Knitting and sewing plans for 2021

This is my last day of holiday before I return to work so I thought I'd better get this post published today otherwise I can see it will languish...(I started writing it about a month ago).

Sewing

I plan to make more floaty dresses and having totted up the sewing patterns I bought last year (21), I will aim to use more of them this year,

although repeats of three of them (McCalls 7969, McCalls 7948 and Tessuti Felicia) will probably also feature.

I've decided that I'd really like to make inroads into my stash of gingham, 

lawns and voiles, 

chambray, Indian cotton and linen.

I may also feel the need to make something really bright...

Although there is no chance of me sewing all this up in a year, this will serve as a useful visual reminder of what I have!  There is a possibility I may buy more linen, because (i) I've loved the look of many of the dresses other sewing peeps have made from it and posted on Instagram, and (ii) I have some ideas in my head which cannot be realised with what I already have.  I also love that it doesn't stick to tights in winter.

I've already finished one dress this year, and will try and cut out a couple more at the weekend - I much prefer to do this in daylight - I find the shadows from electric light on fabric when cutting out disconcerting.

I am also going to plan my sewing so that I'm not forever changing the thread on my overlocker - it's not too much of a hassle, but I'd rather keep it to a minimum.

Knitting

I hope to only knit from stash again this year and would also like to get back to my Home Fires knitting project which stalled during 2020.  There is a new book being published soon (I think it's already out in digital or audio format, but I like paper books) so that will be a perfect excuse to watch the two series (again) and probably re-read the two books already published since ITV pulled the plug.  I've tracked down and bought a few more patterns for knitting which featured in the show.  Two of these I've blogged about already, but didn't own them at the time, 

and the third is what I think was probably used for this jumper, it's more similar than the other two patterns which I thought I might use.

Other than that, more vintage, probably fairisle or colourwork, to use up partially knitted balls and skeins, 

and a few plain coloured cardigans and jumpers as palette cleansers from all the sewing in of ends that multi-coloured knitting generates.

Navy micro-spot dress

So for my first dress of 2021 I wanted to try out the non-tiered skirt option of McCalls 7948 and I've had this fabric stashed for ages so decided to use it for this - although the photo seems to show a slight check pattern, this doesn't notice at all in real life (it's just small white dots on navy), so it might just be a trick of the camera?  I cut this out on New Year's Eve and finished sewing it on Saturday.

I lengthened the skirt by six inches and used the same bodice modification as for this one + pockets from Tessuti Felicia.  This was a quick sew, I didn't do any pattern matching when cutting out - I wanted to see what the minimum fabric requirement would be (2.2m of 110cm wide fabric) and there are no darts or fastenings (or sleeves).

I like how this has turned out, there will be more of these this year I'm sure!

2020 knitting and sewing review

Well 2020 was a very topsy turvy year - all my plans for visiting places and events went out the window because of Covid-19.  I've also been working at home since March and had no work-related travel, which you would think would have given me more crafting time, but I ended up using the time gained to do a lot of sorting out and recycling of stuff rather than creating more.

During this I came across this piece of fairisle knitting.

I knitted this many years ago and the top of the piece has some shaping at the sides so I can only think that I was intending for it to be a jumper for my daughter (who now has three children of her own...).  I recognise the colours as being leftovers from things which I did actually finish knitting for her when she was a baby / toddler.  Memory fails me as to which wool I used - possibly a John Lewis own-brand or Patons - it's 4-ply which has stood up remarkably well to the passage of time, with no holes or thin bits.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't from a pattern, and I didn't have any stitch dictionaries at that time either so I suspect I just made it up as I went along.

Anyway...back to 2020... the first knitting FO was a cardigan (as will be the first FO of 2021...).

This was followed by four vintage tops - two 1940s rainbow jumpers, another Greta top and a fairisle sleeveless pullover.

On the sewing front I made three maxi dresses - two from McCalls 7948 and another Simplicity 2886 / 1801 mash-up. 

 There was also a loose sleeveless dress (Tessuti Felicia), a long-sleeved dress which was a modified McCalls 7969 and a skirt from a vintage New Look / Maudella pattern.

So significantly less sewing and knitting than in previous years.

I'm very pleased that I got through the entire year without buying any yarn at all - this hasn't happened for at least a decade!  I also destashed a fair bit and the money and space this released persuaded me to break my self-imposed decision at the beginning of the year not to buy any fabric or patterns.  Because of this I've ended the year with more fabric yardage that I started with.  I've only made up one of these fabrics so far (the brown gingham), and because I bought 5 metres of it and it's wide there is enough left to make another dress.  On the pattern front I added to my collection of vintage knitting patterns, and probably bought about a dozen, mostly current, sewing ones.  I've just checked and the tally is actually eight indie, three vintage, one vintage repro and nine big four, so 21 in fact - oops...

