Refashion #13: Two-Button Cardigan

I've had this turtleneck for awhile now. It's a beautiful brown color. It's terribly soft. I never wear it. The turtleneck is too high and it's a bit boxy and shapeless, and somehow the proportions never work with any of my skirts.


What I do not have much of, however, are cardigans. I've seen the sweater-to-cardigan look numerous times on WR, but I didn't just want to leave the edges raw or flip them under, since the original sweater is quite fitted as it is. This is probably why I often let my WR membership lapse -- I'm such a picky refashioner and consequently make much additional work for myself through detailing, that if I had to rely on thrifting and refashioning alone I wouldn't make it through all 4 Bostonian seasons. Or so I tell myself.

Anyways. It finally dawned on me that if I could use bias tape to finish off the raw edges, I might just have a cardigan that I liked.



I picked up 1/3 yard of fabric from the homespun section of Joann's, made my own bias tape, put on the sweater and marked the areas I wanted to chop, took a giant breath, and cut. Boy did I feel like I was living dangerously! And I will say that this is not the original look that I was going for. Note to self: if you're wearing a sweater with negative ease, don't expect V-neck lines to stay the same once you cut that baby open!

But luckily, I am not one who shies away from slightly off-beat or quirky. In fact, that's what I'm all about. I think I may actually even like this version better than what I'd originally planned. The buttons are attached to snaps, and if I get really, really nitpicky I may go back and move the bottom button 1/8" so that it lies perfectly flat, and add another hidden snap to hold everything in place better. But I like to think of this as version One Point Oh, i.e. good enough to wear out in public. OPO. Kris and I are trying to become better friends with OPO. Because TPO may never come into existance, but I kind of want to wear my cardigan now.

Ahoy there Chickedees!

I think it's fair to say that I tend to develop a healthy number of obsessions. Take chickens, for example. Darned if I want to live with roosters, but the hens are actually growing on me in terms of cuteness factor. And what with this great painting we picked up in China ages ago, a rooster calendar, and some of my mom's decorative bird plates, well, the family room has a certain theme to it [and yes, I may or may not have egged my mom on to create that theme].

What was missing from it? A quilt, of course.


Of course. This one sports a semi-random pattern I designed on graph paper. The goal was to give the look of randomness while making it easier [and faster] for me to cut and piece everything.

Back in Phase I of my crafting life, I decided one day that I was going to make a quilt based on the Chinese zodiac. Hence all the chicken fabric already in the stash. So now I can safely say that I have two animals out of the stash [I made my ex-boyfriend a dog-themed quilt], and only 10 more to go. Oh, the joys.



Mom and I did our usual collaboration. Probably my favorite parts of these quilts is not the actual piecing of the quilt top which is my responsibility, but coming home periodically and running my fingers over the prodigious output of my mom's handquilting. She is especially prolific in the fall and winter months. I mean, she's always improvising and creates such organic results that it's textured and rumpled without feeling overquilted, you know?

The best part? When my brother spotted this quilt after I bound it in red for a bit of 'pop' he said, hm, I like this quilt. Was is das??? My brother, who has never commented on anything I've ever made, including that pillow I refashioned for him??? Liking a quilt that I had made???

Wow. Apparently all the animals won him over. I say 'apparently' because my brother's mixture of sarcasm and Placating Jessica is a little hard to read sometimes.

So ... this means I finally got a quilt onto the elusive brother's bed. Which is good, because I noticed mom's stack of quilting projects is growing rather thin, which means that maybe I need to finish up another top and mail it to her. We're not out of the winter season just yet.

Blue Ingenue

Sweater #3: Ingenue.

I started this in early December, I remember, because I was sitting in the law school library knitting and reading the Portraits from a qualitative methods class as my friend John worked on his Epi, and at one point he looked over from where he was monkeying with statistical code to see my fingers flying as my eyes zoomed across the computer screen, and he couldn't stop laughing. If it weren't for the fact that he's getting a doctorate, I'm pretty sure he would have made some comment about how could we possibly be getting the same degree?


The sweater is from Wendy Bernard's Custom Knits, though I am going to have to shamelessly admit to using her pattern for the collar and edging details, the number of stitches to cast on, and then tossing the rest of the pattern straight out the window and just guesstimating as I went along. Luckily it turned out smoothly enough [I knit this with negative ease because I knew the yarn would be pretty stretchy], and I have worn it to bits over break as it fills a nice, gaping hole in my winter wardrobe.

