Month: July 2008

A Pleasing Pile of Puffs.

I’d never made a Suffolk Puff before today, and now I’ve made a dozen:

Suffolk Puffs

They’re made from offcuts of the Bishopston organic cottons, with a little bit of Fair Trade batik thrown in for good measure. The centres are made from self-cover buttons.

These particular puffs are going to be sewn on to organic cotton tote bags, which I’ve been embroidering for Paul’s cousin’s daughters. I haven’t done any embroidery for a very long time either, but I’m pleased with the way it’s come out. Pictures will follow when the puffs are attached!

Before the Art Market in September, I plan to make a whole bunch of these as corsages, with brooch pins on the back. If I’m feeling particularly creative, I might go mad with multiple layers and feathers and ribbons and sparkly bits.

I’ve really enjoyed making these little pretties. I can’t wait to see how they look in lots of different types of fabric!

Simplicity 2927

This morning I had a very productive time drafting a pattern for a pair of leggings. By lunchtime I’d transformed a piece of lovely cotton jersey that I bought from The Cloth House several years ago, and in the afternoon I started on a simple tunic to go with them.

Say hello to Simplicity 2927:

Simplicity 2927

It’s not finished yet, mostly because I was taken by surprise at how complicated this little dress turned out to be!

It’s one of Simplicity’s Project Runway patterns. As it happens I’ve never actually watched the TV show, but I’d sort of assumed that the point of the patterns was to encourage young wannabe designers into sewing their own clothes.

We’d already discovered at work that the patterns are quite difficult to read. The back of the envelope is quite confusing in terms of being able to work out what you need (more so than normal!), and the instructions often seem unnecessarily complicated.

This particular design comes in a choice of two lengths, has three different sleeve styles, and optional pockets. Directions are also included for piping all of the seams. Throughout the pattern you’re sewing concave to convex edges to make the curved side front seams and the neck band. The sleeves are either faced or bagged out. The front facing’s rather fiddly, and the sleeves and neck band were a nightmare to put together neatly.

I sew three or four days out of every week, and I found this pattern rather difficult!

I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who didn’t already have plenty of sewing experience – and plenty of patience. It took me around six hours to get this far, and I was expecting it to take about half that time.

As I was putting this little tunic together, I was a bit worried that my choice of colours was going to make me look like a dental nurse. Looking at the photo though, I think the style is quite cute. Slightly sixties-looking, and I think the button makes all the difference. I don’t know whether that’s going to be my final choice of button – I need to see the colours in daylight – but I think whichever button I choose, it needs to be a big one.

All I need to do now is put in the zip, finish off the last few loose ends, and give the whole thing a good pressing. I’m disappointed that I couldn’t get it finished today, as I was planning on wearing it to work tomorrow, along with my new leggings!

Still, I’d rather do it properly, than try to finish it in a hurry and make a mess of it.

I keep going back to these little raglan tunic patterns, so I guess my next step is to draft one of my own. Whatever I come up with, I do know that it won’t have a neckband, and it won’t have such complex curves! I’m still in love with the pockets though.

Freshly eaten, or newly hatched?

Egg

Paul and I went for a little walk in the field closest to our house, so that Paul could take some photographs of  me wearing the skirt that I drafted and made today.

Just as we were going home again, he pointed out this little white egg.

My name’s Claire, and I have a fabric problem.

 

Today I took on four new corset orders, to be completed during August. In order that people could choose the fabric that they wanted, I decided to organise a gallery.

All of the fabrics shown below are part of my very own fabric stash, which I’ve been collecting since approximately 2004. This is only a small selection, you can see the rest over at Flickr.

Corset fabrics

I’m not quite certain what I thought I was going to do with all of these fabrics.

Well, okay, I knew I was going to sew them one day, and I have been procrastinating like mad with regard to making corsets for exactly as long as I’ve been collecting the fabrics with which to make them.

I don’t know how I thought anybody was going to ask me to make a corset from any of these amazing fabrics when they were all tucked away carefully in my Shed, in an enormous box.

