Two green Bardon dresses

This is a quick and easy pattern and it's a great dress for warm days.  The first one I made using some olive green double gauze which I bought in Coupons Merveilles in Montmartre when I visited Paris back in April.  The colour really doesn't show up well in the photo.  It's similar to the double gauze version in this post, although this time I evened out the length of the tiers a bit.

For the second, shorter version I used a triple gauze throw from Ikea (not sure how long the link will work for, it says it's a limited edition).  I can't remember now what I'd actually gone to Ikea to buy, but it wasn't this - I saw it, liked the colour and thought 'I could get a dress out of that', and it ended up in the trolley...  It frayed a lot while I was sewing it, there were dozens of little bits of green thread all over me / the dress / the floor, but I'm hoping that since all the raw edges are either finished with bias binding or overlocked, it won't be shedding any more!  

With hindsight I should have cut the skirt tiers a bit longer to use up all the fabric, instead of now having 30cm of the full width of the fabric left over.  Hey ho 🙂

Tessuti Mattea dress & top

I bought this pattern at the Stitch Festival in London earlier this year and last month I made the top version, to see how the sizing worked.

I cut a size 1 and the fit was fine.  I used some leftover fabric from a Vogue repro vintage dress (V-8728) that I made back in 2013 and it came together pretty quickly.  I followed the pattern instructions as written for this one.

Fast forward a few weeks and I've just finished the dress.  This time I made a few changes - I took out the centre back seam and cut the back bodice in one piece; I didn't use stitch & tear interfacing on the neckline and armholes, I staystitched them instead; I also bound the armholes on the inside rather than the outside and I made pocket bags, not the 'attached to the front bodice' version in the pattern.  I used some linen which I've had in my stash for a while and it took 1.9m.  It would probably have needed more if I'd cut bias binding for the armholes from it, but I used commercial binding instead.

I traced a size 2 skirt, (can't really remember why now... but might have been because it fitted better on the dot and cross paper that I used for tracing).  I haven't top stitched the neckline - I'll see how it wears without it, should be OK because the facing is understitched and also tacked in place on the shoulder seams.  I'm going to make more of these, and if they're in linen I shan't bother to interface the neckline facing - even with using very thin interfacing it feels quite bulky.  The fabric I used for the top was a lot thinner so the interfacing was fine with that.  Now, what shall I make next?

Cinnamon Daisy Willow dresses

 I came across this pattern on Instagram a few weeks ago, I think it just came up in my 'explore' tab, I don't think anyone I follow has made one...  Anyway, I thought it was a very pretty design and decided I'd like to make it.

I made the first version last month and it was a toile really, to see how the sizing and fitting worked.  I used some gingham which I'd had left over from making this dress, cut a size H and it took 2.2m.  It was a straightforward sew and the only thing I changed was to cut the back bodice in one piece.

Fast forward a few weeks and I've finished version no. 2.

For this one I've lowered the centre front neckline by 2" and graded it to the shoulders - the neckline on the brown gingham version was a bit too high for my liking.  I sized down - this is a size G - and it's a better fit, although I think I still need to do some adjustments to the front armholes.  The fabric is a cotton lawn which I bought from Ditto in Brighton several years ago.  I used all of the 2 metres that I had, although if it had been 60" wide rather than 55", it would have needed 1.7m.  Something to keep in mind for future versions.

Two more McCalls 7948 dresses

These are both the same, the first is made with fabric I bought a few years ago (I think it's a Kaffe Fassett-designed print?) I love the colours in it.

And the second is fabric which I think I bought last year, or possibly in 2019, with the intention of making it up in a 1930s / 1940s pattern, but it's quilting cotton (as is the blue chrysanths fabric) and I decided it probably wouldn't hang properly - not enough drape - so it's become this.

For both of these I modified the bodice which is now a mish-mash of sizes from 8 (armholes) to 14 (shoulders).  I also lowered the neckline and adjusted the seam allowances at the armholes and neck for bias binding rather than facing.  I may have done this for the blue and yellow striped version as well, I can't remember now!  Both of these dresses also have Bardon pockets and the skirt is 6" longer than the given pattern pieces.

