Tag: pointelle

More Marvellous Mittens

Purple organic pointelle gloves

I had grand plans for making lots more pairs of gloves today. Above, you can see the total sum of my glove-making endeavours.

Admittedly I got rather sidetracked this morning by a hat, and didn’t start making the gloves until after lunch. Unfortunately, it turns out that making gloves from organic cotton pointelle is the most enormous pain in the backside. It’s very thick and very stretchy. It’s difficult to mark, and it’s difficult to cut and sew accurately. All of this makes working with it very slow going indeed.

I’ve prepared the backs and the bias tape for two more purple pairs, and cut the contrast stripes for three more pairs. Those will be teamed with more pointelle but in brown.

However frustrated I might be by the length of time it’s taking me to sew these, I have to admit that I rather like them! The bias trim (which is also around the thumbs) is a pleasing finishing touch, and I’m happy that all of the fabric is organic cotton. Now I just need to get a move on, and finish making them!

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.)