What I’m planning to do from now on is to offer a limited number or corsets for sale each month, made from the fabrics in my collection.

I’ll make a page for all the details later, but if you like the look of any of the fabrics, please feel free to claim it, and join the queue!

The ridiculous fiction of size charts.

Today my plan was to draft some paper patterns for three or four different styles of skirt that I’ve been thinking about for a little while. I know the average sizes of myself, my friends and family, and my repeat customers, but I thought I’d better do a little bit of research and find out what sizes other people were using for their clothes.

I’m making skirts, so I’ve focussed entirely on waist and hip measurements here.

The sizes shown below are all taken from the charts on the stores’ websites. All of the measurements given are for a UK size 14. They’re in centimetres.

Shop Waist Hips
M&S 79 104
Evans 80 101
Top Shop 79.2 101.5
Dorothy Perkins 78 101.5
John Lewis 77 102.5
Next 76 100.5
Miss Selfridge 79 101.5
Principles 78 101.5
Debenhams 76-80 99-103
British Home Stores 78 103
New Look 81 104
Monsoon 76.5 102
River Island 77 102
Wallis 78.5 104
H&M 76 100
Oasis 77 104
French Connection (FCUK) 79 104
Kew 79 104
Karen Millen 78 104
Hobbs 81 106
Jigsaw 79 104
Coast 80 105
Warehouse 79 102

These are the measurements from two of the industry standard pattern cutting books, from which students learn to draft their clothing patterns.

Fabric, Form and Flat Pattern Cutting, 2nd Edition (1996/2007)
Size   10 12 14 16 18 20 22    
Waist   62 67 72 77 82 87 92    
Hips   87 92 97 102 107 112 117    
Metric Pattern Cutting, 4th Edition (revised 1997)
Size 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26
Waist 62 66 70 74 78 82 86 92 98 104
Hips 68 90 94 98 102 106 110 116 122 128

In the first set of measurements, there is a 25cm difference between the waist and hip measurements, and an average of 5 cm between each size.

In the second set, there is a 24cm difference between the waist and hip measurements, and 4 cm difference between each size, but the measurements given for each size are now larger. A person who would have worn a size 10 in the first set of measurements would now be wearing a size 8.

Despite this, the most recent measurements given in the pattern cutting books for a size 14 are still at least one size smaller than those given in the stores. Having said that, the charts in the pattern book are eleven years old. I know that the 5th edition of Metric Pattern Cutting is due out very soon, so it’s possible that the measurements given for each size may now be more in line with those shown by the stores.

But if the clothing that’s in the stores isn’t the same size as the measurements on the size charts, how can anybody possibly know what size to choose?

According to the pattern cutting books, I’m a size 18-20. Looking at the stores’ size charts shown above, a size 14 should be much too small for me. However, I know from experience that I can usually fit comfortably into a size 14 from any of those shops. In a commercial dress pattern, I sew anything between a size 12 and a size 20, depending on the style of the garment and the amount of design ease that has been allowed.

So, the answer would seem to be to provide exact measurements for each garment that I make – and in fact I will make my own size chart on that principle. But this does assume that people know what size they are, and most people simply don’t.

For example, if I was to buy a size 14 skirt from one of the shops listed above, I should theoretically be able to assume that my waist measurement falls into the range 76-81 cm. Even though this is a pretty large size range for a single garment, in fact my actual waist measurement is much larger. Then there’s the added complication that modern skirts and trousers are cut to fit far lower on the body than the natural waist, which means that the waist sizes given on the charts bears absolutely no relation to the measurements of the actual garment.

As a dressmaker I have a house full of tape measures, and I measure myself on a regular basis so that I can work out which size to choose for my next creation. It’s easy for me to forget that this is not normal for most people!

Perhaps I should offer a handy measuring pack, with a tape measure and a little chart showing where to take the measurements. Once people knew their actual dimensions, then they could more confidently choose the right size of garment according to my chart.

This is quite important, as all of my clothes are made by hand from limited stocks of fabric. If somebody buys a garment and finds that it doesn’t fit, I’ll willingly exchange it, but I can make no guarantees that I’ll have enough fabric left to make another one exactly the same.

