Category Archives: craft

Spring Inspiration Scarves

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While weaving the chenille scarves, I got to thinking more about using up more old or unusual yarns in my stash. When I had searched for something to use up the white warp I had tried weaving some slubby white cotton, but decided an all white scarf didn’t appeal. Could I use up that yarn next? I wasn’t feeling energetic enough to dye the cotton, but what if I wove it with a coloured warp?

Looking at my collection of 8/2 cotton, I chose three that were around the same value. The combo looked very Spring to me. I also had two balls of slightly thicker slubby cotton in a teal, so I wound enough warp for two scarves.

I chose a draft in Strickler (#102) that produced flower shapes, reproduced it in Fibreworks ao I could play with colour placement, and altered it to eliminate a long float.

The white wove up really well:

The teal is okay. You have to look closely to see the flowers. But it is cushy and soft.

I have enough slubby cotton in another brand to weave several more scarves, but after joining the Guild’s weaving group Zoom meeting on weaving with handspun, I was inspired to do that instead. The two balls I picked are also some of the ‘oldest’ yarns in my stash, and the warp yarn was probably a few years old when I picked it up at a destash.

None of these old yarns are particularly ancient, mind. They’re just the oldest in my stash. But I wouldn’t want them to end up so ancient that whatever I made out of them wouldn’t last long, which is a good motivation to weave yarns I’ve been intimidated by or not sure what to do with.

Newness

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For my first garment on the new machines, I decided to make a top out of the striped jersey I’d bought as a test fabric way back when. Since it was supposed to be sacrificial, I decided to also trial changing the skivvy pattern to a top with a scoop neckline.

Referring to a top from my wardrobe, I sketched out the new neckline and made a template for cutting out more fabric rather than cutting into the pattern.

I didn’t do this for the pattern back, which would come back to bite me later, I just trimmed a bit off the back piece after I’d cut it out. Then I got down to sewing.

To get around not having enough cones of thread in the colours I needed (because my old overlocker only takes three) I used black for one thread, which isn’t noticeable. One day, when lockdown is over, I’ll buy not just an extra cone of navy and grey, but an extra five so I don’t have to rethread the overlocker and coverstitch machine at least twice for each project.

(I did try to order more navy and grey cones, but couldn’t find any shops selling the brand and shade of navy I have, and I really need to match the grey in person. Which was probably a good thing, since there was also a big delay in the postal service thanks to Covid exposures and a surge of online orders.)

Some sewing later, I had a new top:

Which went well apart from two things:

First, the coverstitch machine is SO finicky! I went through all of the offcuts of the fabric test sewing, each time adjusting the various settings until the machine stopped skipping stitches. And yet when I came to sewing the actual hems… skipped stitches. Watching videos online helped a bit, but even when I finally got it to work and managed to sew the wrist and bottom hems successfully on this top, the machine then could not handle the neckline. I gave up after unpicking it several times and returned to using a double needle on the sewing machined.

Second, I really should have done more than snip a little bit off the back neckline. It stuck out so far that when I pinched it in to fit snugly, I found it was about 6cm too big. By then I was so over unpicking that neckline that I waited several days before taking a deep breath and redoing it. Fortunately, I only had to unpick the back, trim the back neckline and resew it, and then it was fixed.

I’m not sure what to make of the coverstitch machine. The fabric I used was thin, slippery, and had a very fine and grippy knit structure, so maybe that was the problem. I need to try other fabrics before making any conclusions about it. It’s a whole new thing, so naturally it’s going to take practise and experience to feel confident with using it.

But I am very happy with the sewing machine and overlocker, and keen to tackle the next project.

Chenille Scarves

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When the Venne scarves came off the loom I wasn’t sure what to weave next. I have a few linen projects I’d like to weave, but the heating here is very drying so I’m waiting until spring. I’m not ready to weave another rug yet. I also didn’t want to tackle anything mentally challenging when I was about to launch into the 8-shaft course.

