Monochrome

The cold weather is definitely here and I'm a happy hobbit, since we've established that I should really live in the tundra. My garden is mostly ready for winter, and I spent a day last week sweeping and composting, although I'll have to do another round sometime this month, as more leaves have come off the surrounding trees, and a few annuals have finally packed it in for the year.  I saved and dried most of the marigold blooms this year; I may plant a few next spring and see what I get.  I like seeing the little bowl of dried yellow flowers on my counter.

 

I'm starting work on a stack of flannel I bought at Joann when I visited my parents two weeks ago.  I went in quick a minute for thread and came out with three skirt lengths of flannel (and the thread I went in for).  Oops. 

 In my defense, I'm not into hard waistbands right now, so even thought my thrifted wool skirts have a bit of elastic in the sides, they isn't quite as comfortable as my Free Range skirt hack. I've also had in mind to replace the lining on the wool ones anyway, as the synthetic lining they came with is very static-prone and drives me bananas. 

'Nuff about that.  I shortened my silky noil spruce skirt as the tea length was not working for me, and decided to try it as a two-piece dress with the Remy Raglan I've been wearing a lot this fall.  Generally speaking, if I want to wear a dress, I just wear a dress, but I'm sort of liking the two piece monochrome look.  I wore my beet top and skirt together a few times this fall and liked that too.

I've gotten a lot of wear out of both pieces this fall, particularly after shortening the skirt.  My Mackworth sweater came off the drying blocks last week and I wore it with this skirt; it was just the thing (pics to come). 

Not much else to say about this outfit, since I've already posted about each piece separately. 

I said to my husband yesterday that I feel like I'm living five days every day right now.  It's not so much that I am too busy, it is just that each day feels overfull somehow.  Probably the fast talking at the moment, so I'd better get on with things.

That was inevitable...

You all knew this was going to happen, right?  That I couldn't leave it alone?  That I would fix the plaid matching on the sides of my flannel skirt?

Right.  I went (by myself!) to visit my parents over the Thanksgiving weekend.  It was the first time I've been away from my children for more than 24 hours, so that was kind of strange, but it was super fun and great to hang out with my family for 2 days without my kids, so there's that.  My sisters and I sang a couple of songs for my dad on Sunday night--not too badly for scant practice beforehand!  I'll spare you the video.  😉

The trip was SO worth the major hives I have on my face, scalp, and neck from the N95 mask I wore the whole time (probably some undisclosed latex).  I took the flannel skirt along and wore it but the misaligned sides really bugged me, and I figured it wouldn't take that much to fix it.  

I unpicked the sides and the waist facing and realigned it on the darker stripes (it's not perfectly symmetrical color-wise, but it is visually lined up, which is what I was going for).  I decided to cut a bemberg facing to reduce bulk on the waistline, and while I did accomplish that, I'm still undecided about whether I like it.  

Anyway, it didn't take that long to unpick and re-sew, and I only lost about an inch of depth on the pockets (which were deep to start with).  The skirt is slightly shorter, but I also kept the 1.5" hem, so if I wanted it longer, I could make the hem shallower.  All in all, a good fix!

Fun with flannel

The weather has well and truly turned this week, and I am a happy camper.  It got to the point where I was wondering if my knitting was even worth the effort, since I probably wasn't going to be able to wear any of it anyway.  

 

I think we can all agree that hot weather makes me a totally irrational.  

 

Every autumn, the summer temps hold on a little bit longer and I have a freak out about the continuing heat.  I need to make a note to remind myself in mid-September that it does get colder eventually and I just need to calm down. 

 

My Mackworth sweater is so close to being finished I can taste it.  I have been working on another knitting project with a soft deadline, but have set it aside temporarily so I can just get the sweater done already and wear it while the wearing is good.  Doesn't hurt that I just finished a flannel dress that I think will look smashing with it.  Pics to come.

But as long as we are talking about flannel and cold weather, I figured I should show my new flannel skirt!  Robert Kaufman's Mammoth flannel line is wonderful, and I have had several great dresses out of it, plus a few good skirts from the Shetland line. 

I was sort of craving another flannel skirt from the Mammoth, so I went through all the choices and picked the junior check pattern in a palette of aquas and light greens.  I thought it went the best with my wardrobe.

 

Given the daunting prospect of plaid matching, I decided to stick with a pattern that had very few seam lines, and adapted the bottom of half of the M7353 for a skirt, along the lines of the Purple Violet Squish skirt hack from earlier this fall.  The pattern is drafted for a knit, and although I've made the dress out of a woven several times, the inseam pocket installation is a bit of a squeeze on the 3/8" seam allowance.  

The pocket is additionally anchored into the waistband and sewn down a few inches from the waistband, so it can be a pain to get it smooth.  I added about 1/2" on both side seams to make the pocket installation easier, and that worked out great. 

