Alder Sew Along: Week 1

It's been a sewing-obsessed week for me. The Adler Shirtdress Sew Along is in full swing and it looks like Katie and Allyson are off to a great start!

I've had this project rolling around in my head for a good month now, so I took the time to print the 55 page  (!!) pattern and assemble it last week. Based on my measurements, I selected the Size 10 of the B version and cut out the various pattern pieces.

From there, it's hard to fight the urge to just start sewing, but the fact is: I want to wear this dress, so it makes sense to do what I can to ensure my hard work lasts. That means I washed my fabric in advance, something I do maaaaybe every other project. I was proud of myself, until I realized just how long 4 yards of fabric is and how much ironing it takes to get 100% cotton in reasonable shape.

O, the Ironing

Laying out the pattern pieces was another small challenge. The only space large enough to lay everything nice and flat was the floor. The only other individual who spends time on the floor in this house is my dog Droopy. He remains, as always, as cute as he is unhelpful. 

Hit the bricks, Droopy! We've got a pattern to cut!

Laying out went mostly without incident, although I did find that I needed to flip Pattern Pieces 6 and 13 upside-down to match the layout in the pattern booklet. This felt a little funny, but I trusted the pattern and started cutting.

Tracing Pattern Piece 7 - The Yolk 

Cutting all of the pattern pieces in both fabric and interfacing took a bit longer than I thought it would. There are a lot of components to this dress and it can feel a little overwhelming when you look at them all piled together. You try not to think about the fact that your last project was a baby bonnet for a 1-year-old and that you might be majorly out of your depth and you deploy that time honored strategy: fake it 'til you make it!

In other words: time to dive on in. Remarkably, the actual sewing goes by at quite the rapid pace. You begin with the button bands. I have a weird love of fusible interfacing. It's just so satisfying to iron it into place... PERMANENTLY. 

Buttoned Up

Fun with Fusible Interfacing - working title of my worst selling craft book

And then, it was time for pockets! I've never made visible pockets before, let alone ones that would sit right on my boobs. If done correctly, they should just blend in nicely to the garment. If done poorly, my chest becomes a focal point and I'm just not prepared to deal with that. I'm 30 years old, after all. I demand respect!

Pockets going solo

It's tricky enough to make sure your pockets are lined up with the marking from the pattern, but there's an added challenge with the Adler pattern. Part of the pocket sits on a bust dart, so you're adding pockets to a rounded surface.

Placin' those pockets

Jen at Grainline recommended using a tailor's ham to ensure that your pocket lies smoothly. While that sounds delicious, I don't have this particular piece of equipment. I was able to make due by using the corner of my ironing board and pulling the darted fabric around the edge, which flattened out the fabric. For the most part, I was able to get reasonable placement (after a ton of ironing and accidentally pinning the fabric to my ironing board cover).

Pockets = Placed

Tune in next week, when we add an actual back side to this puppy. Who knows, it might actually start looking like a dress (fingers crossed)!

Adler Dress Mini-Sew Along

I've been expanding my hobbies! For Christmas this past year, my family (after years of not-so-subtle hinting) surprised me with a sewing machine of my very own. The delight I felt pretty quickly morphed into a feeling of distinct intimidation. I hadn't touched a sewing machine since 2002. It had been ELEVEN years. Ho boy...

#blessed

I let it sit on the shelf for a few months and worried that I'd never actually put it to good use. Then, I found the perfect pattern that I could use to test my memory and skill level. The Purl Bee Soho Baby Sunbonnet pattern. Anything baby is going to go fast/ not use up too many resources when you forget that tension is a thing or how to properly insert your bobbin... not that I ever did those things. Those would be STUPID things to not know about.........

Anyway, there was success!

This bonnet brought to you by the Partridge Family

And suddenly, I was back in the game. Local Chicago designer Jen at Grainline Studio had captured the attention of crafters I knew primarily as knitters: my friends Allyson and Katie plus other designers I follow like Ysolda Teague were enthusiastic about her design aesthetic. I decided to give her Scout Tee a try.

Thumbs up for SUCCESS

Aside from not being super on point with my sizing, I was really proud to have produced a cute, wearable garment after only hand-sewing buttons since high school. So, why not keep going?!?

Grainline Studio is doing a sew along for its latest pattern The Adler Shirtdress. Because I need a little extra burst of confidence for a more advanced pattern, I'm pleased to announce a Mini-Sew Along with Allyson of Sweatshop of Love and Holla Knits and Katie of Under the Red Umbrella! On Mondays, you can check out Katie's progress. On Wednesdays, Allyson will allow you to peep her sewing game. On Fridays, I'll have all of the chit-chatting about sewing a baller dress that you can stand. It's going to challenging and it's going to be fun.