I threw in an extra set of decreases in the back and did the waist increases at the side instead of front/back. I do like how the shaping mimics darts but my ssk technique definitely needs work! In fact, I love this pattern so much I went and ordered yarn for another one, since White Sweater is another gaping hole in my winter wardrobe. That one's proceeding a bit slowly though, given the certain amount of ripping out inherent in the guesstimation/winging it method to sweater construction [especially when you didn't jot down your modifications the first time around], so no promises on when it will show up on ye olde blog. Still! I am loving this one, I cannot tell you enough.

Refashions #12 and #13

Whew! What a start to 2010. Anyways, here I am back in Boston, classes start Monday, and I spent the entire day knitting and sewing. Aaaaahhhhhhh, sweet bliss.

Anyways, remember how I had that one seam to stitch up and it took me 7 weeks to get on with it? Well I finally finished that project up before I left for CA in late December, namely Refashion #12: the blue blouse refashion.

When I was in Berkeley last June, I stepped into a thrift shop and spotted a dress that sent me hurtling pell mell through the store, desperate to lay claim to it before anybody else. Of coure, it turns out I needn't have bothered about the 3 patrons that I nearly knocked over in my haste to reach this since I was the only one even remotely interested in it, but oh, check out that collar would you? And the blue with the large white buttons. And it's handmade, with french seams and hand-bound buttonholes. I never seem to have much luck with finding thrifted items with strong personality or character, but I definitely struck the jackpot on this one.


"Very Jessica" is what my mom called this, I believe. Unfortunately for me, though, this dress had a bit of an odd fit. It looks presentable from the front, but check it out from the side:

I can't tell what era this dress comes from, but it does puzzle me a bit to think who would want to make a dress that is shaped like a rectangle from the shoulder to the top of the hips, and then to taper the dress in at the hips and legs? This dress had about -0.2" of ease around my bottom half and way too much room in the middle. I even tried cinching it in with a belt because I loved the look of it as a dress so much, but it didn't really work too well. Also, all those crease lines where it pulled at the hips were pretty unattractive.

Ah, I've never been good with belts anyways.

So, I did what any refashionista would do and turned it into a blouse. Having no dress form and having never fitted a darn thing to my body that required too much in the way of darts or curves, I hemmed and hawed over starting this project for about 5 months [although I did use part of it to make the waistband of this skirt].

Ta da! Admittedly this is not, I repeat not, the best fitting job in the world. Tips on what I could do next time to make it better? It involved a lot of flipping inside out, pinning, basting, trying on, then repeat, repeat, repeat. I think I don't have the same amount of ease all the way through or something and so it pulls a bit funny in the abdomen area and doesn't quite lie flat in the back? [Yes, I know I need to iron it better too] Thoughts or suggestions for improvements?

Once again, my linebacker back. Not quite sure why I'm always standing tilted in these behind shots.

And a glimpse at the inside [sorry for the sideways photo]:

You can see that I finished the hem with hem tape. There was very little room to turn it under because of the cut of the original dress. Still! I am looooooooooooooving this. I wear it right now over a white T for winter weather, and it should wear well in the spring and summer months as well. And blouses! After making myself no less than 17 skirts, I certainly could use some blouses to go with them.

Speaking of 17 skirts ... here's Refashion #13/Skirt #17: The 20-minute refashion:

Forgot to take a before picture. Essentially, this started off as an Eddie Bauer skirt that was 4 sizes too big. I pinched in about 2.5" at the waist, tacked it down with the sewing machine, then sewed 2 buttons on top of the flap of extra fabric. Super quick!

DQS8

So. I signed up for another doll quilt swap. The last one really stretched me creatively, I couldn't help it. Here's a little inspiration mosaic for my partner:



1. bee inspired October, 2. sinp.sew.send. - July, 3. Mermaid, 4. DQS7 finished!, 5. DQS6 Received, 6. HIWTPI Front.JPG, 7. Sonja's" circle tree quilt, 8. dqs7 finished, 9. finished doll quilt for dqs7!!!!!

If you haven't already started, I will shamelessly admit to liking some of the following fabrics but never actually indulging myself in a purchase:

~Zakka owls like these
~Trees like these, especially in the blue/green colorway in the coasters
~Handwriting fabric like here in green
~Heather Ross mermaids in the peach colorway
~Heather Ross' Far, Far Away line

NOTE: this is NOT, I repeat NOT, an 'ask' to go out and buy anything! It's just if you happen to already have these in your stash, the tiniest scrap would be smile-inducing :-). You'll probably notice from my finished projects that I rarely use oodles of designer fabric except as accent pieces, and I wouldn't expect anybody else to do that for me! And if not, well, the mosaic probably makes it clear that I'm often not so much about the fabric as I am about color and texture and lines and design ...

