So once more I have LOVED taking part in me-made May again this year! I participated in the Flickr group every day but decided to just write one summary post here on my blog about my experience; which is this one!
So what to say, what to say...
My pledge.... I went 100% me-made, including all underwear, hosiery, sock and knitwear, all of my clothes. The only exceptions were, as usual, my shoes.
Did I enjoy it...? YES! always :) I love looking at everyone's outfits and feeling like part of a community. I think that for those of us who sew our own clothes, this is the best way for us to have our own annual, if virtual, seamsters' convention.
Did I learn anything...? well that I have plenty of clothes (blush) with no gaps that need filling really, and nearly all my current wardrobe is made by me, which is a pretty excellent stat, if I say so myself. I kinda half-tried, not-very-strictly to go without repeating an item during May, which seems a very silly and shallow goal but a goal that has the well-intentioned side effect of forcing me to rootle out things in the wardrobe that I am not wearing very much and attempt to integrate them more fully amongst the very well-worn items. I think it's good for me to force this every now and again, because let's face it; I sew a lot, because it's my hobby and I love it. But actually wearing everything that I sew doesn't always happen fairly and equitably. I do wear my own creations all the time, but like everyone I have favourites. Me-made May is always a good opportunity to play at styling more of my own closet.
And did I repeat any items...? my two pairs of black tights, my navy and paprika tights, my burnt orange Nettie bodysuit and my ivory Pattern Magic twist top each got worn twice. Everything else got worn just once, and I managed to really mix it up with some new outfits that I really enjoyed. It was fun playing about and trying to make the most of my wardrobe.
Favourite outfit...? can't decide, I like lots of 'em
Least favourite....? well yes, there were a few less than stellar days and I have singled out some items that should and most likely will, exit gracefully from my wardrobe. Some things that I have acknowledged are undeniably shabby. Photos do not lie. A few things have been moved to the "potentially for the Salvoes" bag, and I am going to try very very hard to actually deposit them in the bin sometime. It's going to be tough but I think I can manage to do it.
How did taking the photos go....? well this time I found it to be pretty easy and no biggie actually! I've traditionally complained about taking photos of myself during me-made May, but that is probably because I've traditionally set a certain standard for myself and burned myself out. This year, I had more of a no frills approach and set myself a time limit of ONE minute, and NO MORE in which to take my photo. And that was that. Also, I am already taking a quick photo every day for my daily outfit photo blog too so it has become just "a thing" that I do once a day anyway, a part of my daily routine. Occasionally while on holidays I get Craig to take my picture; and he has a pretty low tolerance for this activity so the process is still quite speedy with minimal fussing allowed!
So that is that for another year.

The entire Flickr group's photos are here, and all of my May outfits can be viewed separately in my own MMM14 Flickr album here.

And also; today marks the last day of Yoshimi's and my joint photo blog; the year-long photo maisonette experiment. I've really looked forward to and enjoyed looking at Yoshimi's photos every day. It's been a fun, enjoyable and very interesting exercise for me; and Yoshimi, thank you so much for saying you would join in taking part with me. I know you are very busy with your work and family so I am so appreciative that you agreed to make the commitment.
Also I hope that everyone who did view the blog enjoyed the differing, and sometimes very similar views of our daily lives in Japan and Australia respectively. Thank you to all those who did stop by! Your kind words were always very much appreciated :)

Travelling! We're home from a perfectly delightful sojourn in Scandinavia, back to a house full of the noise and busy-ness of offspring and animals, of cooking and cleaning. Not to mention a mountain of washing. I've done 3-4 loads a day since we got home and it's still like, full floor coverage in the laundry there. Joy!

We spent time in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland; unfortunately with limited time we could not fit in Finland, home of Marimekko. And the Moomins. I know, right? A little bit of sad face. But not too much since everywhere we went was pretty much ALL amazing. I'm in love with Scandinavia! I would seriously love to live on a fjord in Norway or anywhere in Iceland: except that I'm a wuss who just cannot cope with true cold.

Anyhoo, now to get into something I nerdily like to do; the retrospective travel wardrobe analysis, looking back the the success (or not) of the clothes I took, ponder on what I wish I'd taken, and generally how did it all go.

Time away:
21 days
Where to:
Copenhagen, Stockholm, Norway, Iceland
Season:
Early summer. However I was keeping a close eye on the weather over there and soon realised that an early summer in Scandinavia is like early winter in Western Australia. So I packed accordingly. The daily temperatures were from lows as low as 7C up to about highs of 19C, and one delightful afternoon in Oslo when I met with the lovely Sølvi was warm enough to leave off the tights!
Expected activities:
Lots of city as well as country walking, one formal dinner, one hot spring and plenty of cold weather outdoorsy stuff, including hiking, horseback riding and zooming about in an open dinghy on a wind-whipped, iceberg laden, glacial lake. Fortunately, for that last activity everyone was provided with an ultra-thickly padded flotation suit, Michelin man like. Without which we would have fair dinkum all been icicles. Incidentally; no picture, sadly, but I can assure you a dinghy load of tourists all dressed identically as huge, puffy, red marshmallow men is a pretty darn hilarious sight.
Colour scheme:
Mostly strong, bright colours, tempered with ivory and only a little black
What I packed:

(each garment is linked to its original construction post)

2 jackets: faux leather jacket (smart) and lightweight blue raincoat
2 jeans: black corduroy and ivory denim
2 scarves: ivory wool (smart) and raspberry jersey
6 tops: ivory Pattern Magic twist top (smart)
striped Tshirt, purple Tshirt
dark orange bodysuit, olive green bodysuit
royal blue short-sleeved hoodie
3 skirts: navy corduroy A-line, green corduroy, sludge-coloured denim
1 jumper: pink/green/ivory striped
1 dress; floral jersey, with beige satin petticoat to wear under
5 pairs tights/leggings: 2 prs black woollen, navy blue tights, paprika tights, olive cotton leggings,
neon green knitted hand-warmers
white bathers
6 pairs wool socks
3 shoes: black suede pumps, black leather booties, hiking shoes, plus red thongs,
chocolate leather handbag
not pictured; underwear, nightie, toiletries bag, umbrella
My daily outfits:

Apologies that some of these pictures have already appeared here as part of the me-made May collage. There was some overlap in time :)

Thoughts:
Well I was adequately warm and comfortable, and had suitable outfits always so in that respect it was a very successful little selection! I got pretty bored with everything I'd chosen by the end of the trip but that's par for the course :)
I know it looks like rather a lot of clothes pictured up there but for three weeks it kinda wasn't. The weather was cold so lots of items were worn layered together, frequently. The variety of tops: long-sleeved, short and elbow length; fitted and loose, worked out to be absolutely terrific for layering.
The surprise "fabulous" item was the royal blue Pattern Magic hoodie; which seemed like the perfect thing to go with almost everything else! I wanted to wear it twice as often and several times had to restrain myself from throwing it on over yet another day's ensemble. No joke, I need to make myself another one of those things!
I also really LOVE my floral dress. It just makes me feel really good when it's on, I think it's instantly flattering, it's smart enough to wear out to dinner as well as during the day and yet is still that traveller's godsend, non-crushable.
I tried to mix and match things up every day, and aimed to wear everything at least three times each. Because of the timing of our itinerary there was scant opportunity for washing clothes apart from the obligatory undies-in-the-shower-every-morning that I stick to religiously while travelling, no matter what. It's always best to keep on top of that at the very least, I reckon! Also I washed my ivory Pattern Magic twist top and "saved" my white denim jeans for the trip home. Might sound funny, but for us it's always such a long long trip to come home, from everywhere! so I always aim to keep something nice and clean for the trip home.
Shoes. Hmmm. In my opinion the trickiest thing in packing. Aaaaargh! So hard to narrow it down and always the most annoying and bulkiest things to pack! I had forgotten about the cobble-stone situation that is endemic to Europe so I kicked myself a bit for not bringing my desert boots. In retrospect they would have been fantastic in the city streets. But since my suitcase was bulging with new purchases by the end of the trip perhaps it was a good thing to have restricted myself there, spacewise. I took my black suede pumps because they can be worn both with or without tights. The tights-less occasions numbered exactly two! I guess I was overly optimistic about the prospect of warm weather, there :) My ankle boots were brilliant. Hiking shoes are just a given. I wore my thongs just once! but I never feel like they are a waste of space since they really don't take up any room in the suitcase. And you just never know if they might come in handy. That could just be the Aussie in me talking though :)

And yes, I met Sølvi! or define elise as she is known in me-made May.
I enjoyed a totally delightful few hours chatting with Sølvi; sipping champagne in the sunshine sitting alongside Oslo's beautiful new Operahuset (opera house) and discussing important world issues such as sewing, fabric shopping, blogging and me-made May-ing. Just a thoroughly gorgeous afternoon. And we were so caught up in happy sewing chatter that we forgot about the obligatory commemorative selfie!
Thank you so much for coming out to meet with me Sølvi! :)

When going away I like to buy at least one piece of fabric or some yarn from a place, so I can make for myself a wearable souvenir. So how fortunate that fabric shopping in Scandinavia is fantastic!!

Our first stop; Copenhagen. I didn't find much by way fabric stores online, but I had read about a leather shop and paid it a visit.
Well.
It. Was. AWESOME.

Skindhuset

Skindergade 6

1159 København K

map

Here can be found a lot of leathers and suedes in a variety of colours, leather needles and other working tools, and a good range of metal bits and bobs such as purse frames and handles; and buckles, snap latches and hooks used for finishing handbags and luggage. Stunned by the fabulosity within I conservatively bought only three pieces of leather. Later on I realised I had been way toooooo conservative and planned a return visit on our last day. Biggest mistake ever. My advice: buy stuff when you're there, on the spot. Because you may find, like I did, that your last shopping day in a place is unexpectedly a public holiday and the shop is shut. *silent scream* a la Edvard Munch
oh well.

Next stop; Stockholm...
and Craig's reflection in the window, wearing a shirt that I made for him too, hehe...

Svenskt Tenn AB

Strandvägen 5

114 51 Stockholm

map

Stocks a very beautiful, albeit extraordinarily expensive range of Swedish designs and prints in the form of upholstery fabric, lots of curtains and cushions made up. I was prepared to buy curtains as a last resort but fortunately found that you could also buy some of the fabrics off the bolt... and I did buy a lovely bucolic print that is still deciding whether it wants to be an Elisalex or a spring coat. Ahhh, decisions decisions!

And now I am so very grateful to Liz, who emailed me to point me in the direction of some bonafide garment fabric stores too; thank you so much Liz! Enabling successfully achieved. :)

Tygverket - Tyger i Stockholm

Sankt Paulsgatan 19

118 46 Stockholm

map

As soon as I walked in this place I knew I had come to the place where Swedish ladies shop for their fabrics. A cheerful jumble of all sorts of fabrics of every description piled up all over the place, not unlike our Spotlight, but more intimate and classier. I found some very lovely designs, both cute kiddies' and lovely adults' prints from Swedish designers and also other European countries. The staff were super helpful and kindly took my name and email so as to keep me notified about a sold-out button.

er, I promise that is not as lame as it sounds! They have a dala horse button, and I HAVE TO HAVE SOME!! They would be perfection personified; per-button-ified? to finish the little white summer blouse I have planned, and for which I have the fabric already :)

Ohlssons Tyger & Stuvar AB

Sveavägen 34

111 34 Stockholm

map

Another regular fabric store, with some lovely reasonably priced Swedish designs on linen and linen blends. A smaller range than Tygverket but of a more select quality, so still worth a visit. I bought one piece.