All My Fabrics

I'm excited, you're excited, they're excited. Gangway for good times!

Sparkle Motion

Although things have been quiet on the blog, I actually have been knitting. Mostly, I've been focused on gifts, which I can't really blog about in advance because I have 8 readers and I'm preeeeetty sure they'd figure it out.

So here's some odds and ends:

Knit Night inspired me to pick up the ol' crochet hook again and I made some granny squares.

I was also inspired by that episode of Call the Midwife where they all frantically patch together a baby blanket for Chummy while waiting for news from the hospital. You're all watching the show, right?

I've also picked up the Sparkle Yarn again for a new purpose. Originally, this was to be used for a Holla Back Tank, but I won't lie to you, gentle reader. The lace defeated me. The time came when I need to to decrease to make the armholes and I had to rip back four different times. I just couldn't take it anymore. I put it in a drawer and declared the project Dead To Me.

But the yarn is just so... mesmerizing. It deserves to be something. Using a modified version of Jilted from Holla Knits, I'm making a little spring sweater that will hopefully make a good addition to the work uniform.

I've taken my sweet time finishing the body, but you know what else has been dragging it's heals? Summer. So, who cares, right? It's going to have short sleeves, so hopefully I'll have results for you in this century. No promises, though!

Feeling Jilted

I wanted to share my progress on my Jilted sweater, but I'm not feeling particularly verbose. So I'm just going to share a three-step process with you:

 

Step 1:

Knit and knit and knit forever

Step 2:

Remove marker and drop stitch on the front of the garment. Keep reminding yourself this is part of the design and not to panic while working on the K1P1 ribbing.

 

Step 3:

Whew! It fits! Take a selfie that gives you Double Tricep and Double Hip Mystique.

My Prerogative

Last week, I was really excited about my new project because it involved color. And I still am, I promise! Check the progress:

Bring it on down to Colorville, amiright?

But I forgot that I added some other yarn into my KnitPicks order - some Capretta in a light grey color.

This is the exact opposite of what I was looking forward to - we've had enough grey in our lives lately, after all. but you guys, this yarn... is so squishy soft and so pretty. I just wanted to try it out, honest. Plus, I did this to my nails:

Which was plenty of color to mesmerize me while I cast on a few stitches of this squishy new yarn. Those few stitches just happened to turn themselves into a project - Jilted by Jennifer Dassau featured in Holla Knits:

It's slow going, but the yarn feels so nice, it keeps me motivated. When it gets to be too much, I hop back to the chevrons. We'll see which one wraps up first! Is this a little flighty of me? To bounce wildly back and forth like this? I'll refer you to the following:

Inspiration

An awesome thing that I found:

Montezuma Sweater

DearGolden is a wonderful vintage shop on Etsy and I love reading their blog posts each day for a little style inspiration.This guy is from the 1970s, kint in acrylic and is only $34. Not too shabby. I love the wave motif at the yolk. Makes me want to throw on some strappy leather sandals and paint in the desert somewhere.

I'm back in a colorwork kind of mood. I hit a snag with my Norwegian boot socks and had to put them aside for a while. The foot of the sock doesn't call for any decreases and therefore turned out kinda... stumpy.

It looks fine from the side:

 But then, Stumpsville:

See what I mean? Just a little too much fabric at the foot to shove into a shoe. I found this frustrating and put the project aside for a while. I've got a new super colorful project in mind, but the yarn is taking foreeeever to get here and I need something to do while I'm waiting. Ripping back and restarting the feet of these socks seemed like a great 'waiting around' project. It's good practice for the new colorwork project I'll be undertaking soon, and I might actually have functional boot socks before winter is over! Who'd have thought?

Invested

I'm trying to get my financial house in order this year. I'm going to try to live thrifty, bring my lunch more and (gasp!) get serious about my savings. As part of this resolution, I'm trying to use yarn I already own. I have more than I realized, and it really should be put to good use.

A few months ago, I won a yarn give-away hosted by Holla Knits. I won two skeins of Dirty Water DyeWorks Edna in Celery - a beautiful wool-silk blend of yarn in a lovely green color. I was trying to figure out how best to use it, and since I got it from Holla Knits, it only made sense to use a Holla Knits pattern!

It was time to cast on Put a Belt On It

 

I had a small skein of KnitPicks Swish Sport in Cobblestone Heather. I think it makes a really nice contrast to the green. And my, how a project with no sleeves flies!

Plus, there's the back. CABLES. Yum.

Just finished up the seed stitch border this morning and thought you'd like to see the magic of blocking.

Before:

Front

Back

And here we have it drying:

I'll try to be better about modeling the finished garments, but for now, enjoy the magic of blocking!!