 

 

I'm definitely living the elastic waistband life, but I somehow can't find it in me to feel too bad about it.  I think I've mostly found ways to style it well.  (She says hoping that she's not just deluding herself).  I'm reminded that 18th century petticoat skirts were almost as adjustable as elastic, and no one was making boo or baa about it then, so I probably don't need to now.   

It's interesting to me that one of the byproducts of industrialization is a kind of rigidity in fashion that only really changes with the advent of commercially available knit fabrics in the 1960s and 1970s.  (Admittedly, they were double knit polyester, mostly, but still, a huge change from wovens).  And by rigidity, I mean in the fabric and the styles it produced.

 

As the shift gives way to modern undergarments, there is more and more constriction, less room for the body to change over time, necessitating faster consumption of clothing and styles.  I think there is more to unpack there, but I need to think about it further.

 

As I do every time I sew with plaid, I learned something new.  I did make sure to line up the lines very carefully along the sides, but it wasn't clear to me until I took photos that the pattern's gray lines are much stronger than the surround and I should have focused on lining up those instead.  Oh well, live and learn. 

I suppose if it really bugs me I can try to realign it; the skirt is slightly long anyway, so I would have the length to play around with it.  For now, however, it will do.  The inline pockets are from rayon bemberg, as I wanted to reduce bulk on the waistline.  The bemberg shows slightly when I walk, but it is dark gray, so it looks okay.

I also sewed another Coco shirt, using the rhubarb telio knit that I made a skirt from this summer.  It is a much richer shade than how it photographed--a complex deep red that isn't quite burgundy and not quite cranberry, but a saturated tone in between.  I love it.  

The fabric was purpose-bought, so I had enough fabric to make long sleeves this time, and I added an inch to the bottom, as I thought it would give me the option to tuck it in if I wished.  I sewed the side seams at 1/2" and the rest at 5/8" to give myself just a smidge more room through the torso.  I also skipped all the facings this time and did a simple turn under, which I think I prefer. 

My wardrobe is in a good groove now, and I am pretty happy with almost everything I've made this fall, so yay for that!  I'm mostly through my gargantuan sewing list, so it's time to move on to the neglected knitting projects and get ready for Thanksgiving.

Doocot Refresh

Sometime in the late summer, I decided I wanted to refresh my blue Doocot.  I wear it quite a bit, but I find that the plainness of it is a little boring, and the bright scarf I love to wear with it makes me feel stuffy and hot these days.  I've had the idea to embroider on sweaters for a while and wanted to give it a go on this one. 

My first attempt at embroidery was on a magazine submission, using a thrifted grey sweater.  I used embroidery floss on that iteration since the sweater was a finer gauge, but I knew I wanted to use yarn on the Doocot.  Which left me to dither about designs.  Because there are a LOT of options.  I was a bit paralyzed by the choices, and also unsure how to do a design transfer onto a sweater.  (I know I could have used my tried and true tissue method, but some preliminary fiddling had shown me that it doesn't work as well with the blunt yarn needle).  

In the end, I just winged it, freehanding the stitches until I had something I liked.  I did pull out a lot of the stitches as I went, because it took me a bit to figure out how to get the yarn to look the way I wanted it to on the sweater fabric, but I'm quite pleased with the result.  The palette was the result of seeing these balls of yarn next to each other and realizing how well they would look on the sweater.   I might add some additional embroidery on the cuffs and hem, but for now, this is a nice amount. 

For reference, the yarns are: KnitPicks Wool of the Andes Worsted in Hollyberry & Papaya Heather, Malabrigo Arroyo in Sunset, Quince and Co. Chickadee in Cypress, and Wool of the Andes DK in Dove.

The Cancer Train

For those who have been following along this past month or so, you'll know that my dad was diagnosed with cancer in mid-October.  He has stage four lymphoma, and there is a fist-size tumor wrapped around his bronchial tubes in one lung, cutting off his air on that side.  After spending a month in the hospital at Mayo (a Providential occurrence if ever there was one), he was finally discharged last week.  He's completed one round of chemotherapy and is due to start the next one today.  We are so grateful for the excellent medical team around him and for all the support and care we've all received.  

The first round of chemo started the process of breaking up the tumor, and he is off continuous oxygen now, although he remains extremely thin and weak.  My mom has been staying at a nearby hotel this whole time, and they are there together now while he completes this next round and stays for a few days to make sure there are no complications as there were last time.  

They hope to return home to Missouri at the end of this week.  He will have a total of six rounds, spaced roughly three weeks apart, and while he plans to return to Mayo for the next round of chemo in December, barring the weather, his medical team will continue to direct his care from afar, another great blessing.