Given that I’m planning to offer a new range of clothing in multiple sizes, I need to have a set of basic patterns that I can use over and over again. (The cost of drafting a new pattern for each individual customer is rather prohibitive.) Having a standard range of sizes definitely makes this much easier from a manufacturing point of view. The difficult part is going to be to come up with a range of sizes which genuinely reflect the actual dimensions of the garment, and will fit as many people as possible.

Wish me luck!

A little light reading…

I think it might be safe to say that my bedside reading mountain is getting a little out of control!

Bedside Reading...

As you can see from this picture, I don’t tend to read a lot of fiction these days. This makes the book on the very top of the pile a bit intimidating.

I signed up to Blog a Penguin Classic, and this is the one I was assigned – Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson.

Oddly enough I had rather been hoping for a “proper” classic, rather than a “modern” one. I feel as though I could have quite enjoyed a bit of Herman Melville or Alexandre Dumas. Now that I’ve looked at the website I see that I’ve read more of the Modern Classics than I’d thought – and I’m quite grateful that I didn’t end up with Jack Kerouac. I read On The Road because I thought I ought to, and found that I hated it.

I’m trying to stay open minded about Hell’s Angels but the subject matter of drinking, violence and motorbikes really doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest.

I need to start reading it soon though – I only have a couple of weeks left before it’s time to submit my review for Penguin!

Knitting time already?

It can’t be, surely? I haven’t finished knitting the socks from last month’s Simply Knitting, and Issue 44 has just dropped through my door!

Actually it didn’t so much drop through the door as fight with the postman to be wrestled through the letterbox, as the free gift this issue was a set of butterfly clips. (The down side of subscribing? You don’t get a choice of gift colour. I’d have chosen the pink ones!) You’re supposed to use them for holding the seams of your knitting together as you sew it up. Of course, the first thing I did was try one out in my hair!

There are two patterns this month which immediately make me want to rush out and buy yarn.

The first is a child’s cardigan, called “Just Peachy”.

Just Peachy

The pattern goes up to age 11-12, but it has quite a lot of design ease (see how the cardigan is quite loose in the picture?), so the age 7-8 years is actually a perfectly snug fit for me! I’m very short-waisted so the back is already the ideal length, and all I’d have to do is lengthen the sleeves by about four inches. A single sparkly button or a silky ribbon at the top, and you’ve got a pretty summer cardi. I wonder whether John Lewis has any Kidsilk Night left in the sale…?

I also fell in love with the cardigan on the cover, and was wondering whether I might have just enough of my poor neglected Debbie Bliss Cathay to make this in light pink.

Zesty Lime

My favourite thing about this pattern? Right there on the picture – “Pattern in sizes 8-32!” The smallest size fits a 32″ chest, and the largest is 54″. I know that a few of the American knitting magazines include larger sizes, but their patterns often look like an enormous woolly sack. It’s so nice to see a pretty knitting pattern in such a wide range of sizes.

Mind you, it isn’t half complicated!

I received a survey last week, regarding a potential new knitting magazine aimed at intermediate or experienced knitters. I enthusiastically answered all of the questions saying, “yes! I would love to knit more complicated and adventurous things!”.

Then I looked at this cardigan, and my brain fell out of my ear.

The front panels are a twelve-row pattern, featuring twisted stitches for which I didn’t even recognise the abbreviations! Thankfully there is a helpful key to explain how you work “tw2, P4, tw2, twF, P1, twF, P5, tw2, P4, tw2”, which is the first row!

 

Perhaps I’ll start with the children’s cardigan. A four-row lace pattern I can probably manage, if I sit down and concentrate on it properly. (Lace is not my strong point.)

Maybe I ought to finish my socks first. Or my summer jumper.

I might even get around to sewing the zip into my green cardigan, taking a photo and actually publishing the pattern for you, one of these days…

Having a go at weaving.