Blue Moon

Writing my little ode to Norwegian knitting the other day made me long to try those boot socks again. I had a bit of professional news that left me in a funk on Thursday, so it was clearly time to start a new project. Cheap thrills are underrated:

And you know what? It really worked. I'm feeling great and the recent cold snap here in Chicago makes me really excited to finish these up and wear the hell out of them. Insert Norwegian Celebratory Phrase Here!

I fell behind a bit on my Holla Knits KAL work, mostly because I was busy magically transforming my home with the power of paint. My "before" photos didn't make the ol' upload this morning, so you'll have to take my word that my dining room was a subtle, light blue. I've had the idea of using a more saturated, royal blue for a while. I love the white trim around my condo's many (drafty) windows, and wanted to pick a color that would make the white pop. After a visit to Home Depot, I decided Song Bird was the way to go. A gallon was purchased. Paint supplies were carried up from storage. This is where I should offer many thanks to my lovely assistant:

Lovely Assistant shows us coat 1 of 2 while covering profanity on tee-shirt

It's always hard to capture the correct color on your point-and-shoot camera early in the morning, but these are pretty true to what I see when I walk in the room.

POW!

BAM! (Excuse the Diet Coke, I have to actually live in this house, you know)

Still working on that photo arrangement, but I'm trying to use existing holes from shelves that were up in the room's previous incarnation. I've been resisting the urge to buy tons of new art on Etsy by salvaging mediocre stuff I have hanging in other rooms/ laying in closets around the house. I'm really happy with it - I'm going to love surprising myself every time I need to walk to the kitchen for something over the next few weeks.

Order

I'm trying to get things in order. I spent the weekend organizing, cleaning, sorting and planning - I even went to Home Depot (it was a pretty nice little Saturday). I'm trying to plan ahead and secure my gifts early for an upcoming bridal shower and for Christmas (in a perfect world!)

I also have some friends who are expecting a boy this winter. Baby news automatically makes me want to cast on a project, but knitting for boys can be tough. Knitting World is heavy on the lace and the pink frippery projects. That's why I was excited to find this baby blanket on The Purl Bee a few months ago. It was functional, masculine and could be easy to care for with the correct yarn selection. Sold! I really loved the color palette they showed in the pattern, so I wasn't too creative with my choices.

Casting on was fun:

Making the edging felt like a real accomplishment. So polished-looking!

And since then.... it's just been miles and miles of stockinette stitch:

Miles

and miles

and miles

Basically, it's been slow going. But I'm on the sixth color stripe out of nine, so I need to just push on through. The end is in sight, at least! And then I'll get to crochet - IF I can find the one crochet hook I have. Oy. Maybe I'm not as organized as I thought.

Sparkle!

Hi! It's me, again!

Even though I haven't been writing about it, I've been doing quite a bit of knitting over the summer. It's been such a long time, that I don't even know where to start again. I guess I'll just begin with what I'm up to now and then do a few retrospective posts as we move into the fall aka Prime Knitting Season.

While I'm moving along on some Christmas gifts, I'm still taking the time to be selfish, like a good American. We're in the middle of another awesome Knit Along, this time for Holla Knits' Holla Back Tank. It's a nice summery pattern with some visual interest at the back. I'm hoping to add some 3/4 length sleeves, and transition this through the fall. I've chosen a SPARKLY yarn (Knit Picks Stroll Glimmer in Potion), which is so fun to work with, but may not prove to look that great as a whole top. We'll have to see....

For your reference, it's always hard to capture color accurately because I take pictures when I have time and that could be under ANY weather/ lighting circumstances. This is as close to an accurate representation of the yarn color as I can get (From the KnitPicks website):

Here's the progress from the last few weeks:

Sparkle Swatch!

The first few weeks zoomed along faster than I thought they would. It's fingering weight yarn, but not knitting in the round helps you move faster than you'd think!

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Which brings us to this week's goal: finish the waist decreases on the back.

Zig + Zag

Blocking will open up the lace more than you see here. I made the back a size smaller because the front has a lot more stretch (negative ease) than I was expecting. I like to avoid what my mother calls "sucky gut" in my clothing, if possible. Other project updates coming shortly. I guarantee it!

Knit Night Results

Having a regular knit night is great for productivity. I was FINALLY able to join the sleeves to the toddler dress I'm working on and it now actually looks like recognizable clothing:

I also cast on the Dollar and a Half cardigan for a mini Knit Along with Magical Grammar and Adaly Myles Place using Knit Picks CotLin in Sprout, a light green. Not photos yet, since it's just 2x2 rib, but hopefully I'll start the fun part soon.