 11:55 am \ 1 Comment \ Carolyn

I made a new jacket 🙂

I love making and wearing jackets, and this one was … um, fun? to make? Haha, no really. I used this beautiful ivory/vanilla wide wale corduroy that I bought years ago, from Potters Textiles… it’s one of those quite lovely luxe fabrics in such a perfect “white” for my complexion that I’ve been saving for all this time… just waiting for that perfect pea coat pattern. Although maybe it’s not quite a pea coat in the end, maybe more of a cropped shacket…? Honestly I don’t understand all the in or even relevant terms for clothing a lot of the time but it’s a jacket and very comfy and fun to wear, and I LOVE it! Phew what a crazy sentence! I’m sorry!

So, launching into the pattern deets: this is the FibreMood Madou jacket pattern, from the latest magazine/pattern release. It’s quite boxy and intended to be a bit longer that my version here. I cut mine bit short; partly because I thought this was a better length, and partly because by doing so I have enough leftovers to scrape a little mini skirt for winter too. Ha! It has huge breast pockets, which may well be mostly decorative in the long run because honestly, can you actually put anything bulkier than a credit card in a breast pocket?? but they look pretty cool, I think. However, there are also huge hip pockets, thus satisfying my die-hard little pocket loving heart. *happiness*

I added one of my circa 2022 labels. Still love these!

Now, why was it *inverted commas* fun? to make, as expressed above? well, being wide wale corduroy, and also being really gorgeous fabric that I absolutely could not ruin; any wobbly wales in the corduroy were going to drive me absolutely crazy and I quickly realised I could not tolerate any of that … I ended up hand-basting the central back seam; cursing myself the whole time for not ignoring the pattern and cutting it on a fold instead NO! actually I remember now, I DID cut it on a fold, and thought I’d just cut the edges off and avoid that centre back seam… and then I thought; no, I’ll follow the pattern as it should be and have a centre back seam. So I sliced up up the middle thus condemning myself to handstitching the seam. However! I have to admit I love the look of the centre back seam now; it’s perfect as far as the wales looking lovely and even, and it does make the back look a little more interesting than if there was no seam.

Same goes for the front button band stitching, and putting on the patch pockets; I was super super careful in the pressing, the lining up, and the stitching of each of these components. And am very happy with the results too!

The underneath of the collar, and the front bit of the hip pockets are cut from a perfectly colour-matched pice of heavy natural calico; that I bought from Calico and Ivy years ago. I did have enough fabric to cut these things, but am determined to get that matching mini skirt!

I used some dark copper jeans buttons for the buttons; from stash. My supply of these is very low now and I will need to buy more in the near future. It feels good to be using my stash though! I love finding exactly what I need, already in my possession. Reminds me, I can update my #use 30 stats; I had 2m of the corduroy, and I still plan to make a little skirt from the leftovers, so I think I can claim 1.5m for this latest creation. Bringing up my total to 18.5m for the year so far. 11.5m to go!!

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: daily outfit, fibremood, jacket, madou

handprinted socks and hand warmers

14/04/2022 7:01 pm \ 3 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve knitted a new pair of socks and matching hand warmers for myself… aren’t they beautiful?

Yoshimi sent a handprinted sock blank to me for my birthday last year, and I got onto it straight away! I’ve never seen or even heard of a sock blank before, and was quite interested to give it a go… the sock blank looked like this:

and was knitted, I presume by Yoshimi on her knitting machine, in two strands of sock wool held together. And then painted. I started at the bottom, unravelling carefully as I went and knitted my socks from the toe up, because I wanted the red/pink section to be the cuffs of the socks…

The pattern I used was my regular Patons pattern, that has been modified, and then I have also reverse engineered to be a toe-up pattern. I think I will publish the latter one of these days.

You can’t tell just by looking, but the “foot” section of the socks got re-knitted about three times before I was completely satisfied. The problem with knitting toe-up is that it is very difficult to gauge what the length of the foot is going to be, at the point where you have to start increasing for the heel, and I got it wrong a few times. I figured I really wanted them to be perfect, so each time I realised it wasn’t going to be quite right, they got unravelled back to the start of the increases, yet again.

I also realised before too long that there was enough yarn in the blank that I thought? hoped? I was going to be able to get a pair of hand warmers out of them too… and there was! I put the socks onto a length of waste yarn, without casting them off until I knew what was what… and started knitting the hand warmers from the other end, and finished in the red/pink section so they could have a red/pink cuff to match the socks nicely. I also carefully measured how much I needed to cast off, so I could stop in just the right spot. I’m proud to say there was a bare few 10cm leftover after I’d cast off!

I’m SO happy with how these turned out! The hand-dyed yarn is such a pretty range of colours! Thank you to my dear friend Yoshimi for such a lovely thoughtful gift!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: handwarmers, Knitted, knitting, own design, socks

pretty pink and lace simone

05/04/2022 12:41 pm \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

Here’s something I made recently… a rather lovely, if I say so myself – slip dress that I feel is perhaps almost too pretty to even wear!

This is the new Simone slip dress pattern by Closet Core patterns, I was lucky to be picked as a tester and I also luckily had a short length of pink satin in my stash already, plus a very short length of cream coloured lace that was fortuitously the exact and perfect length for the project… one of those projects where it was all just very lucky and fell happily into place.

I initially wasn’t going to post pictures of my actual self wearing the slip, these are the fitting pictures I sent off to Closet Core for pattern feedback… but I think they’re ok really. One of my all-time goals with this blog in the first place was to get over my awkward attitude towards photos of myself, so I shouldn’t revert now, hmmm?

The slip was of course quite easy and fun to make; I love testing patterns and trying to make things carefully. I was very careful in lining up the edges of fabric to my table before cutting out and I measured the bias with scrupulous care; and I think that paid off. However, despite great care in stay-stitching the back top edge; I must have stretched that bit out just a bit because it flips out against my back, so *shrug*

Anyway, it’s certainly turned out quite lovely in my opinion 🙂 and of course the satin is beautiful to wear; so I’m very happy with this useful edition to my wardrobe. I’ve already worn it a couple of times underneath other things; which feels like a very swish thing to do! I always feel like this when I wear my ivory Ruby slip too…. maybe I should make a few more!

I finished off the bottom edges with a skinny triple-stitched hem, and the side seams using french seams. btw, I just love this (above) picture! these finishes look so lovely in satin. The stronger pink colour in the close-up pictures is much closer to its real colour than the slightly washed out colours in my modelled shots, I don’t know why it’s like that!

Oh! my #use30 pledge came into play again, hip hip hooray! I managed to polish off another 1.5m with this here lovely bit of frippery; so I’m up to 17m down, and with 13m to go!