I am going to stop now. I have to pack for my trip back to Boston anyways. Tons of pictures to upload and share!


Oh yes. I know lots of crafters have been posting about Haiti, and I just wanted to say that the public health student in me HAS to mention Partners in Health and their amazing work in Haiti. They're an organization that's pretty lean, truly on the ground and partnering in real and significant ways with locals to make sure that stuff gets done.

Going Incognito

The instant I spotted this pattern on Ravelry, I laughed out loud, clapped my hands, and immediately started planning a couple gifts for some friends I'd be seeing in California ...




It's so hard to resist something like this when you have a running joke about mustaches with multiple friends. I'm telling you, the next mustache party that comes up ... watch out world!

So. It's a cowl that can be pulled up for full effect or pushed down to warm your neck, kind of like an inside joke because nobody else can tell the mustache is there. If it's hard to see where the cowl ends and my sweater begins, that's because I had 1+ balls of yarn leftover from Ingenue [photos to come! Once I get back to Boston and upload them off my camera ... these photos courtesy of dad], which was perfect for this pattern. I resized it to the thinner yarn by casting on extra stitches, which seems to have worked out just fine.

Cowl #2 I brought home less yarn for, so I just did it in Stockinette stitch the whole way up. This bright color seemed more e. twin's speed, and when I presented it to her last night she happily informed me that it would be worn all over Paris on her trip.

I actually really like it in stockinette, it seems to roll down pretty well. You could just flip the mustache to the back if you didn't want the black to show.

As you can see I tinkered with the mustache design ever so slightly for the second [bottom] cowl, making it slightly more pronounced. I don't know which one I like better, but I do know that mustaches are always good for a laugh! And who doesn't need a laugh when they're trudging through midterms?

Ishbel I

Hello again! The only internet source at my parent's house is not compatible with my computer, and I forgot my camera uploader cable anyways, hence the silence on the blogging front. But today I've gone all native Palo Alto and am currently plopped down at Happy Donuts with what appear to be several tables full of regulars that love this place for its free wireless, large green tables, padded seats, and mile high display of donuts.

I couldn't tell you for certain, but my guess is that the day crowd is the work-from-home, independent business type looking for productivity outside of the house [or, alternatively, the job hunters looking for fresh inspiration], and that the afternoon and evening crowd is mostly high school students tapping away at homework assignments, sprinkled with your occasional Stanford student. All I have to do is bike the ~5 miles here from my parent's place, and I'd be native for sure.

And then there are the families and couples that filter in, a white-haired grandpa with his 6-year old grandson. The grandson carefully picks out a donut smothered in red and green sprinkles and a Coke, the grandpa meticulously lays out a napkin next to his Orange juice. I wonder if the kid will remember these Saturday mornings with grandpa, years from now. I hope so. Not for the partially hydrogenated corn fructose aspect of the memories, but for that time with grandpa that cannot always be taken for granted given how often we move around for school, jobs, retirement homes.

//Insert non-sequitor//

Ishbel :: the mom version


Malabrigo sock yarn, size 3 needles, this took me forever especially since I would get off by a stitch and have to rip back the row. And then there was the time I was 7 rows from finishing and I lost my knitting. Oh, that was a heartbreaking moment. I actually called my mom and cried. Then I checked the lost and found at the Ed school library and spotted my little handmade black bag, and let me tell you, I have never been happier to see black fabric in my life.




The Malabrigo was incredibly soft to knit with [I so get why people go mad over this stuff], and worked up into a beautifully subtly variegated finish. I'm afraid it's a tad small for mom's liking though it's the perfect size for me. I think I'm going to have to retire this pattern and move on to other knitting projects, but Leslie is right, it's helpful to have one small and one large knitting project going at any given time, one for easy transport, the other inching along ever closer to a completed sweater or other such large transport.

Happy 2010 to all! My focus this year, although I would like it to be Crafting, is going to have to be Career, I'm afraid, but I will still be here, and definitely still be drawing inspiration from the many beautiful, talented, thoughtful, creative bloggers out there! Thank you all for keeping me grounded and bringing much joy and peace to my life.

Ishbel II

I did it!!! (*2)

I actually finished something off my list! And, I actually finally uploaded those pictures from a month ago!!!

Presenting ... my very first lacework knitting project ever ...