Next stop... Oslo!

Thank you so much to Sølvi for this recommendation :)

Rainbow Tekstil AS

Storgata 28

0184 Oslo

map

It doesn't look like much on the outside but it's an Aladdin's cave of a shop; two stories with floor to ceiling shelves all stuffed to bursting point with fabrics. I didn't find any traditional Norwegian designs here or anything, it's more like a regular fabric store, but it does have a very large and a nicely diverse range. After much hemming and hawing I managed to choose one piece.

A word of advice to the fabric tourist; the address says Storgata 28, and the shop is in this building but the store entrance and the shop itself is situated quite a way away from Storgata, around the corner on Lybekkergata. I had come thisclose to giving upon my search, but Sølvi had confirmed the address and so I was sure that it must be there somewhere and so kept on looking. I was glad that I spotted it at last!

Next stop; Reykjavik!

I hadn't found any fabric stores in my online searches, so had thought I would most likely be buying yarn here.

However!

First day we wandered in here...

Nordic Store ehf.

Lækjargata

101 Reykjavík

map

And sure enough, found some lovely yarns and knitting patterns immediately. Browsed these for a bit, but then my amazed eye was caught and held by something else, far far cooler and all thoughts of yarn were abandoned. Not that yarn is not cool, you understand. It is. Really, yarn-lover from way back, here, honest. But wait. This store also sold leather made from fish skins. Fish leather. I kid you not. Cooooool! Obviously I bought some. I bought cod, salmon, perch and catfish leather. What on earth am I going to do with that, you might ask. Ahh, we shall see, we shall see ;) I have some ideas, but everything's still bubbling and geminating. One thing's for sure, it has to be something to do the materials justice so I'm not rushing in.

So I didn't buy any yarns, but do have to say something about Icelandic yarns though. Knitted items are part and parcel of Iceland. Icelandics are serious about their wool, maybe even more so than Aussies. Once you get out of the city sheep are everywhere you look and traditional Icelandic knitted items are sold and worn everywhere. It seems like everyone has and wears an Icelandic jumper, and I can't tell you how much I loved seeing this. Even regular guys pumping petrol into their monster trucks, kiddies riding their bikes, women shopping in the supermarket. Everyone rocking their Icelandic jumpers. I just loved the regional cohesiveness, and it seemed to me a really nice thing, and sorta quietly patriotic.

Speaking of supermarkets, even the supermarkets sell wool and knitting patterns. That's pretty impressive. How much do I wish we still had that here in Australia?? so much! Browsing through a knitting pattern book in one little supermarket I even found patterns for knitted wedding dresses. Consider my jaw officially dropped. Seriously, how lovely! Seeing this just made me love Iceland even more :)

So no, I didn't buy any yarn, sadly not enough space in the suitcase... but yes! I did buy an Icelandic knitting book! Expect some Icelandic-style cosiness to pop up here, at some stage ;)

Have you heard of Magicka?
That's OK, I hadn't either until less than a week ago. Now I consider myself an expert, at least on the attire.
This weekend is Supanova weekend in Perth and Sam wanted a Magicka robe. Fortunately he had done some research and found a very helpful little pattern so you can make one for yourself. And it's free! available here.

You might be wondering about the sausage on a stick. Please know this is an integral motif in the game, and everyone knows about that bit. Jeez.

I enjoyed making this! It is actually a pretty good pattern and you end up with a rather excellent wizard's robe I reckon. The robe is a complete garment in itself under that hood, with an integrated chest plate piece that is joined inside the right front and snaps closed at the left shoulder seam: the hood does cover up the chest but the chest plate piece is a nice detail in that it does completely remove any slight risk that your undershirt might show.

The hood is separate, and rather mega-bucks cool, non?! I actually kinda love it. When I saw the pattern piece I was like no way, but it sewed up to be perfectly draped and mysterious and magic-y looking.
It was designed and the instructions written by someone who does know what they are talking about, like the hood and sleeves are fully lined. For some reason the sleeves are called "arms" in this pattern. The instructions are aimed at the beginner. I'm basing that assumption on directions like "Hint! Fold the fabric in two, so you can cut two of each piece in one go!"
At the same time, my view is that some of the steps are not explained in full enough detail for a complete beginner, for example the instructions for inserting the contrasting edging strip in the hood opening would be a little confusing for a beginner, and some of the illustrations are in the wrong spot to go with the accompanying sewing directions. Also, when drawing up your pattern pieces a few measurements are missing. No biggie, you can still work it out, it's not rocket science. But just saying.
At first I thought it might be designed for a small person, like a kid, as a Halloween costume or something; and it might not fit my six foot two son. So did a few quick measurements, and yes indeedy this is a wizarding robe designed to fit a full sized, and tall, adult man. O-kaayy!
I used panne velvet, navy blue polyacetate for the hood and sleeve lining and gold satin for the edging, all fabrics from Spotlight.

Actually, the panne velvet was in absolutely shocking condition, the absolute worst I have ever seen for a brand new fabric.
After rolling out the first 2.5m we saw the fabric was sliced completely off from selvedge to selvedge, and had been joined together again with multiple little plastic joiner ties. Yep I'm talking full price, untouched on the roll, straight from the factory, fabric here. We're not talking about a remnant. I knew I could easily cut the big skirt pieces from that first bit so I told the girl I would still take that as part of my whole .... "are you sure?" she asked, clearly horrified, but I assured her it would be ok. She continued rolling out and next thing we came across huge holes in the fabric. Holes. Like big holes, easily 2 inches across and boom! right in the middle. The first one she said, oh, I'll just give you that bit, but by the next one, she was looking doubtful again, and I was starting to think twice too. After the third hole popped up she just offered to give me the entire roll, for the price of 6m; the quantity I had asked for. So far I've only just seen those three holes, spaced about a metre apart from each other.
I'm not dissing Spotlight here, after all they can't check all their rolls of fabric and the staff at Spotlight are always very good about giving you extra and/or discounts when there are imperfections in the fabrics. But damn! that fabric was in a bad way!
And I now have masses of ultramarine blue panne velvet. Yay. I have zero idea what I'm going to do with it. Sheets? haha.