Opening my stash spreadsheet, I looked at the oldest yarns there and found a few potential sparks of inspiration. Maybe I could weave up some of the small batches of interesting yarn I’d been procrastinating over for years. Taking out whatever appealed, I wound up with three batches of indigo blue and white yarn – clearly something about the colour was attracting me. I chose the chenille that was ikat dyed in one of Kay Faulkner’s workshops.

I’ve woven this yarn (undyed) into a scarf before, using it as both warp and weft on a rigid heddle loom. It was hard to beat and the warp was a twisty nightmare, and the scarf came out a little stiff. Then I tried dip dyeing in indigo later, didn’t like the look and dip dyed the white end… and hated the result.

A different approach was needed. I’d seen chenille woven as weft on a 8/2 cotton warp in a project before, so based the sett and structure on that. I chose a simple 4-shaft 2×2 point twill with a straight treadling on a blue warp, which was easy to warp and fast to weave. When the scarf came off the loom it had the perfect drape for such a cushy yarn.

However, I had only used up one of the two balls of chenille. I decided to weave another scarf using a white warp. But then I thought… just one scarf? Wouldn’t it be more economical to warp up for two scarves? But what to use for weft on that second scarf? I could try unweaving that stiff chenille and use the weft to make a new one. Or, if that didn’t work, there was plenty of white slubby cotton in my stash that I could weave – and perhaps dye.

The second chenille scarf is much busier, because the white weft makes the twill more obvious and breaks up the blue.

In the meantime, I tried to unweave the old chenille scarf. It turns out chenille locks in pretty determinedly when woven with itself. I abandoned the task went looking for another yarn to use, but something about the unwoven chenille, which had a speckle effect thanks to being tightly woven then overdyed, kept calling me back to the old scarf. So I gave unweaving another try and found if I trimmed off the warp every 2 cm it was not so laborious that I wasn’t prepared to do it, over a couple of days.

Turns out I was right. It did weave up nicely. This time I wove point twill, which gave it a kind of flowery feel. However, it barely wove up to a cowl length. I added a bit of denim at either end and buttons to make it easily removable.

Which left quite a bit of warp on the loom. Not enough for a scarf, possibly too little for a cowl, but too much to just cut off and ‘waste’. This was an opportunity to play, I decided. I then played around in Fibreworks until I had a pattern I liked, and decided to weave it in black.

I’m thinking maybe fabric for a small bag.

Lengthening

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I made this vest/top back in 2006:

The yarn is a particularly soft and luscious cotton. I had just enough to make the vest. My, er, assets were a size smaller back then, and the bottom of the ribbing was at about waist height.

Time passes. Bodies change. The vest has been too short for a while now, and while I can wear it with something beneath, generally I don’t wear fests unless I need warmth, and then I don’t want a chilly gap around my waist.

I haven’t knitted beyond finishing machine knitted garments and the occasional accessory for (yikes!) ten years. A while back I bought some cotton from the Great Ocean Road Woolen Mill that had the same softness, and it occurred to me later that I could use it to lengthen the vest. Recently I finally got around to it.

The process was slow and laborious. I put in a thread just above the ribbing, then one several rows below to reduce the band width, cut and unravelled the yarn. Then I slowly knitted the simple pattern bands. I only dared to knit a few rows at a time, every two or three days, in case my rsi flared up. Even so, my back was not happy with me looking down so much.

After several weeks I had the pattern section complete. I needed to unravel a bit more of the body to end the pattern in a balanced way. Then halfway through Kitchenering the top to the bottom I discovered that there were increases in the extra section I’d unravelled, so I had to pull the stitches out and add the increases before restarting the joining.

So when I finally finished, I was very relieved that the vest still fit, and the ribbing meets the waistband of my jeans and skirts.

Fidget vs Focus

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The sewing I’ve done this year has been different to the occasional bunches of projects over the last decade. I’ve taught myself how to sew stretch fabric, done some challenging refashions and sewn more handwoven fabric than ever before.

My aim had been to have well made clothes from organic cloth, but the long-term benefit of that has been getting my sewing mojo back. You see, when I was in my 20s sewing was my main hobby, but I pushed myself too hard and wound up hating and avoiding it. Then in my late 30s I discovered refashioning, which was a great way to get back into sewing because it isn’t making a garment from scratch so there’s often a lot of construction already done.