Today Paul and I went to our local Fun Day, organised by the Lions Club. We go every year, primarily to see the ferrets. The Hants and Berks Ferret Club bring lots of ferrets with them, and they have races, which are hilarious! The ferrets run through an obstacle course of pipes and bridges and seesaws. Last year we managed to place a bet on the slowest ferret of all – he stopped half way through the race to have a nice long drink from the water obstacle! Today I got to cuddle a ferret called Zorro. He was adorable, although extremely wriggly. Thankfully he (and his owner) didn’t seem to mind when he squirmed right out of my arms and landed on the floor!

We have a pet rabbit, so there’s no way we could keep a ferret at the same time. It just wouldn’t be fair to the rabbit to bring a predator into his home. In the meantime though, we’re quite happy to visit the Hants and Berks Ferret Club when they’re in our area.

After playing with the ferrets I headed straight for the crafts tent, where there was a weaving display set up. I was immediately overcome by the wool fumes, and as soon as I’d picked up a little skein of wool for a squish, I was encouraged to have a go on the makeshift looms.

Lower Earley Fun Day - weaving

Here I am, a couple of rows in. I believe I was doing weft-faced weaving, as the warp threads would have been completely hidden if we’d been packing the rows together tightly enough.

Look at the little boy opposite me, in the football shirt. He has the most intense look of concentration about him, and he was weaving away for ages!

Lower Earley Fun Day - weaving

Here’s my finished bit of weaving!

I really enjoyed doing it, and am very tempted by the idea of buying a little table loom of some kind. When my hands won’t allow me to knit any more, I think a little light weaving would be an interesting way to carry on having fun with yarn.

Paul took the photos on his new iPhone, and he was checking his email as I was weaving away. Something of a technology clash going on there! It worked to everyone’s benefit though, as one of the ladies in charge of the weaving demonstration has asked us to email the photos to her, “to demonstrate that anyone can do weaving”.

We chatted a little as I played with a piece of lovely soft roving which matched my hair. As soon as I picked it up, it seemed totally natural to twist it between my fingers. I think perhaps I should back away slowly from the idea of weaving, before I find my house filled with roving and a drop-spindle.

Never mind ferrets – please can I have a sheep?

Silk socks and a passionflower.

I have a confession to make.

I am in love with my new socks. And they’re not even socks yet!

I honestly thought I’d be bored by the monotony of knitting every single row, but the self-striping yarn is absolutely fascinating to watch. How wide will my stripes be? Which colour’s coming next? I also thought I’d get cross with faffing about half way through every row, but I’m so relieved not to be wrestling with a set of double-pointed needles that Magic Loop is wondrous by comparison! The yarn is beautiful, the little needles don’t hurt my hands, and I believe I may have found my new vocation. Sock knitting is brilliant.

 Silk sock in a passionflower...

My knitting friends are turning out to be such a bad influence. Who’d have thought it?

We’ve been talking about socks, and hyperbolic crochet, and lace patterns knitted in aran weight wool, and teasing one another with links to the most beautiful yarns you’ve ever seen.

I have a comparatively small yarn stash, thanks to a comparatively small yarn budget, but I am now fighting a desperate urge to buy ALL THE SOCK YARN. You know, in case there’s a shortage, or something.

And, of course, you don’t have to use sock yarn just for knitting socks! I went to have a look through the pattern archives at Knitty, and stumbled across this amazingly beautiful pattern that I hadn’t spotted before.  Reversible lacy cables. Knitted in sock yarn. Wow.

I might need some help to decipher the chart, but that one’s definitely going in my Ravelry queue.

I knitted on my sock yesterday while I was waiting at the hospital to have some scans and x-rays done. When I sat down I realised that I’d forgotten my cable needle, and my next row was full of cables! Being a resourceful type of person, I pulled out the toothpick from my Swiss Army Card, and cabled with that.

In the course of two waiting rooms I overheard at least six older ladies talking about how on earth I was knitting a sock on such a peculiar needle, yet not one person came over to ask me about it. Usually people are keen to chat about knitting, especially when they see a strange woman with pink hair doing it. Perhaps it was the look of intense concentration and the toothpick that put them off…