I was thrilled to receive recently Fashionary's newest and latest invention; the Fashionary tape. This is a dressmakers' tape measure, but it's not not just any old ordinary tape measure. The measuring tape has all the body measurements a person could possibly need, and more; already thoughtfully marked on the tape and ready for you to go.
Pretty useful, huh?!
The tape measure has both metric and imperial and metric measurements on it, which is terrific if, like me, you have trouble mentally and accurately converting one to the other sometimes. Womens' measurements are on the white, or metric side; and mens' measurements are on the black, or imperial side; but obviously it is pretty easy to see the measurement in either side since you can just flip the tape over if your preference is for the other.
The tape measure has all the regular body measurements we use all the time, like bust, waist and hip, and then some other useful ones like bust-to-bust point, shoulder, neck, bicep, wrist and crotch height, and then even more that you might not have even thought of ! In all there are thirty measurements for women and twenty-seven for men.

And even if you don't think you'll need all those extra measurements, the tape measure is of superb quality, made of that really nice and thick, solid and sturdy, indestructible but still pliable, fibreglass fabric that's going to last forever and a day. Just with that nice heavy old-fashioned feel to it, y'know, like your grandmother's tape measure.
The Fashionary tape can be seen in action, along with bonus close-ups of a rather divine manicure that is just perfect for summer! on the Fashionary site here.

Also, Fashionary were generous and thoughtful enough to send me two tapes and so I thought I would offer the second one up in a giveaway! If you would like to own one of these beautifully sturdy tools of the dressmaker's trade then please leave a comment on this post saying so by next Thursday 26th June. On this date I will randomly choose a winner.

Thank you so much to Fashionary for your generosity :)

Later edit: Thanks everyone for joining in! The winner has been notified :)

I totally should have posted this before, sorry!... some fellow fabric enthusiasts expressed interest in seeing my Scandinavian purchases; the spoils sought and acquired, packed and repacked, schlepped through cities, one cobble-stoned street after another; and once safely home to be borne triumphantly aloft with pomp and circumstance and deposited with due ceremony unto the bottomless black pit that is The Fabric Stash. Haha, only joking, hopefully I will get around to making some things up without too much delay! I have already muslined up a highly possible "maybe" for the caramel leather.
Anyhoo, without further ado here are the goods:
leather from Copenhagen...
two pieces of the caramel and one small piece of the yellow

from Stockholm;
an enormously expensive upholstery fabric which may prove too scary to actually cut into... eeeek! and below; a linen mix that is a modern Swedish design. I fell in love with this straight away and bought the rest of the roll, which wasn't very much! I'm really hoping I can get out of it the summer frock that I have firmly in mind.

from Norway;
it might not look traditionally Norwegian but somehow this fresh navy and white gingham print does seem both nautical and Norwegian to me. I'm thinking of a little summer-weight, boxy, zip-up hoodie of some kind.

from Iceland:
fish leather, from left green wolffish (catfish), black cod, salmon.. well, salmon! and aqua blue perch leather.

and a knitting book;

Also in Iceland; on our last day I just couldn't resist a visit to the brick and mortar store whose online site is one of my favourite to visit and merely drool over the eye candy within, KronKron. Long ago I succumbed to an online purchase from these cooler than cool Icelandic shoe designers. Well, I would have hated myself forever if I had left Iceland without popping into the real deal.

Take a look at these details. Obviously I was helpless to resist, of course.

Mundane, but oh so welcome and necessary. I've been absolutely freezing!!! at night lately and my old winter jammies were as thin as! so this was highest of high on my list of priorities. But it had to still sit waiting patiently in the wings for the all important Magicka robe to get made first, ahem.
Both top and bottom are made from nice and warm fluffy cotton flannel from Spotlight; the top is a modified version of pattern 121/122 from Burdastyle magazine 10/2009 and the bottoms are kinda self-drafted.

The top: actually I've been eyeing off this Burda magazine pattern for yonks and dreaming of making it up in a suedette and this new jammie top is sort of my "muslin", if you like. I loathe wasting fabric on muslins and nearly always prefer to make something hopefully wearable, even when testing out a new pattern for the first time. So; this PJ top. It was a little bit hideous in its first, unmodified state; I ended up shortening it by about 12cm; slanted off the front neckline to be a V-neck and sewed the slit together at three spots which were covered up with three little buttons.
All the seams are sort of a faux version of flat felled seams. By this I mean I sewed all the seams normally, overlocked the raw edges cutting close to the seam stitching and then laid the seam allowances to one side and top-stitched them down 5mm (1/4") away from the seam stitching.

at left, "looks" like a properly flat felled seam, but on the inside, o noes! it's plain to see now that this is the cheat's version...

I also added an interesting breast pocket; this was also a rough try-out for this pocket that I pinned a while ago.

The bottoms; standard regular baggy trouser bottoms with an elasticated waist. I made them the same way I've been making my PJ bottoms for yonks now: namely years ago I saved an OK-fitting RTW pair that had had it, and cut it up for a pattern. I'm saying "self-drafted" because I've made multiple minor modifications, in this case an added a faux fly front, narrowed the waist and raised the waist rise, made them wider in the leg and longer in the leg and added in-seam side pockets. My advice, PJ bottoms are like the easiest thing in the entire world, so when you are looking for a good pattern, just cut up an old pair for a pattern and make your own little modifications, do whatever you like, it's almost impossible to stuff up PJ bottoms. Easy peasy, and you can spend that money saved on the fabric for your new pair instead!

