Knitted Archives - Page 6 of 13 - Handmade by Carolyn

Bless her little cotton socks

09/10/2010 3:25 am \ 14 Comments \ Carolyn

You don’t have to tell me. It is crazy to be knitting white cotton socks. But honestly, these are just shorty ankle socks and take up about two or three evenings each in front of the TV, so why not?
I thought you might be amused with some of my outtakes from when I was trying to get a photo of these socks. After all, really, how hard could it be, propping the camera on a small pile of books, and simply putting the feet in front… it’s not like I have to worry about a bad hair day or a weird facial expression or anything. But I didn’t count on the determined stealth attack of this creature, desperate for a little quality one-on-one time with the household provider of all things good and fishy… and she will not be denied her stab at supermodel-dom…

Details:
Ankle socks; like all my socks, adapted from the Ladies’ sockettes in the Patons knitting book C11 (a circa 1960’s publication), knitted from Rowan cotton glace 100% cotton, shade 726

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Knitted, Patons knitting book C11, socks

Domestic diva VII

23/09/2010 5:21 am \ 10 Comments \ Carolyn

Went on a recky (translation; Aussie slang for reconnaissance mission) through the husband’s side of the wardrobe for this morning’s outfit. Oh, btw, that’s just the shirt here, not the skirt hehe, in case you were wondering…

Details:
Shirt; Burda 7767, blue linen, seen first here
Skirt; Vogue 7303, green cotton velveteen, see first here
Socks; handknit by me, using Patonyles sock yarn, seen first here
Belt, kept from some old cargos that have long gone
Hat; Barmah, leather stockman’s hat
Shoes; Francesco Morichetti

Re yesterday’s post: my husband reckons I was far too mysterious and should not have told just half a story. I can see now he was right and I wasn’t fair. Talking about private stuff makes me uncomfortable, but I appreciate that many of you are now like my pen-pals and we are interested in each other’s lives and not just visiting each other for the sewing and fashion so I should try to open up more…

A friend lost her son to cancer. He was 24. He had been ill such a short while, so while the end was not unexpected it was still too shocking. Of course would always be too shocking, no matter how much time you have to prepare, of course. I saw her and the family yesterday and they were just amazing. So loving and so positive. My friend C makes me want to be a better person.
That’s all. Just go and hug your children. I am.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 7767, Knitted, mens shirt, Patons knitting book C11, skirt, socks, SSS10, Vogue 7303

Domestic diva III

19/09/2010 5:51 am \ 27 Comments \ Carolyn

This is an all-new outfit for today; another pair of corduroy jeans, these in my new favourite neutral, greige. These are made using Burda 7863 again, fitted to me, with a zip placket and coin pocket added, and flared out from knee to ankle by about ten centimetres overall circumference wider than the pattern. To line the waistband and pocket I used the very last of the leftover fabric from Sam’s shirt. (and thanks, for your kind words of comfort about Sam being away, he will be back in a few weeks!)
The T-shirt is made from the leftovers of my Jailbreak dress, my own design, drafted roughly from T-shirts I already have. I wanted to have the neck, sleeve and hemline binding stripes lined up perpendicularly to the body of the T-shirt; the only difficulty to achieving this effect was that the jersey fabric had no stretch in this direction. However I managed to make it work; the bands fit nicely over my wrist but don’t contract snugly over my arms like a stretch would, c’est la vie…
The scarf is merely a strip of leftover fabric from my greige top with half-raglan sleeves, seen worn together like this it can be seen the new pants are going to be a perfect match for that top… yay for mono-tonal dressing! According to my latest Vogue, mono-tonal is in in in!! Along with the sailor-striped top… nice to know I’m looking sort of “in” when just doing the housework, no?!
The socks are handknit by me also…
In blogger news, Trudy, of Sewing with Trudy, has awarded me with a Beautiful Blogger award, thankyou so much Trudy! Trudy always takes the time to leave a kind and thoughtful comment on my blog, and she has been so sweet and supportive of me! I have received this award before so I am, however, thinking of you when I say I won’t try to think of yet another ten things about me (truly I’m not very interesting!), but if you wish to read the 10 things I wrote about before then you can click on the Beautiful Blogger button in my sidebar.