Sleeveless Demeter dresses

I've decided to just write one post for all the sleeveless linen Demeters I've made so far this year, rather than give them each a post with about two lines of text!  They are all view B (which has a higher neckline and longer and slightly narrower skirt than view A) with the skirt lengthened by about 3" and the plain ones all took 1.8m of fabric.

In order of me making them they are this one, which I made in April

with Forest Green linen from LinenOholic who have an Etsy shop and their own website.

Then I made a few other dresses before version two came along in an absolutely beautiful pale pink colour.  Started in late May and finished in early June.

After that in mid-June (again, with a couple of other dresses in between) came this in Lollipop linen from Merchant & Mills - I absolutely love, love, love this fabric - orange is such a happy, summery colour.  this took 2m and I also had to cut the front skirt piece slightly narrower - this isn't quite as wide as the plain linens.

This was the next Demeter off the blocks in a gorgeous yellow linen called Faded Sun which again came from LinenOholic and which I finished in early July.

Five other dresses later, in August, came this one in Penzance linen from Merchant & Mills,  I cut the skirt slightly shorter and wider and it took 1.65m

Closely followed by this one which has the skirt width of view A and took 1.7m.  

And that's as far as I've got until now, although there will definitely be more.  Great in summer just as they are, and in winter with a warm cardigan and boots.

Dabloon cardigan

Long time no write - time to start updating this blog... 😉

I bought this wool in February 2018 from Easyknits when they were exhibiting at Unravel in Farnham, because I loved the colour.  It then sat in my stash for a while waiting for me to settle on which pattern to use.  I knew I wanted it to be a cardigan but kept changing my mind about style.  In the end I decided I wouldn't use a pattern at all, just get it knitted!  I started it in December last year and finished it in January.

It's a very simple style - front and back knitted in one piece to the armholes, then divided for the top and seamed at the shoulders.  The button band is picked up and knitted on, the sleeves are picked up at the armholes and knitted in the round down to the cuffs.  The buttons are vintage and I already had them in my stash.

It's lovely and warm and had quite a bit of wear earlier in the year and it's now back in rotation for the winter.

Dayflower cardigan

This was the first thing I knitted this year - I took a break from knitting in January and finished this in early March.  I can't remember now where I saw this colourway (it's Madeline Tosh sock), but I know that I liked it and bought some online two years ago before the prices went up dramatically and it's sat in my stash ever since.  I decided it was high time to knit it up!

I did have some other plans for it originally, but changed my mind and so I had a look through my stitch dictionaries to find a pattern that I liked and this was what I settled on.  The stitch pattern is called drooping dayflower, and it's from The Knitter's Stitch Collection by Lesley Stanfield and Melody Griffiths (other retailers are available).  There are lots of stitch patterns in this book and I've used quite a few over the years.

It was an easy knit and I followed my usual template for cardigans which I knit without a pattern - knitted bottom-up in one piece to the armholes, create fake side seams and split for the back and fronts and work them separately.  Seam the shoulders and pick up and knit the sleeves top down.  The button band is picked up and knitted on.

The buttons are vintage although I can't remember now where I bought them.

I love this, it's a great colour for spring!

Grasshopper cardigan - #OAL 2019

Finally... I have got this wool knitted up!!!  I've had it for at least seven years...

I used the stitch pattern from this vintage pattern,

but as you can see I did plain sleeves, a lower neckline and no collar.  The back is also plain and I knitted the body in one piece rather than separately and seamed (apart from the shoulders - they are seamed).

I bought the buttons at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival two years ago and they are a really good colour match.

I am so pleased to have got round to knitting this up - I love the colour and there hasn't been a justifiable reason for the delay (other than so many other things to knit...)

Joshua Tree cardigan

I wasn't sure whether I'd get this finished this year, but I finished the second sleeve last night and so it's in under the wire for 2018.  I bought the wool this year, so it's not a stashbusting project - I don't often buy wool with an immediate project in mind, but this was one of those times.

