Home Fires Project update

Well, a second book continuing the story has now been published so I thought this would be a good time for an update on my Home Fires knitting project.

So far I have knitted three tops and one cardigan.  One of the tops is a pretty faithful colour reproduction of the top worn in the show,

 

the other two I've done in different colours,

but all three, and the cardigan,

have used wool which I already had in stash.  Although the cardigan is 'inspired by' really, since I only did patterning on the front.

I'd like to knit another feather and fan top using a beige background colour like these four tops in the show did, I've got enough wool in stash to do this, I just need to decide on the contrast colours to use.

I've also decided to use a different pattern for this top

but haven't yet decided on a colour combination.

I'll adapt this pattern

There are also a few other tops I might get around to knitting at some point - I think I've got a pattern similar to this, but if not it wouldn't be too difficult to knit without one,

I think this is very pretty, but realistically I doubt I'll have the patience, or time, to embroider all the flowers

And I like this one too - this top also appears in the Joan Hickson version of Agatha Christie's 'A murder is announced', worn by Philippa Hames.

ETA - Which I think is this pattern

And also, ETA, I think I've found the pattern for this

It looks like it's this one

Which is a P&B pattern from this book - I haven't found it as an individual pattern yet though.

Back in the spring I visited Bunbury in Cheshire where the show was filmed and spotted some, although not all, the locations they used.

The church

The village hall

The Brinsleys' shop

The vicarage

The Campbells' house which is a rather nice pub in reality and where I had lunch

The Horse & Groom pub

The Simms' house

The Service Station

The Telephone Exchange

And a few other views

The site of the War Memorial

And now I'm going to get on with reading the book!

Frida la Catrina dress

Here is another dress sewn from my fabric stash, I'm not sure how long ago I bought the fabric - maybe four years ago?  I now have one remaining dress length of Frida Kahlo fabric to make up, and it's been in my stash longer than this one!  Maybe that will get sewn next year...

I bought 3.2m and used all of it.  Apart from the time it took to cut out, this was a quick sew - a lined Sew Over It Betty bodice and a vintage Simplicity 3749 skirt with pockets from Simplicity 2444, a combination I've made several times now.

Autumn wardrobe planning

Last Saturday was the annual Sew Brum event in Birmingham and I set off bright and early to get there.  The meet up started at John Lewis and then moved on to the rag market and fabric shops in Birmingham city centre.  After that there was a short bus ride to Guthrie & Ghani in Moseley where the first floor sewing room was set up with tables for the fabric and pattern swap, a table displaying all the raffle prizes and a very welcome section with tea and cake!

I completely failed to take any photos all day, but I was inspired by Guthrie & Ghani's window display (there are pictures on their Instagram account and their window displays are always lovely) and when I got home I decided to have a bit of a wardrobe sort out to see what I had in the gorgeous autumnal colour palette they had used.

Everything

I was pleased to find that actually I could do quite a bit of mixing and matching and come up with several outfits.  (Although both pairs of trousers need shortening before I can wear them - I must get on and do that.)  I don't normally have everything together like this - the knitwear and tops I keep in a chest of drawers so it was helpful to see it all in one place.

Jackets and tops

Knitwear

Skirts, trousers and dresses

After I'd done the wardrobe review I got out all my autumnal fabrics - more than I'm going to sew up this year that's for sure, and some will also work in winter and spring as well, but it did bring home to me that I really do need to continue only sewing from stash (although the bee-print corduroy I did buy this year... shhh).  I'd had a good sort out of fabric stash before going up to Birmingham and took quite a bit for the swap table and I'm very pleased my resolve to not bring any fabric home with me didn't desert me, even in the face of temptation.

While I was reviewing my autumn knits I sorted out some cardigans which I either don't wear at all, or hardly ever wear, and have added them to the charity clothes recyling bag - I only have finite space and I'd much rather pass things on for others to wear than have them languishing unworn for years in a chest of drawers.

So, these are for skirts

These are dress lengths

These are also for dresses except the mustard sweatshirt fabric which is for a Coco top and which I bought in Guthrie & Ghani during 2015's Sew Brum - eek!

Now I've done the wardrobe sort out with autumn colours, I think doing the same with the rest of my autumn / winter clothes will be a good idea.  There may be another blog post on this theme in a few days' / weeks' time...

Peplum cardi

Another cardigan I can cross off this year's to-do list.  I had originally intended to knit this wool using a different pattern, which didn't have a peplum (but I wanted one so would have worked out how to add it), and then I came across this - I'm not sure how, lost in the mists of time!

My inspiration was a cardigan worn by Summer Strallen (as Nancy Morell) in the first series of Land Girls, but unfortunately I don't have a clear screenshot.