Details:
Top, modified version of Burdastyle magazine 10/2009, 121-122, cotton flannelette,
Bottoms; self cobbled together, cotton flannelette
Socks; hand-knitted by me to a 60's pattern, details here

After wearing only my own self-made tights throughout 2013 during my year of all-handmade, I have worn some RTW tights a few times lately. And made a surprising discovery.

I actually prefer my self-made tights.
Funny, hmm? One of the things I had been most looking forward to was getting back to wearing RTW tights again. For some reason I think I had convinced myself that factory made, seamless tights would be sooooo superior; comfier, warmer, better fitting. And NO inside leg seam, hurrah! Life was going to be so great once I ditched those!
Well, nice, smooth, perfectly seam-free legs is a plus in the looks department, I grant them that; but otherwise I've found myself strangely disappointed with my RTW tights, almost immediately. The fit is horrible. I buy my designated size Talls, but find they still sink at the crotch over the course of a day, which is hyper annoying. Meaning I have to find a discreet moment to hoink up each leg and redistribute them every now and then. Annoying!
I have never had that problem with my own self-drafted tights. I guess I had forgotten that a sinking crotch was ever a thing, at all!
Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, my self-made tights are drafted to fit my legs perfectly, so um, they do. Most RTW tights have two unshaped tubes for legs, the same circumference from thigh to ankle. Obviously most women's legs do not have the same circumference all the way down. My own tights are bigger around the thigh, going in to smaller around the knee, going out to a bit bigger at the calf and shrinking in to skinnier around the ankle again. What this means is that the tendency for an elasticated thing to migrate to an area of lesser girth, like from the thigh and down to the knee, which is what happens inevitably in an unshaped RTW tight; is not an issue.
The inside leg seam that is an unavoidable feature of my own tights; well undoubtably it is a less perfect look. But it is also a helpful aid to putting on the tights correctly. When you have a featureless tube it can sometimes be difficult to keep the legs straight and also to tell where you put your heel the last time you wore the tights, and they can easily get twisted up. You never ever have this confusion with an inside leg seam there.
So I'm eating my own words, and as my current crop of rtw tights start to hole-up and die I might just go back to making my own again. Ha!

In related news, I've been checking out the old sock drawer and found ew HOLES! the horror! A whole bunch of poor sad hole-y socks were shoved hastily and lazily back into the drawer undarned at the end of winter last year and forgotten about. Out of sight out of mind. Bad me.
Fortunately I like darning; it's old-fashioned but I find it quietly contemplative and a small meditation on slow "fashion". Not simply tossing out but pausing and thinking and doing; taking a few minutes to mend and prolong the life of a thing.

This one was particularly bad... yikes!!

However, when it came to the holes in my merino tights my approach was a little less holistic and a whole lot more expeditious!

Ugly yes, but well, hopefully it will keep them keeping on for just a little bit longer!

my tutorial on darning here
my tutorial for drafting your own pattern for custom-fit tights here

o hello :)
I've made a suede cardigan for myself, or is it a jacket? The pattern says "jacket" but I tend to think of jackets as being kinda involved, time-consuming things to make, with lining and so forth. While cardigans are unstructured, unlined things one can whizz up in a blink of an eye. Which actually describes this thing pretty well.

The pattern is jacket 132 from Burda style magazine 11/2012, which Philippa sent to me in a giveaway, thank you so much Philippa! I lurve Burda magazines, the designs are usually both interesting and stylish, the cost per pattern is very very low, and still not bad even if you do only make a few things in an issue. I reckon they deserve to be a heckuvva lot more popular than they are. You don't need every issue but I generally get maybe one magazine in a year and manage to make several things in each one. This design caught my eye straight away, and was firmly in my mind when I bought my leather. I actually made a muslin for it, which is only worth mentioning because it's such a rare thing for me to do. Well my leather was kinda precious and I did not want to stuff it up! I did a minor sway back adjustment and shortened the bust darts by a few inches.
I used my two pieces of pigskin, bought in Copenhagen on our trip. I liked both sides; the smoother, leather-y side has some interesting brand marks, but the suede side has the most glorious, rich caramel colour. Colour trumped brand marks.

The cardigan is quite long in the body with wide-ish front flaps so it took some layout wizardry to get the pattern pieces out! I re-layed the pieces down over and over and over again, seeking to fit them all in and cut it with the skinniest little 5mm seam allowances. I did have to do just one little fill-in piecing on the left back back, but I managed to position this at the very top, centre back, so it's as un-noticeable as I think it could possibly be!

The pattern has pockets; which I cut to be nice and huge, to accommodate my nice huge hands, hehe. Burda magazine patterns have the teeniest tiniest child-sized pockets of all, I swear. Very cute, but seriously?! Maybe it's just me; I like to plunge my hands right down deep into my pockets :) I used chocolate brown silk charmeuse, which I fortuitously just happened to have in my stash already, hanging around, in the perfect colour, you know, as you do ;) Hopefully cutting those pockets out of it won't mean I now don't have enough for it to fulfil its original destiny.

below left; I have no idea why the colour is so off here, but... pocket!

The pattern called for a waist tie, to be sewn in the side seams. I preferred the idea of a separate belt that I could wear or not wear, whichever, however whim and whimsy struck, and not to have the ties dangling uselessly and annoyingly at my sides whenever I wanted to wear the cardigan loose. So I put little belt loops in the side seams, seen at top left in the picture above, and made a very long skinny belt as a separate thing. This has tonnes of mad bias-cut piecing all along it, as I was dealing with mere scraps of leather by the time I had cut out the main pieces of the jacket. But I don't think that matters much, you can barely see all the joins when it's on. This is simply folded in two lengthwise and topstitched.