Standard construction for cardigans I knit without using a pattern - first pick a stitch pattern -  in this case two - the cable pattern is from the first Barbara Walker Treasury and is called Reverse Plait cable, or Branch cable. It’s easy to work, and is the second time I’ve used it (the first time was on an aran-weight cardigan I knitted in pre-blogging days).  The eyelet pattern is the column lace from the Honeybee pattern, (and is also in Barbara Walker’s second Treasury - called Honeybee Pattern with Faggoting).

The body is knitted in one piece up to the armholes then separated for fronts and back (at which point I make fake side seams), shoulders are seamed and sleeves picked up and knitted top down.  The button band is knitted on and I did seven three-stitch one-row buttonholes.  The buttons are vintage from my stash - I can't remember where I bought them though.

Knitted with Madelinetosh Sock yarn (one of my favourites, but has become very expensive so I only ever buy it when it's on sale now).  This wasn't an easy colour to photograph - it's definitely more of a yellow-green than blue-green, and I love it.

50s print dress

I bought the fabric for this dress from Hammersmith Vintage Fair 3+ years ago and it's been sitting patiently waiting for me to make up my mind which pattern to use it for ever since.  I decided it was high time I stopped prevaricating, because I love the print and wanted to wear it.

So... it's another Simplicity 5510 / New Look 6824 combo.  It's also one of my #2018makenine challenge items.  I've actually only made three out of the nine this year - four if you count the Merlot cardigan (used the yarn, but not for its originally intended design).  Once again my enthusiasm exceeded the time available, but never mind, it did focus my mind on knitting and sewing from stash this year, which is largely what I've done.  I'll write more about this in my end-of-year round-up.

I love this dress and am very pleased I finally got around to sewing it!  And that's it now until after Christmas...

Green 30s inspired dress

This dress came about because someone I follow on Instagram posted a fabulous dress which had been made for her.

Screencap from Instagram - right hand photo is the inspo dress - Miss Lemon from an early Poirot episode

In my online quest to find the fabric used (which I subsequently did, and bought some although I haven't made it up yet) I came across the fabric for this dress.

Unfortunately it is not a current print and the shop only had 1.75m of it, so I was limited as to the style of dress I could make.  Undeterred though, I thought I'd be able to get a sleeveless straight-skirted dress out of it, which I did.

This is the Betty bodice and straight skirt from NewLook 6824, which didn't fit together at the waist, so I added in an extra dart on each back piece of the skirt to resolve this.  No photo of that though.  If I ever take one in the future I'll upload it.

I'm really happy with this dress - I love the print.

Penelope cardigan

I don't remember where I came across this cardigan pattern, but as soon as I did, I knew I wanted to knit it.

As it turned out I made quite a few changes from the pattern, the most obvious of which I suppose is that I ran the pattern up the front next to the button band, not in a straight line.  I also changed the pattern.  The smocking part is the same, but I changed the eyelet columns to be stocking stitch, not reverse stocking stitch.  Actually, I did that for the whole cardigan - the pattern as written has reverse stocking stitch for the right side and I prefer that to be the wrong side.  I also didn't do any patterning on the back or the sleeves, they're just plain stocking stitch.

In terms of construction, I knitted the body in one piece up to the armholes, then did fake side seams and split for the fronts and back.  The shoulders are done with short rows and seamed, and the button band was picked up and knitted on.  I don't know why I did it in 1 x 1 rib when the waist and cuffs are 2 x 2, suffice to say that I didn't notice until I was half way down the first sleeve and had already made the buttonholes (one-row 2-stitch) and sewn the buttons on.  I wasn't going to undo all that.  The sleeves are picked up round the armholes and shaped with short rows and knitted top down.

I used Malabrigo sock yarn in the Water Green colourway to knit this, and I have no idea where the buttons came from (they were in my stash but I can't remember where I bought them).  I'm really pleased with it, even though it doesn't really look much like the pattern photo!

Le tour Eiffel dress no 1

The second of my me-made May pledge dresses, this is the same pattern combo as the Tulips and St Ives dresses and, apart from the time it took to cut out, came together very quickly.  I really like this bodice/skirt combo, it's quick to sew up and doesn't take long to iron.  Much as I love big, pleated and circle skirts on dresses, this is an ideal work-wardrobe shape because of the quickness of the ironing!

