A year in pictures.

These are all the things I’ve made during 2009 – or at least all the ones I’ve remembered to photograph!

There doesn’t seem to be very much knitting in there, which surprises me, although I did spend most of the summer working on two large items which aren’t finished yet.

I also still haven’t really shown you very many photos of all the things that we made for the wedding. We do have the official photos back now, so I’ll be able to show you some of those very soon.

What’s really strange is that I can’t decide whether this represents a heck of a lot of sewing, or a really quiet year!

Violet Baudelaire.

Over Christmas we watched A Series of Unfortunate Events, the Lemony Snicket movie. We’d seen it before, but it’s a film that I’m always happy to watch over and over again, so that I can get a really good look at Violet’s costumes.

There are so many things about the dress that I love. The layers of translucent burn-out fabrics, the stripes, the lacing, the little puffy sleeves, the asymmetric hem with its slightly scruffy-looking ruffle… everything about it is just gorgeous. Pretty without being little-girly, grown-up without being sexy. Perfect.

(If nothing else, I need to make myself a Violet costume simply so that I have an excuse to buy those gorgeous boots I spotted the other week!)

That’s better.

Vogue 8145 - with amendments.

I find that most dresses can be improved by the addition of a polo neck. If it’s frilly, all the better.

Now I just wish I’d put pockets in it!

The pattern started out as Vogue 8145, with the addition of a modified polo neck based on the pattern piece from McCalls 5924. The dress is the shorter of the two, and the sleeves are elbow length because that’s how much fabric I had left.

The fabric is organic cotton natural pointelle from Near Sea Naturals, and I dyed it “Burlesque Red” using Dylon machine dye. The tie belt is organic cotton shirting from Bishopston Trading, dyed at the same time.

Despite the difficulties I had while making this, I’m really pleased with the end result. I think the frilly neckline is my favourite part.

A slight sewing difficulty.

I’ve been trying for the best part of a fortnight to make a dress. A dress which should be so easy that I thought it would only take me about four hours to make. And then my sewing machine stopped working, so I was going to use the overlocker, and then I didn’t have the right colour of thread, and then I remembered my old sewing machine was still in the loft, and it was all going quite well until I tried to bind the neckline yesterday. And now it’s all gone a bit wrong again.

The dress currently looks like this:
Vogue 8145

It’s supposed to look like this– that is, with a nice flat neckline.

It did look exactly like that, until I tried to add the binding.
The neckline is supposed to be hemmed, but I wanted to add the binding a) because I had a bit of matching fabric left over and it would be a shame to waste it, and b) because I wanted to add stability to the wide boat neck, so it didn’t stretch out and slide off my narrow shoulders all the time.

Except that this fabric is a very heavy ribbed pointelle, which means that it stretches. A LOT. And my old sewing machine doesn’t have a differential feed, or any variation in the pressure on the presser foot, and as a result the neckline has stretched and stretched and stretched.

I’m going to undo the binding and hope that I can stream shrink the ribbing back into place. Then I can do what I should have done in the first place, which is finish the neckline by hand.

The hem and sleeves though, I actively want to stretch! I plan to finish them with a lettuce hem, which basically means that I’ll deliberately stretch the ribbing out as far as I can when I run it through the overlocker. This will leave me with a decorative wiggly edge.

That just wasn’t quite what I had in mind for the neckline. :/

(And yet, as I sit here swearing at my sewing machines, I do still harbour some faint delusion that maybe I could one day be up there with Secret Lentil and Sarah Clemens. If only I wasn’t so… I don’t know. something.)

Leaves in the snow.

I went for a walk in the snow this morning. I took a grand total of 99 pictures, then came back and edited them down to just 9. I went out rather early, so although there was a lot of light reflecting from the snow, it wasn’t really daylight yet. As a result a lot of the pictures were rather grainy. I also took a lens that I’m not really used to using (70mm macro), so it took me a while to get the hang of it.

I ended up concentrating mainly on single leaves. Some were still just about clinging on to the trees, others were lying in the snow. I’m honestly not sure what’s going on with this one! It’s clearly not attached to a tree, so it must be lying on the ground, but somehow it looks as though it’s floating.

I particularly like looking at the largest version of this one. It’s still rather grainy, but you can see an absolutely amazing amount of detail of the structure of the leaf.

Quadrat

Yay, the new Knitty is up!

Knitty’s a funny one for me – I love looking through the new designs, and I’ve got quite a few patterns queued on Ravelry, but I’ve actually completed very few Knitty projects. Slither, Fetching and the ubiquitous Clapotis are the only ones I’ve finished, I think.

This one though… I know I haven’t got enough of the correct weight of yarn in my stash unless I wanted to make it stripy, so I’m now wondering what I can unravel in order to make myself a Quadrat!

I need about 900 metres of dk/worsted weight yarn – something that can be worked on 4mm needles.

The bargain section at Kemp’s Wool Shop is looking pretty tempting right about now…

Simplicity 2777

This is Simplicity 2777.

I’m making the ankle length version of the top/dress (which I have rather unhelpfully cropped out of the picture), but I’m not entirely certain which size to make. Usually there are actual garments measurements given on the pattern, but there aren’t any on this one.

According to the pattern envelope I should be making a size 18, but it’s such a loose-fitting garment that I think I could easily get away with making a size 14 instead. As long as the top of the dress is a good fit the rest will be fine, but I don’t want to accidentally make it too small under the arms.

Speaking of arms, I’m probably going to make the sleeves a bit smaller as well. I do love ridiculously floaty sleeves, but they’re not terribly practical. I haven’t decided yet whether I want to slim down the entire sleeve, or whether to bring in the fullness by adding some elastic or a little cuff at the wrist.

The fabric’s just a lightweight plain white polycotton, and it’s going to be an underdress. The dress to go over the top is going to be Vogue 8145. I’m making it from a lovely organic cotton pointelle from Near Sea Naturals, which is currently being dyed Burlesque Red, in my washing machine.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will turn into a really pretty outfit without being too “costumey”.

Another Cherry Circle Skirt

Cherry circle skirt

The Art Market went really well on Sunday – I sold a few things, and came home with a lovely print of a girl with pink hair!

The skirt above is another cherry print circle skirt for Tiger Lilly in the Harris Arcade, to replace one that was sold a few weeks ago. I’m going to have to put these on hold for a little while, as I seem to have bought every single inch of black broderie anglais trim from my local fabric shop, so I’ll just have to wait until they’ve got some more.

It’s probably about time I wrote a tutorial for these circle skirts. They’re extremely easy to make, along the same principles as my a-line elasticated skirt.

I was also really pleased to discover that the tutorial for the gathered skirts was featured on an Australian site called Frugal and Thriving. They’ve collected a grand total of 48 skirt tutorials, which are well worth a look!

Rising Sun Art Market

REVEAL Showcase preparation

Oops, this is a bit of a last-minute announcement, but the Rising Sun Christmas Art Market is tomorrow!

Rising Sun Arts Centre, 30 Silver Street, Reading RG1 2ST
10.30am – 5.30pm

Skycarrots and I will be there, and there will be cake and mulled wine in the bar area – conveniently close to my stall.

Come and join us for some original Christmas shopping, away from the mad rush of the town centre!

(This afternoon I will be mostly mounting badges onto Moo cards, and backing my ampersand embroideries with felt.)