I think worn loose, as at top, it looks quite modern, and with the waist tied up it looks a little bit boho 70's, yes?

Details:
Cardigan; Burdastyle magazine 11/2012-132, caramel pigskin suede
Jeans, Burda 7863, white denim, details here and my review of this pattern here
Tshirt; self-drafted, white cotton jersey, details here
Socks; hand-knitted by me, details here
Shoes; Francesco Morichetti, from Zomp shoes

Not the real Milanese panther of course which I understand is a very rare animal...
I bought this fabric in Milan during our trip there two years ago. I realised after making up my caramel suede from Denmark that, well *blush* all of the fabric I bought on our Paris/Italy trip was still sitting in my stash virtually untouched. It's a bad habit of mine, buying precious fabrics and then finding myself completely unable to cut into them. Fear of destroying them, you know. Fortunately this beautiful fabric has been successfully not-destroyed ....I don't know whether to call it velvet or fur, it's not really like one or the other but a kind of hybrid of both. Thicker and more directionally "brushed" than velvet, and lighter than most furs. The pile is deep midnight black over a brilliant, almost neon, rusty-orange backing that reveals itself in the folds of the dress and in motion as sort of inner fiery glow, like the embers of a dying fire.

please excuse that a vampire appears to be wearing the dress here but instead note the interesting inner glow and the luxurious velvet-y furry pile of the fabric, as mentioned above..

The pattern is Vogue 1220; and the design is, in short, lovely. In not-short; it achieves the trifecta of interesting and feminine and figure flattering; the neckline is pleated into a softly draped shawl collar with a slightly retro feel in its volume, the wide belt cinches the softly blowsy cocoon shape into a tiny waist, and a pegged hemline accentuates the hourglass effect further. I wasn't keen on that tie belt at first, especially the way it's been tied like a big juvenile birthday-bow in the middle of the model's tummy on the pattern envelope; but the dress does look nicer with the extra waist definition that a wide belt gives and I like it wrapped around twice and with the ties hanging down at the back like this.

The tie belt is supposed to be unlined and simply finished with a narrow hem, meaning the wrong side of the fabric is exposed. And the bright rusty-orange reverse of my fabric would have shown in a very distracting and very not-good way! So I underlined the belt using a very thin, slippery black poly-crepe from Fabulous Fabrics.

Also I like my winter-y skirts to be lined, so I improvised a lining for the skirt portion of the dress, using the same poly-crepe. It is cut the same as the skirt parts of the pattern pieces, the pleats and darts simply folded in position and the top edge sewed right sides together to the back skirt/ back seam. The skirt lining fronts have the raw edges turned under and are hand stitched invisibly to the dress front, and the raw edges of the lining at the side edges and lower edge are encased within the folded back front facings and the hem facing pieces. I hemmed the skirt facings by hand, to the skirt lining.
The pocket linings are cut from the same poly-crepe; and due to my improvised lining the pockets are nicely hidden away between the layers of the skirt and lining, as seen above. Or not seen, I guess...

The sleeve cuffs are supposed to be folded out so the wrong side of the fabric shows on the outside too; instead I sewed them in a deep inside hem, which I turned back outside on itself and hand-stitched invisibly in position to the sleeve about 0.5cm inside the edge of the cuff.

How is it to wear? Well... first outing, I wore it out to dinner and found that when seated a little more inner/upper thigh is revealed than I am comfortable with! And also that attractive pegged hemline does make the skirt rather tight around the thighs, which, if you want, can be easily and quickly remedied by some discreet bottom-button undoing. Leading however, to even more revealing. Thank goodness for tablecloths and the ginormous linenware that restaurants drape across your lap!
Anyhoo, I rapidly formed the opinion that a separate petticoat or slip is pretty much an essential accessory for this design.
So: upon getting home I dug out of my wardrobe an old black satin and lace petticoat that I made about seven? eight? even more? years ago using NewLook 6035; I've re-hemmed it to the requisite length and will wear this underneath.

I'm actually super happy about this, to be honest it's actually an absolutely brilliant turn of events ... why? because I pretty much haven't worn this black petticoat for years. Years! But I've hung onto it, thinking surely! it'll come in handy again, someday! And now it has! Finally! Woooooot!

Just to give some perspective to the issue: seated, with petticoat... see wot I mean? Essential!!

Details:
Dress; Vogue 1220, black/orange brushed velvet
Petticoat; NewLook 6035, black satin and lace, first seen here
Shoes; Zomp, from Zomp shoes

no real reason for this picture other than that the sun broke through the clouds and I just liked it :)

... mm mmmmm, it looks just exactly like Bessie has had a giant big vat of melted chocolate poured all over her, yes?
So, after I cut the pockets out of this delicious chocolate brown silk charmeuse for my suede jacket I wondered if I still had enough of it to make up what I had originally earmarked it to be. Which was a petticoat. So I just went ahead with it, whimsically; since I actually have no designated thing to wear it under yet and now it's hanging all alone on its hanger in the wardrobe. An orphan, a sad and lonely little thing, the petticoat with no dress. And it's such gorgeous fabric too. Shimmery soft and delightfully whispery against the skin. I'm going to looooove wearing it, one day.
Maybe I'll be totally, wickedly, gloriously self-indulgent and give it to myself for a summer nightie this year. Maybe. If I'm good ;)
The fabric was from Fabulous Fabrics and the pattern is Vogue 1160, which is really a dress pattern. This is the accompanying petticoat, which is a very nice, quick and simple little pattern. The pieces are all cut on the bias which makes for a beautiful drape. I looked at the underbust darts on each bodice piece; two of them, both quite wide, and just had to laugh. Not with my bust! I eliminated some bodice width by folding the pattern piece a little between the 2 dart markings and in lieu of darts gathered excess width into the relevant area of the skirt front. Silk charmeuse gathers just beautifully and imo the soft gathers are prettier and look much nicer than a dart.