This is another stashbusting dress which I wanted to get made in time to take with me to Paris and I got it finished with a couple of days to spare.  I had several people comment on it as I was wandering around - the sweetest one was a little girl, about 3 years old, who tugged at her mother's hand "maman, maman, regarde cette robe" with a big smile on her face.  I was very pleased to have got it made up!

This took more metreage than the Tulips dress because the fabric isn't as wide, and I think the next dress I make will be from a smaller print which I won't need to faff about with pattern matching...

I love the graphic of this design and have this fabric in two other colourways (hence this being no 1), which I hope won't take me as long to get made up as this did (I've had it for at least a couple of years I think).  Although I think I'll probably use a different pattern.

Spring is (not) in the air

Or at least it wasn't when I wrote this post.  Now that I've uploaded the photos though the sun has come out at last and it's actually quite warm!

I first saw this pattern knitted up by Lucy and decided I'd like to knit it.  However, it is one of the few vintage patterns that I have which is too big for me as written - size 38" - 40" bust, most vintage patterns being in the 32" - 36" size range.  (Although perhaps more accurately most patterns that seem to be readily available on the internet, rather than most patterns ever written.)  So some adjusting of numbers was required.

You will see that my version doesn't look much like Lucy's, or the picture on the pattern itself.

This is because I found the fancy ribbing quite time consuming to knit, and I knitted the body on 2.5mm needles, so the stocking stitch wasn't exactly quick either!  I decided to forego the fancy ribbing at the top of the yoke - ultimately what I wanted was a green cardigan to wear sooner rather than later, not a faithful vintage reproduction garment.

Fancy ribbing

I used Wollmeise lace in the Petersilie colourway which I've had in my stash for a while.  I absolutely love the colour and it was lovely wool to knit with.  It's the perfect yarn for a lightweight cardigan and I'm really pleased with how it's turned out.

Other changes from the pattern - I didn't knit the pockets - I might well knit pockets on a longer line, relaxed fit cardigan, but I didn't think I would ever use them in a waist-length fitted cardigan. I also did top down sleeves, knitted the body in one piece up to the armholes and did short-row shoulders.  I also did a picked up and knitted on button band rather than a narrow strip to be sewn on - I don't really have the patience to knit these types of button bands...  I made twelve 3-stitch one-row buttonholes (another change from the pattern) simply because I had twelve buttons.  I don't think I'm ever going to do them all up though.  The buttons are glass and I bought them at a Hammersmith Vintage Fair last year, or maybe the year before.  I bought them on spec hoping they'd go with this wool... Aaand I've just noticed that they're in the header photo at the top of this blog, still on their card!

Vintage glass buttons

I've already worn this a few times and am so pleased that I finally got around to knitting it.  I think it's going to get quite a lot of wear.

Green stripey jumper

Inspired by two similar striped jumpers that crossed my Ravelry radar, I decided I wanted to knit my own version.  The pattern I used is basically the same as I used for this jumper, although the neckline might be very slightly different - perhaps a couple of rows lower - I don't really remember now!

Anyway, I'm very pleased with how it's turned out, I really like this pattern as a go-to sweatshirt alternative.  I may well knit another one next year, I have rather a lot of leftovers of this particular yarn (Drops Baby Merino), in lots of different colours so will have a play around with different colour combinations at some point.

I probably won't wear this one until next Spring though...

Fleur de lis jumper

This is a jumper which I saw being worn by Sienna Guillory in an episode of the TV series Miss Marple (with Geraldine McEwan - A murder is announced - there's lots of great knitwear in this episode).

Rather grainy screenshot

It took me a while to track down the pattern and I'm not sure now how I actually came across it, but it's from the March 1940 issue of Stitchcraft magazine.  I first started knitting this last year with different yarn, but after completing two full pattern repeats (and having already reknitted it because the tension with the needle size given in the pattern was too loose - gah) I decided that it wasn't a pattern/yarn match made in heaven and unravelled it.  I think the pattern got a bit lost in the semi-solid yarn really.