This renewed enthusiasm is a much quieter thing than the obsession I had as a young sewer. Recently, I judged it enough to upgrade my machines. My Jenome is great, but it isn’t strong enough to sew many layers of fabric. My overlocker is good, but it has only three threads so only sews the edge, not the seam. I’ve also found that the stretch seams sewn with a double needle on the sewing machine keep breaking, and I concluded that the only way to get the quality I want is to use a coverstitch machine.

Of course, being locked down meant ordering without trying, so I did my research and aimed for robust machines. Which meant heavy machines I don’t want to be hauling out of the cupboard when I use them. To set them up permanently, some shuffling of the craft room furniture was required. Which led to a review of all the crafts I do, whether new, current and old.

That inevitably turned my attention to the Passap knitting machine. I searched for the email from the seller and was shocked to discover I’d bought it nearly ten years ago. I probably only used it regularly for the first year. The main reason I bought it was to make socks, of which I made a few then stopped because I already had so many socks.

I’ve used the Bond over and over, and it can be packed away into its carrier, so it’s well worth keeping. But I think the Passap has to go. Ironically, it’s home isn’t in the craft room, so selling it has no bearing on the furniture shuffling except to empty the cupboard of the magazines and parts that came with it.

Of course, selling it will have to wait until after lockdown ends. Even if I found someone willing to hire a courier, I can’t get out to collect the packaging needed.

Dyeing to Start

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The eight shaft certificate weaving course has begun! Woohoo! The schedule needed to adapt to lockdown, but thanks to Zoom and our adaptable teacher and her assistant, it got underway without a hitch.

The Guild provides yarn for the course, but we couldn’t go there to pick it up. Last year, in anticipation of this course, I bought a range of the yarn we mostly used in the 4-shaft course – Bendigo 3ply classic – but for the first sampler we used the 2ply version, and I only have two colours of that yarn: natural (which I used for the warp) and a red. One weft colour wasn’t going to offer much exciting experimentation, so I dyed ten bobbin’s worth of the natural.

In my limited supply of dye I had the purply blue on the right, red and yellow. Overdying gave me the colours between. I was hoping for a brown using all three, but got dark burgundy-purple shades.

Still, I love how they turn out. Overdyeing creates more harmonious colour schemes. I’d dye more often if I wasn’t too lazy for the set up and clean up.

Venne You Can’t Decide…

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… weave a kit!

This is definitely one of those “looks more complicated than it is” projects. I had the treadling sequence memorised within two repeats, and it wove faster than I expected. Avoiding draw-in was a battle. Seems like that’s a thing with shadow weave. I don’t have a temple small enough to fit the scarf, so I laid in the weft in a big angle and left a little bit of a loop at both edges, which kept it getting out of hand.

To be honest, I wasn’t that excited by the design, so for the second scarf I rethreaded the loom to weave a draft from Handweaving.net. I’m a sucker for a weaving pattern that is a weaving pattern. It was a slightly shorter, narrower draft than the kit scarf, and a bit simpler to thread and treadle.

The tie-up had me weaving it back-side-up. I must have missed some clue on the site. But I didn’t mind as I still liked the back more than the original design, and the there was the satisfaction of seeing the front pattern when I took it off the loom.

Funghi Legs

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Having successfully made leggings, I looked at the two jersey prints I had, and considered whether to make more or use it for skivvies and tops. I decided the latter, but I did want to make more leggings. The pattern I had traced off an old pair was slimmer at the ankle and lower at the waist than the Style Arc pattern, and I was curious to see how well it would fit. So I went online looking for organic black cotton jersey, and somehow some two other fabrics fell into my cart.