Details:
Jeans; Burda 7863 with a few modifications, greige corduroy
Top; my own design, striped jersey knit
Scarf; strip of greige jersey knit
Socks; handknit using Noro Kureyon sock yarn and Koigu sock yarn

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Blogger award, Burda 7863, jeans, Knitted, own design, Patons knitting book C11, socks, SSS10, top

Domestic diva

17/09/2010 2:47 am \ 8 Comments \ Carolyn

The Maternity dress. Oh, sorry, not aiming to mislead, I’m NOT expecting. This is just the name I mentally gave to this dress ever since its debut out of the home atelier. This final form here is quite a bit slimmer in line than its original incarnation, but it’s still a distinct “possible” to go to nine months with triplets in this dress…
Ok, ok, I am exaggerating… I made this dress inspired by the Duro dress that was making a few waves on the fashion scene at the time, touted as being the dress shape that suited everybody… well not this body unfortunately. After finishing it and staring aghast at my reflection in the mirror (and being told by the whole family that I did, indeed, look pregnant) I embarked on some frantic alteration; top-stitching the body pleats in order to streamline this thing… or people will have been asking me “when’s the happy time?” and I have been down that path and have retired gracefully from that particular stage of life, thanks… after reducing about a third of the volume around the waist I was quite happy with the dress and wore it a lot last summer, so all is well that ends well, no? The big, pleated patch pockets on the front are my favourite feature of the dress. As well, it is a fabulous garment for hot weather; breezy, light and very comfortable, and I do feel pretty and feminine in it. Just don’t want to look so feminine as to tip over into fecund…
The socks are handknitted by me, also.

Details:
Dress; Simplicity 3745, white dotted swiss voile and crocheted lace trim
Socks; handknitted by me, Noro Kureyon sock yarn
Shoes; Francesco Morichetti, from Zomp shoes

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: dress, Knitted, Patons knitting book C11, Simplicity 3745, socks, SSS10

Ladylike in brown

13/09/2010 5:25 am \ 11 Comments \ Carolyn

This morning attended a ladylike morning tea to celebrate a friend’s birthday, so have thoroughly enjoyed the last hour sitting in the dappled shade of the jacarandas sipping tea from a charmingly cracked and mis-matched pretty china set, ahh, just bliss… but now the fun is over and it’s back to the office…
Now, kind people leave me lots of lovely sweet compliments (and thankyou!) on the picturesque backdrops in my photos; so I’ll let you in on my little photography secret… well I take nearly all my photos in either one of about three or four locations, and it’s amazing how different the effect in a shot can be just by pointing the lens in a slightly different direction. For example the sunlight is quite bright today so I decided to set up my camera in the shade of a tree for this photo. I think the muted light shows off the fabric textures and colours of my outfit better than in direct sunlight, which here in Australia can be quite harsh and create either too dramatic shadows on one’s clothes or alternatively bright bright areas completely devoid of any discernible detail… but from where I am standing in the above photo the view I am looking at is this…

So I couldn’t resist kicking off my shoes, rotating the camera 180degrees and stepping out on the beach for one more shot, and decided to show here it to demonstrate the contrast even though you can’t see my dress very well from this angle…! Which background do you like better?

Details:
Dress; Burda 8511 from tobacco wool mix, modified to be more fitted and fully lined
Cardigan; knitted by me to my own design, using Jo Sharp Aran Tweed in Brindle
Shoes; Sandler, from David Jones
Bag; Gucci

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 8511, cardigan, dress, Knitted, own design, SSS10

Comfort dressing

12/09/2010 2:41 am \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

Self-Stitched September day 12:
Woohee, taking one’s photo everyday has been quite a challenge, not to mention the embargo on reaching for the same old same old favourites from the wardrobe. Everybody has favourites and comfort zones and there are some things you just feel like putting on more than other things… fortunately for me today’s garments fall into that category, (yay!)
My new rusty cords; well, my love for corduroy jeans is a permanent. Actually I’ve just finished a new pair for myself, sure to be wearing them soon…
My top; another favourite, this one an oldie I made quite a few years ago. This based on New Look 6483, but you only have to look at the illustration on the pattern envelope to see my version is heavily modified and the pattern was but a starting point here. In fact the top ended up completely different from the pattern, not even the bust darts were retained. It is made out of quilting cotton and with inserts of crocheted lace. I can’t see myself ever getting rid of this top. Occasionally I see sage advice from dressmaking experts telling us never ever to use quilting fabric to sew garments; well rules are made to be broken in my book and this top is living proof that that particular no-no is just a load of hogwash, imo… It’s been hardwearing and a real goodie.
My scarf; chenille. Cosy. Gorgeous colours. One can ask no more of a scarf!
Socks; my favourite pair, handknit and also in favourite colours.