The side seams are sewn in French seams and the shoulder straps are tiny spaghetti straps. Turning out skinny straps is usually a pain in the neck, but not with this slippery stuff which turns out like a absolute dream. A dream, I tell you!!
I almost feel like making another one straight away just so I can turn out more spaghetti straps. :)

Ok, so I'm on the fence... I'm not sure if my new dress is just an ultra feminine style that I'm not quite used to it yet, or um, sorta hideous. I hope it's not hideous, that would be pretty tragic considering I've poured a massive amount of meticulous fiddling into this thing. And silk georgette too, grrr. Like, only the most difficult freakin' fabric ever!
A recent Vogue magazine editorial informed all of us bright-eyed, eager and devoted little fashion mavenettes, aka their readers; that a longer, elegant tea- or midi-length was the Next Big Thing in dresses and skirts. An edict accompanied by loads of pictures of lovely young things striding the streets trailing beautiful long fluttery floaty tea dresses in their respective wakes. Well, I was inspired! aw hells yeah, I definitely need to get me one of those badass elegant tea dresses so I can look all freakin' feminine and ladylike, yo!
Et voila. But hmmm. Technically speaking, this dress is rather lovely, if I say so myself; I put a lot of effort into finishing as well as I could; doubled-layered the bodice with all seams enclosed within the layers, French seams throughout and a hand-rolled and -stitched baby hem around that long looooong lower edge.

The dress looks charming on the model on the envelope but not as tea-length as I was envisioning, so I lengthened all the skirt pieces by 15cm. Maybe that was a mistake, although I still think the length looks quite lovely on Bessie. Maybe a little Pride and Prejudice, or 70's Faye Dunaway or something. I should get one of those wide brimmed felt hats maybe...
The front skirt panel is supposed to be cut wider and heavily gathered into the front of the bodice, and if you think it looks a bit fluffy in this version you should have seen it with those gathers!! I painstakingly unpicked that middle panel and re-cut it narrower at the top to fit the bodice portion assigned to it, eliminating all the gathering. The skirt is a LOT more sleek now, believe it or not!

The sleeves at their intended length were a bit puffy and perky and juvenile for my tastes, so I carefully picked those off too and re-drafted and re-cut new ones. My re-drafted sleeves are 16cm longer than the pattern and have had the sleeve cap flattened a little AND reduced in length to eliminate nearly all gathering to fit it to the arm scye. I do like my modified sleeves a lot, actually one of the few things about the dress with which I'm unequivocally happy. I LOVE the interesting cross-over sleeve cuffs. In fact these, along with the petticoat pattern are what seduced me to buy the pattern in the first place.
So maybe it's the empire waistline? I think maybe empire waistlines are not for me... But you know, a lot of work went into it so I'll wear it. It actually looks quite nice if I throw a coat over it, haha; like how I'm wearing it today! The hemline is quite pretty, I think, and looks quite satisfyingly fluttery around your legs as you walk. And it looks rather gorgeous while twirling too, although sadly my days generally involve very little girly twirling.

Obviously I reserve all rights to suddenly decide I love it sometime down the track. I do that sometimes because I'm, like, capricious and flighty. When it suits me. And if feminine floaty, twirlicious tea dresses do become the dernier cri then I'm well prepared!

Oh, one more thing; I have another copy of this pattern to give away to a reader. When I ordered the pattern from Club BMV, for some weird reason I ordered two patterns exactly the same. When they arrived I thought Club BMV had made a mistake, but then I checked my own record and oh deary me, it was all me. I had clicked "2" in what I hope was late night fuzziness and not early dementia.
Anyway if you would like a pristine brand new copy of Vogue 1160, sizes 6-8-10-12 and still in factory folds, then please leave a comment on this post stating so, and next Tuesday 29th July I will randomly select a winner.

Details:
Dress; Vogue 1160, pale cocoa brown silk georgette
Petticoat (under) ; Vogue 1160, dark chocolate brown silk charmeuse, seen here
Tights; Kolotex
Boots; Sempre di, from Zomp shoes

Another lingerie set, and a new-to-me bra pattern. This is pattern 2610 for a balconette style bra by makeBra, a Finnish lingerie pattern company. The two pairs of matching knickers are my usual McCalls 2772.

The watercolour fabric is from Fabulous Fabrics. When I made my floral birthday dress last year, I originally wanted to make a lingerie set from the fabric and was talked out of it. Obviously I do not regret making that dress instead; it's one of my favourites! but that floral lingerie set was still in my head, crying out to be made. I really really wanted realise it, too. So recently I snuck out and sneakily bought 50cm of a different splashy floral stretch knit and quietly made it without showing the fabric to anyone who might talk me around hehehe... Note to self; 50cm is the perfect length to cut out a bra and two pairs of matching knickers.

The makeBra pattern; well, I LOVE it!! I've been hankering after a balconette style bra, one designed specifically for a foam lining. I really do prefer a foam lining. All my current bras are made using KwikSew 3300 which is an absolutely terrific little pattern, but it's not specially designed for a foam lining. I usually forced a foam cup lining on it, found a way to make it happen, but it was always flying against the spirit of the pattern, if you know what I mean.
I bought a paper pattern in one size, which is a money saver. You can get it in a multisized pattern if you're not sure of your exact size and that costs more. I'm familiar enough with my needed size that I decided to go with the single size and I'm happy to report that it does fit me beautifully and the sizing is spot on.
At the same time I bought two basic lingerie kits; black and ivory. THESE ARE FABULOUS!!!!!
It was a real pleasure, and so much easier, to sew a bra using such high quality materials and findings. Up until now I'd been making my own shoulder straps and underwire casings as per the KwikSew pattern instructions, and using rings, sliders and underwear elastic from Spotlight, which is meh, kinda-ok standard. Hey, absolutely nothing "wrong" with that of course, but now my eyes have been opened to how using proper underwire casings and really nice lingerie elastic is SO MUCH BETTER. I'm talking rtw quality here.