I always wash fabric before sewing it, just in case it stretches or runs or behaves weirdly. When I went to cut out a pattern I found that both new and old fabric was distorted where they had hung on the line, so I stuck all five pieces in the rinse and spin cycle and then into the dryer. Now, we barely ever use the dryer. Call me old fashioned or hipster, but if I can save money and avoid producing carbon by drying on the line or a clothes airer, I will. The only reason we have a dryer is because I adopted Nana’s one when she died in 2009 for emergencies, like the house flooding (which seems every house I own will do at some point) and we have an excess of wet towels to dry. I think Nana’s dryer was bought in the 80s. It worked fine until recently, when it started making a burning smell whenever it was on the warm setting. This meant it took about three days to get all the fabric dry, helped along by me ironing it now and then to speed things along. Cotton sure goes suck up moisture. Anyway, it all dried eventually and…

I sewed up some black leggings first. The pattern worked fine – a teeny bit tight around the legs. When I cut out the next pair I gave them a few mm extra room, but that pair came out a little loose, despite feeling a little less stretchy. That just seems to be the luck of the draw with jersey.

I have another pair of leggings to make, but I’m moving on to skivvies and tops next because they’ll use black thread. No sewer changes the thread on the overlocker until they have to!

One From Two

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Earlier this year we spent a weekend in Castlemaine, and at one of the local tourist attractions, the Mill Market, I bought a second hand jacket:

I love how three different knit fabrics have been combined to make it. This came to mind when thinking about how I might make garments out of Late Lucy’s knitted skirts at around the same time I culled some knitwear from my wardrobe. Could I make another jacket out of the navy skirt and an old jumper?

I had a perfect match colour-wise, though that only gave me two fabrics.

So I made a rough pattern from the jacket using calico, and laid pieces of it on top of the skirt and jumper. I had enough fabric to make it, if I eliminated the pockets.

The jumper I’d cut up had been sewn so the purl side faced out. This meant the knit side was in really good condition, so I put that one on the outside.

The next day, despite not feeling 100%, I got out the scissors, too a deep breath, and started cutting. The pieces from the jumper were cut first, then I turned to the skirt, and that’s when I got distracted.

It occurred to me suddenly that if I flipped the side pattern piece over it would fit right down beside the collar piece. I should have then made sure I still had room for the sleeve pieces, but I didn’t, and only went to cut them out did I realise my mistake.

I didn’t fancy making a vest, so I’d have to find more fabric. I packed everything up and put it out of sight. Then, a few days later, a possible solution came to me. The cuffs on the original jacket are extensions of the sleeves, that fold up. What if they didn’t fold up, but were attached halfway up the forearm? The main sleeves pieces could be shortened. I measured and tweaked and made it work, though it meant the sleeves would be bit skinnier so I had to hope they wouldn’t be too tight.

Once cut out, all of the pieces were overlocked around the edges except where I’d taken advantage of already existing hems. I sewed the bottom hem of the side pieces on the machine, but though I’d done a test on a scrap I wasn’t happy with the way this stretched out the fabric. So I hand sewed the rest of the seams, using thread unravelled from the waistband, until I got to the zipper, which is a non-stretchy part of the garment, and the inside of the collar, which benefited from the reinforcement of a straight stitch.

The sleeves are a teeny bit short, but I don’t think I’ll notice. It took quite a few weeks to make it, and a lot of hand sewing, but I’m chuffed to have made something wearable from two tired old garments.

Skivvies

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So of course, having chosen and started another filler project, the skivvy pattern arrived. I decided to continue with the filler project, then I stuffed it up big time and packed it away in the hopes I’d stop beating myself up over it. Out came the skivvy pattern and my test fabric, and I quickly whipped up a garment:

The fit is almost perfect – only the neck is a little tight when putting it on. I was so chuffed, I cut out the pieces for another, out of a mercerised cotton from a friend’s destash. This time the fabric was a one-way stretch, so it would be a test of whether the pattern works without vertical elasticity. The cutting required matching the pattern, but what made that extra challenging was the pattern was denser at the sides than the middle, as if the centre area had been stretched. I tried steaming the fabric to see if it would even out, but it didn’t help. Fortunately I had enough fabric to place the front and back at the centre, and the sleeves at the sides.

I took a break, had a cuppa, considered other things I could be doing… and went back to the craft room and sewed this one up too. It came out fine – a little tighter at the neck but still comfy once on:

My plan now is to alter the pattern to make a round or scoop neck top. But by then I’d figured out a possible fix for the filler project I’d messed up, so I returned to that.