My version of the pattern has some changes - I converted it to a v-neck, which also meant changing the front to be knitted entirely in the rib pattern - I thought the shaped stocking stitch yoke might look a bit odd with a v neckline.  I also changed the button band - in the pattern it's knitted as part of the fronts and is stocking stitch which is folded back on itself.  I've done a picked-up band in the same 1 x 2 rib pattern as the upper body.  The sleeves in the pattern are stocking stitch with a folded cuff and are knitted flat, seamed and sewn in.  I kept them as stocking stitch but knitted them down from the armholes with short row sleeve caps and did ribbed cuffs.

The buttons are from stash - I've no idea where they came from.

The wool I used is Malabrigo Arroyo, which is a sport / light DK weight and lovely to knit with.  I more or less got the same stitch tension as the pattern, but my row tension was very different.  Fortunately the pattern is written as "work for x inches, then decrease, rather than work for x rows, then decrease" so the fact that my tension was off didn't matter.

I'm pleased with how this has turned out, and it's going to look good with jeans just as much as with dresses or skirts, so good and versatile.

And now I must start planning Christmas knitting...

Maple seed dress

I'm really pleased to have finally sewn this fabric into a dress - it's been in my stash for at least five years and I'm only ever going to wear it in the autumn, because of the print.

It's a Sew Over It Betty bodice with the skirt from New Look 6824 (the same combination as the first dress here, and these two dresses) and it didn't take long to sew, especially when I found a bodice lining which I had already sewn together earlier in the year from my me-made May dressmaking session.

Not really anything more to say about this except that, because the seeds are seven different colours, I have several cardigans which I can wear with it!

Grey jumper

Another stashbusting jumper which I have now crossed off my '2019 to knit list'.

I used the same pattern as for this jumper and this really didn't take long to knit at all, just over a fortnight in fact.  The grey is Drops Baby Merino and the sleeve contrasts are Madeline Tosh Unicorn Tails in Edison Bulb and Neon Peach.

Once I'd knitted the first sleeve (the peach one) it became obvious that I wouldn't have enough wool left to do the second one the same and so tried striping the two colours together, but I wasn't very taken with it.

So I overcame my 'but if I do them different colours they won't be symmetrical' feeling and did the second one entirely in the Edison Bulb.

And I'm perfectly happy with it.  I know I'll wear this as a weekend jumper over the winter - it's a wool equivalent of a sweatshirt.

Koigu Feather and Fan top

This is another jumper which I've knitted as part of my Home Fires project - the fourth garment so far this year, so I'm very pleased with that amount of progress!

There were several of these tops worn during the course of the two series (see my original post here), and although I'd intended using Koigu wool for this I ended up using slightly different colours than originally planned.

I knitted one less widthways pattern repeat and used smaller needles than were given in the pattern (3.25mm instead of 3.75mm) in order to get close to the pattern tension.  I didn't change the sleeves though - by the time it came to knit them I just wanted them done.  As it was I had to reknit the cuffs because I didn't have enough wool to do 12 rows of ribbing on each sleeve.  I knew I was going to be close to running out of wool, so did both at the same time and in the end each has 10 rows, which I think is enough for short sleeves.

The armhole shaping given in this pattern is one I haven't come across before - on the body pieces there is just a large number of stitches cast off on each side all in one go and then it's knitted straight.  When attaching the sleeves you don't sew the side seam up to as far as the first cap shaping cast offs, but leave part of the sleeve seam unseamed and then use that as part of the sleeve cap.  At least that's what I did.  That might not have been correct, the pattern just said "sew the sleeve seam for 5 inches", so maybe I had the wrong row tension (no row tension is given in the pattern), but I don't think my tension would have been out by that much on such a short piece of knitting, and if I hadn't attached the sleeves that way the armhole would have been too big for the sleeve cap.

One unforseen consequence of taking out one pattern repeat was that the centre front neckline looked a bit strange because the pattern went up instead of down.

Original front neckline with 18 stitches cast off in the centre

I'd already lowered the neckline and didn't like how it turned out so unpicked it and reknitted it to be wider at the base as well (28 stitches cast off in the centre) and I think it looks OK now.  I also dipped the back neckline slightly and did short row shoulders.

Even though I carried the different coloured wool up the side of the knitting when possible, there were still rather a lot of ends to weave in, which took hours.  Not enough to put me off knitting another one of these though, although I think the next one I'll do the pattern row in knit rather than purl, just to be a bit different from this one.  And change the patterning so that it dips in the centre front and back.

Definitely a good pattern for using up leftovers.