This is Ishbel by Ysolda Teague. I used sock yarn on size 5 needles for this, and spent a lot of time in hotel rooms and on airplanes just stitching away. Since it was my second time knitting up the pattern, I was much more adept at sensing when I had gone off the charts and missed a stitch.

I had been really wanting a nice, fall-ish scarf for awhile, and this yarn was a beautiful blend of all sorts of great fall oranges, which seemed to nicely complement the leaf pattern. The pattern comes in a size small and large, and like many Ravelers I knitted up the stockinette portion for the Large, and then did a Small number of lace repeats [wouldn't have enough yarn otherwise].

However, once I bound off and tried it on, I realized that I didn't want a scarf that was this big! Haha. I don't know, I think it overwhelms my frame or something. Which is too bad, because I'd made my mom a red one for Christmas and was hoping we could do some nice mother-daughter matching-but-not-ness ... instead, my roommate gets to match my mom, 3,000 miles apart.

Note: photos taken after I had given this to roommate and she'd worn it several times and totally rocked the look. The points definitely do become less pronounced as you wear it, but I still think it's a beautiful scarf/shawl/etc. So! More knitting adventures to come ...

PS: Yes, the semester has finished, hence the time and mental clarity for blogging has returned. It was amazing. Last night I sat down again at my sewing machine and actually finished up a project before diving into two other projects [I know! Shocking. I've really missed sewing]. One is a WIP that has languished forever now [yikes, electronic journals don't lie], the other is a quick refashion I hope to finish at home where my larger button stash resides. That's right! After having my flight cancelled Sunday due to the torrent of snow, I'm flying home tonight! Very exciting. Although I've really liked the emptiness and quiet of being in my apartment for the extra 2 days. Seeing friends, reading, writing, "growing deep" in myself in my "winter season" as my roommate would call it.

Although I can't say I'd recommend this for long stretches of time ...

... at least this set-up finally got me in front of the sewing machine for the first time in weeks.

We'll keep tweaking. It may take another couple stacks of textbooks to get right, or yet another configuration to ye olde study room. But ... the hum of the sewing machine! Oh, excitingness.

Circle to Square

I have a new favorite hat.


Actually, it's my new-old favorite fall hat, so dubbed for the colors and because, well, I've just recently discovered how poorly it stands up to the biting Boston winter winds, so unfortunately this little gem is going to have to be retired until warmer weather hits, or retired for indoors-only-wearing which, believe me, happens not infrequently in my neck of the woods. Professional school be damned, I'm wearing what I want, peoples.

This is the brilliant Turn A Square pattern and I must say, I love this circle-to-square action. So much that I keep pointing it out to each and every person who has complimented this hat [quite a few!], with an enthusiasm that causes much shifty-eyedness and gentle edging-awayness on the recipient end, and which you can see modeled here by the ever-classy 'hold that camera over your head and aim wildly!' shot. Thank goodness my bedroom floor was relatively clean when I shot this.



In fact, I love this pattern so much, 2009 is officially The Year of the Hat. You think I'm joking? [You think I haven't been procrastinating ... I mean, that I haven't been without massive amounts of writers block?]

And there are another 4 more of those babies floating around Boston, in varying stages of done-ness or already-on-headness. Including 3 that actually utilize two or more colors to create the striped effect in Jared's original pattern, instead of Jessica getting all lazy and using self-striping yarn instead. I used this 1-ply, 30% soy something or other brand of yarn I can no longer name as I have thrown away all tags that came with it; during Thanksgiving one of the many things I did was go nuts at the craft store and pick up 6 skeins of this stuff, and nary a spool of white thread which I have been desperately needing for 6 weeks. Nope. Too distracted by the pretty colors. And it's a good thing I've already promised away most of these hats, because I get really, really tempted to get all Selfish Crafter whenever I take a gander at those brilliant colors in their brilliant striping combinations.

My brain has been so far from the holiday season cheer, it's not even funny. I glance through blogs where people are wrapped up in present-making and cookie-baking and decorating and I heave a little sigh of envy at being able to sink into the moment -- which is something I'd promised myself I'd always be able to do, to capture those brief moments and enjoy them. But who was it that said that you may be able to have everything you want in life, just not all at the same time? I'm pretty sure I've told myself that before, it's just that these little flickers of insight come and go and then return again, very slightly stronger than before and with that flash of recognition and familiarity - hey there, I know you, we've met before. So. Embracing that this year it is just not meant to be. Perhaps it will mean that next year will be ever more the sweet for it.