McCalls 7948 version 2

Having spent weeks knitting the fairisle top I wanted to make something which would be quick!  So this is another version of the McCalls dress I wrote about here.  This is made from an Alexander Henry quilting weight fabric which I bought years ago, probably mail ordered from the States because I had 3.2m of it (which is 3.5 yards).  That's not a length I would buy from a vendor who sells using metric measurements.

I used the whole length for this dress.  I recut the back bodice to be in two parts with a centre seam, and also brought the side seams in from the last version I made, and made the neckline a bit wider.  So this is a real mish-mash - size 14 shoulders / bodice length, size 10 armholes and size 12 side seams.  Rather than use the pattern pieces the skirt is two 26" long full widths of the fabric and the frill uses three 13" full widths.  This means there is slightly more fabric in both the skirt and the frill than would be the case if I'd used the pattern pieces, but I didn't want any leftover fabric and doing this meant that I used the entire 3.2m.  I also added Felicia pockets as before.

I'm really pleased with this - I probably won't wear it until the spring, but I'm glad to have finally sewn up this fabric!

1940s fairisle top

I've been meaning to knit a fairisle top for ages and just never really got around to it.  Watching the new version of All Creatures Great and Small inspired me to get on with doing it now.

Tristram in a very fetching jumper

This was another stashbusting project, I've had the wool I used for this for ages - four colours are leftovers from projects I've made already - one jumper and three different cardigans.  The other colours I bought separately with a fairisle top in mind, and they've been in my stash for a good few years.

I tried a few different colour combinations before I settled on the final versions 

I charted out the pattern, because I thought it would be easier to follow a colour chart than written instructions (I find lace knitting much easier when it's charted rather than following long line by line rows of text).

I used a different colour for the ribbing - the pattern uses the same colour for the ribbing and the main colour - because I didn't have enough of the darker blue to do that.  Because I used eight different colours and most of the colour changes were on an odd number of rows which meant I couldn't carry the wool up the sides, there were an inordinate number of ends to sew in.  I don't think it took as long to sew the seams, add the armhole and neckline ribbing and sew the ends in as it took to knit it, but it felt like it!

I have quite a few vintage fairisle patterns and I think they look lovely, but it may be a while until I knit one with sleeves unless the patterning means I can carry the yarn up, or I can adapt the pattern to be knit in the round.

And finally, I have three cardigans which I can wear with it!

Zigzag dress

This is from a pattern which I bought this year which I though would be ideal for floaty dresses for hot summer days.

I modified the bodice because I wanted it to just go over my head rather than have the button closure which is in the pattern.  This necessitated lowering and widening the neckline.  I also cut a larger size than I usually would because I wanted to be able to wear it over jumpers during the winter.  However... when I quickly tried it on having just sewn the shoulder seams, it was clear that there was too much width of fabric across my upper chest, so I cut the armholes two sizes smaller and that solved that issue.  Another modification was that I lengthened the frill  to make use of the full length of the fabric (3m), which I bought several years ago from Classic Textiles on the Goldhawk Road in London.  Rather than cut three frill pieces per the pattern I just used two full widths of the fabric, so in all there was 12" less fullness.

I cut the back bodice in one piece and lined rather than faced the bodice because this fabric is quite fine and I felt lining it would give it a better structure than just facing the neckline and binding the armholes (also, I didn't have any bias binding the right colour).

This meant that I had to pin the armholes together and topstitch them rather than sewing everything inside out and then turning it through.  This was a faff, so next time I make this pattern I'll put a seam in the centre back.  The pattern pieces for the pockets were for the other version of the skirt and wouldn't have worked with this one so I used the pockets from Tessuti Felicia which were what I had to hand.

Other changes for next time I make this - reverse the proportions of the skirt and the frill - I think it would look better with a longer skirt and shorter frill - and take the bodice side seams in.  I'm sure there will be summery versions of this next year.

Autumn rainbow jumper

This is the second version I've knitted of this pattern and I really like it!

I used the same wool as for the first one (Malabrigo sock), but in a different selection of colours.  I tried a few colour sequences before settling on one.

After a few inches I decided that I would change the sequence - cue rather a lot of unravelling, but I'm glad I did since I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

I've still got enough of this wool to knit another multicoloured top, but I'm undecided yet whether it will be another one of these, or whether I'll use a different pattern.