Version one - frogged

So, that was that until Fyberspates brought out some new colours in their Scrumptious 4ply.  The jade colourway was perfect!  I'm really not one to knit up patterns so that they look like the photo (although actually the pattern photo is black and white), but I loved the colour as worn by Sienna Guillory and this was pretty similar, so when I saw it I knew I'd found the right yarn.

I can't honestly say it was a pleasure to knit - the k5tog stitches were a bit fiddly, but fortunately they didn't come along very often.  Also, I had to change the instructions for the flowers - as written the stems all sat to the right which didn't suit my desire for symmetry.  But I love it now it's done.

This is the second of my vintage KAL projects.  And now, 21 posts later,  that's this blog all up to date!

Suffragette City

I'd been wanting to knit another Your Victory jumper for a while but not necessarily in red white and blue.  I love purple and green together so I tried a couple of stripe sequences and decided the one on the left looked better so that's the one I went with.  The name is a nod to both the colour combo and David Bowie.

This is such an easy pattern to knit.  My first version had long sleeves but this colour combination made me think of spring so I decided to do short sleeves this time round.  I had to change the rate of increases on the sleeves to get the right number of stitches at the point of casting off for the armholes, and I picked up and knitted the neckband in the round.  Other than that I followed the pattern.

I really like this and may well knit another one - there are lots of lovely versions on Ravelry with different colour combinations.

Land Army-ish jumper

Well, this has been a long time in the making and I'm glad it's finished - I've probably knitted about 75% of it twice...

I've already blogged a bit about it here and here, so I won't repeat myself.  But I see that I'm about a year behind schedule on this one, despite starting the knitting in January!  I can also see that I haven't completed any of last year's autumn & winter knitting plans apart from this jumper, so I won't be making any plans for this year - although next on the needles will be an Audrey in Unst cardigan.

Pattern, in A Stitch in Time Vol 1, by Susan Crawford and Jane Waller

After knitting the body with smaller needles because my row tension was off with the needles stated in the pattern, I tacked it together and tried it on and decided that it was too clingy.  So that was the first lot of unravelling.  It fitted much better with the right size needles and either my row tension miraculously changed, or I can't count, or it didn't matter because I'm pretty sure I followed the pattern instructions for the armholes exactly.  I can't be sure though because I wrote my notes down with a Frixion pen and following an accident with a cup of tea they vanished.  So although these pens are great because you can rub the writing out just like a pencil, they are not waterproof!

So, after reknitting the body I knitted a sleeve as per the pattern and tacked it in to place so that I had something to refer to when trying to work out the shaping top-down.

Sleeve knitted exactly as per pattern and tacked in place

This took a bit of trial and error with the numbers and increases and they don't look exactly the same because the originals are gathered into the sleeveheads, whereas mine aren't gathered.  They do puff nicely though.

Back view

As I knitted the sleeves down to the cuff I decided to do the shaping with a mixture of 'seamline' decreases and progressively smaller circular needles.  The first version was a bit too clingy (again) for my liking, cue the next lot of unravelling and reknitting.  However, it did make it easy for me to work out where to do the decreases and which needles to use so once reknitted it fitted much better.

Love these sleeve heads

 The final bit of unravelling was the original sleeve.  Knitting the second one was straightforward because it was the same as the first, and because I did it more or less straight after the first one I could still make sense of the notes I took (which were on a different bit of paper and escaped the tea incident).

I did wonder whether I would have enough wool to knit this with long sleeves and as it turned out, I ran out with about an inch and a half of the second sleeve still to knit.  A quick stash search on Ravelry revealed that one of my knitting friends had a skein with the same lot number in her stash and I'm so grateful that she was willing to part with it.  If I'd knitted the body to the length suggested in the pattern then the six skeins I had would've been enough, but I made the body about an inch and a half longer than suggested and so needed a little bit of a seventh skein.

Now  it's finished I love it and I think I'll be wearing it a lot, both with skirts and jeans.  One thing which I might do differently next time is make the bits at the side front neckline a bit wider - I do wonder whether, in wear, the sleeves will pull the neckline so that the shoulder seams don't sit on my shoulders.  If they do, I'll have to think how to tighten up the neckline, but for now I'm leaving it as is.