My dad is semi-retired from a 45 year career as a pharmacist, and was working per diem at the psychiatric hospital where was he had been head of pharmacy when all this happened.  It is unclear whether he will be able to resume part time work any time soon, and there are substantial medical bills that will come due in the coming months.  My sister set up a GoFundMe account for my parents; I know these are difficult financial times for everyone, and the holidays are approaching, but we'd be most grateful for any assistance.  

And as long as I'm talking about my dad, I should show the shirt and quilt I made for his birthday in September.  He is often hot in the summertime, and I fixed a lightweight camp-style shirt he loves when I visited in July, but the fabric was really on its last legs.  And more importantly, my mother does not like the pattern on the shirt.

I decided to make him another shirt in the same style, out of handkerchief weight linen in a lovely pale minty green (called Meadow on the fabrics-store.com website).  I used Simplicity 9157 for the pattern, and found it mostly fine.  The packet I was able to find started at size 44, which was slightly bigger than I needed, so I graded to a 42, but otherwise made no changes.  (Although my dad has lost so much weight in the past month and a half, I'll probably need to alter it for him before next summer).  

My only complaint about the pattern is that the back of the collar is finished a little bit less neatly than I would have liked.  I've made this type of collar before, and there is more than one way to finish the edges.  

This one has you tack the front facings to the shoulder seams, and turn the inside edge of the back collar under and stitch in the ditch to secure. I tried to draft a back collar facing instead, but it just didn't lay nicely, so I gave up and finished according to the packet directions.  

I did flat-felled seams throughout, to mimic ready-to-wear, and used up the last little bit of lightweight fusible interfacing I had on hand for the button bands.  I had to piece the fusing significantly to make it work, but I was on a deadline and didn't have time to wait for additional interfacing to arrive.  

The buttons are vintage from my stash, and were the ones that looked the best.  I like the contrast.

The quilt is just a simple panel quilt with a fishing theme, done in free-hand stitching on my machine.  I noticed a note from my gram in the manual about using the darning foot/setting for free hand quilting, which I never would have thought to do, so thank you Grandma!  (I have her machine, and the manual is full of her notes and stitch swatches--so handy!)  

It was the first time I used that feature on my machine, so I was trying to learn control with the stitching, but the end result looks like tangled fishing line, which I quite like, and fits the theme.  More importantly, my dad liked it, and that is what counts!

Gofundme here.

Moar beets

I guess I should log this linen skirt before the weather makes it seem totally weird to post.  I bought three yards of this color linen back in August, when I was buying for one of my sewing school students and my dad's birthday shirt (also need to blog that!)  The shipping from fabrics-store.com is high enough that it is worth making a substantial order.  It happened that all three colors coordinated quite well!

Beet appears to have been a limited run color, as I hadn't seen it before and not since. It is similar to Tawny Port or Wild Cherry; to be precise, it is exactly the color of beet juice.  The photos don't do the color justice--it is saturated and interestingly tonal, depending on the light.  It's not quite purple or red but somewhere in between.  Three yards was more than enough for a dress, although I dithered a long while about what to make.

I had initially bought it to make a 3/4 sleeve Terrace dress, but after making the Redwood one, decided I didn't want another in my wardrobe. So it sat. Once I got into the whirl of trying new patterns, I made up the Peppermint wrap top, cutting carefully to preserve yardage as much as possible.

 

The wrap top is fine, but it isn't something I want to wear regularly.  I've been wearing my drop-shoulder linen tops so much, it seemed like a good idea to make another one out of the remaining yardage.  After carefully cutting out the top, I realized I could eke out a Free Range Skirt hack as well, so I carefully cut out the skirt from the rest.  

I shortened the skirt by about 4" from the lengthen/shorten line to make the yardage work, and only had to piece a little bit of the waistband facing, so I consider it a great use of three yards! 

While I'm at it, I took some detail pictures of the gusset on this shirt, as it is the first one I made intending to add the gusset from the start.  

This is the underside of the sleeve, and you can see the triangular piece inserted there.  The gusset is actually a diamond shape, although you can use an oval petal type shape too.  The main thing is to figure out how much room you need in the underarm and cut a corresponding size.  On this one, I cut them 6" long by 3" wide.

I'm still working out how to finish these as neatly as possible.  I sew them in on a 1/4" seam and then zig-zag the edges, which is fine.  I've been doing French seams on these shirts, but it is difficult to make it work on the gusset part.  I'll figure it out eventually; I did do French seams on one of the shifts I made, including the gusset, but it was kind of dumb luck that it turned out well.

This is what it looks like from the outside when you pull the sleeve straight up.  The gusset can also be pieced down the middle if fabric is short.  

I wasn't planning to wear these together, but I actually love them as a two-piece dress.  I had hoped my spruce noil Remy and matching Free Range skirt would go together similarly well, but I think I need to shorten the skirt to knee length before I will be completely happy with it.  I don't think ensemble this counts for #dresslikeacrayon, though.  Still working on that one!