Details:
Jeans; Burda 7863 with minor modifications, rusty corduroy
Top; my own design, based on New Look 6483, cream cotton with cream crochet lace inserts
Scarf; Colinette Chenille, 3 balls, 80 stitches, garter stitch
Socks; handknit by me
Shoes; Florsheim men’s, found in an op shop last week!! WIN!
Mug; made by my brother David, a very talented and handy craftsman…

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 7863, jeans, Knitted, New Look 6483, own design, scarf, socks, SSS10, top

Green Day

11/09/2010 5:06 am \ 8 Comments \ Carolyn

Aaah, social whirling over and life is back to normal around here for a while… I do like to go out and get dressed up once in a while and the social season is certainly upon us now spring is here… but I do hope nobody came here expecting a glamour-puss today because she’s nowhere to be seen!
A normal-ish Saturday so far, spent much of the morning waiting in a ginormous queue to organise foreign money for my son’s upcoming trip overseas; in a week’s time my youngest is going away on a trip alone for the first time (insert brave deep breath and lower lip wobble here…)
So today being a bit overcast and cool, I’m dressed for moderately presentable comfort and warmth; this is perhaps one of the more dubious of my Self-stitched September ensembles so please be kind! The dress is a favourite seen here heaps of times (but first and only time for this month! as per my self-imposed rule of no repeats, hehe), Burda 8071 made out of ivory broderie anglaise cheesecloth (to see this styled in six different ways see here) This dress is really a summer-weight dress, and if I do wear it on a cooler day I usually prefer to wear my Metalicus petticoat underneath, but as I am strictly eliminating store-bought from this month’s clothing I had to think of something else… The skirt worn underneath is possibly the only version I have of my old standby Vogue 7303 that is made to the pattern as it is in the envelope, and the hooded cardigan is knitted by me to my own design, and is perfectly snuggly for a moody cloudy day.

Details:
Skirt; Vogue 7303, slightly stretchy white cotton/lycra
Dress; Burda 8071, ivory broderie anglaise cheescloth
Hoodie; my own design, Jo Sharp Silk Road DK in Ambrosia
Boots; Enrico Antinori, from Zomp shoes

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 8071, cardigan, dress, Knitted, own design, skirt, SSS10, Vogue 7303

New greige top, with a shoulder experiment…

08/09/2010 8:11 am \ 9 Comments \ Carolyn

“Greige”; not a word found in any dictionary, but one adopted by the fashion industry to describe this colour that is not quite grey, not quite beige… I love it. And going by my latest fabric shopping ~~binge~~ carefully-considered purchases, one I will be incorporating happily into my neutrals collection for this spring…
I’ve made this new top. Seemingly just an ordinary top, the pattern drafted from other tops I already own, with a small pattern modification… I’ve noticed on some designer collections the trend for a slightly different shoulder/sleeve treatment, where the sleevecap seems to be sitting much higher on the shoulder than usual, but still smoothly fitted to the shoulder. The crest of the shoulder/sleeve seam sits halfway up the model’s shoulder, see below right. Usually in my tops I aim to have that seam right on the shoulder crest… He he, I had a fleeting thought on first noticing this unusual shoulder in a fashion shoot that this might just be a symptom of an ill-fitting top!, but of course in serious fashion collections an effect is usually intentional… and I thought this was interesting so thought I’d give it a whirl. I think I had reasonable success for a first-time experiment. I just cut the sleeve cap about 4cm higher and removed width from the shoulder seam and arm scye along the outer edge… I do like the way the seam sits up a little higher, and not on the crest of the shoulder. It feels a lot smoother and sits nicer, in my opinion! Sometimes that little blobby seam sitting right on the shoulder edge can detract from the overall smooth lines of a top and this higher seam, not raglan, but not quite a conventional set in shoulder either, is a nice compromise… what do you think?
And for day 8 of Self-Stitched September: my pants are made from Burda 7863, from khaki stretch gabardine seen first here, and my scarf is knitted by me, seen first here.

Details:
Top; self-drafted, greige jersey knit
Jeans; Burda 7863, khaki stretch gabardine
Scarf; my own design, Debbie Bliss yarn
Boots; Andrea and Joen, from Uggies

photo below right, Maison Martin Margiela top, from Vogue Australia, photographed by Max Doyle; it is hard to see here, sorry, but the seam IS halfway along the model’s shoulder…