The makeBra website also has this absolutely brilliant video where you can watch someone making a bra. I was soooo impressed at how quickly and easily that girl whizzed up a beautiful bra in the video, I cannot tell you. Gobsmacked. It was a revelation! On viewing that video I realised how difficult I'd been making it for myself, by using less than good quality materials available and "making do". She didn't even pin her underwire casings anywhere to sew them on, compared to my homemade, bias-cut, double folded voile underwire casings requiring 7000 pins to hold it evenly in place.... man! Well, now; I know. I didn't use pins either this time and I think the finish turned out pretty nice!

And her machine... *drool* My poor little old Janome is nowhere near that smooth. But I'm banishing any and all machine envy thoughts. I love my dear faithful little Janome.
I do have one tiny hmph with the makeBra pattern; you have to go to the website to get the full instructions, including elastic lengths etc. I mean, no real biggie, I've noted the relevant elastic lengths in with my pattern now, but would it have been really so hard to include that info in with the pattern? What if your internet was down when you wanted to use your new pattern? I would say that is my one pet peeve with modern-day online pattern services: I think when you buy a pattern, you should get with it everything you need by way of instructions, and you should not have to search through some website to find necessary information.
But small grumps aside; essentially a fantastic pattern, went together like an absolute dream. There will be lots more of these in my life :)

I am so glad that Mum brought around her finished Alabama Chanin skirt for me to ooh and ah over; and has allowed me to photograph her wearing it and to show it here on my blog too... thank you so much, Mum!

This is the mid-length skirt from the book, Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, by Natalie Chanin. Mum used a deep blue upper layer over a black lower layer, both cotton jerseys bought in Tessuti's in Melbourne during our truly fah-bulous Mum/daughter/grand-daughter trip over there together last November.

The upper layer is stencilled with the Anna's Garden design from the same book, enlarged by 306%, then the two layers are embroidered together using Gutermann's upholstery thread in a pale grey. The stencilled areas are then cut away in the "reverse appliqué" method to reveal the black under-layer. Mum used a doubled strand of upholstery thread as per the book's instructions, but found the two strands a pain in the neck to work with; they constantly got twisted up awkwardly together and were subsequently difficult to pull through. Just for comparison sake, I used only a single strand in embroidering my own two pieces.
The surface embroidery is all done by hand of course, and Mum decided to sew the finished pieces together by machine. The waistband is pale grey fold over elastic, also from Tessuti's.
The stencil was applied to the upper layer in watered-down acrylic house paint using a small foam roller as described here. Since I did the stencilling for Mum I know there is one more piece in the works! and now I'm roolly excited to see that one too! :)

Once upon a time there was a shirt, a man's shirt. This shirt was superficially unremarkable, but was made out of a wonderful microfibre that had extraordinarily silk-like properties. Soft, ripply, with a quietly glossy sheen, it felt wonderfully cool and smooth against the skin just like silk; but unlike silk it was as tough as guts. It barely ever needed ironing, thus earning the everlasting approval of the laundry maid of the house.
After a few years of regular wear it was designated "old", signalling the end of any special care in its laundering, from then on it just got tossed in the machine with jeans, whatever, no special cycle. It soldiered on, looking just exactly as lusciously silky as it always had.
The Indestructible Shirt. Winning further admiration from the laundry maid, who alone in the household truly appreciated such a magical fabric ... all the benefits of silk but without the maintenance... ! o-kaaaay!
After twenty years of use, its owner carelessly tossed it in the Salvoes bag, whereupon the laundry maid astutely retrieved it and planned a feminine new life for it, hehehehehe.

The End.
Well maybe more like a brand new beginning!

Technical bizzo...
The pattern is Vogue 8879, view B. Funny thing; Spotlight had a $5 pattern sale last week, I bought um, 6 patterns *blush* call Patternaholics Anonymous; I need help!! anyway, I bought some of the more glamorous interesting and unusual designer Vogues that caught my eye, and then this funny unassuming little one too. Guess which one was the one I was most excited to try out first. Ha!
I love the split back; it's quite elegant in my opinion, and just quietly sexy without being the least bit tarty.
The old shirt was completely cut it apart to make the new one, and I modified the existing button band and sewn-on buttons to accommodate the split back. The old front is now the back of the new shirt, and the old back is the new front. The sleeves! it often astounds me how difficult it can be to cut a new thing from an old thing even if you think the old thing has masses of fabric; the sleeve pattern pieces barely fitted on the old sleeves, taking up the full length of the sleeve from the cuff to the armscye! Amaaazing!
One new buttonhole was required at the very top, and the left breast pocket was picked off and repositioned it at a funky angle on the lower front of the top. All the seams are flat felled to honour the original beautifully flat felled seams in the original shirt: although obviously none of the original seams remain after it was hacked apart I still felt compelled to try and reproduce those immaculate finishes in its new incarnation too.

Rather than the quirky but fabric-hungry twisted sleeve bands of the pattern, I made hidden, shaped facings for the lower edge of the sleeves instead and I finished the neck edge with a narrow bias cut strip; these were cut from a scrap of deep blue real silk, the leftovers from this top, and stitched, under-stitched then top-stitched.

One thing: the pattern stipulates two way stretch fabrics only; but I found that this view B is so loose and easy fitting that my decidedly non-stretchy microfibre version is absolutely fine to slip on over my head. Don't need to un-do even a single button.
So it's got that going for it too!

Details:
Top; Vogue 8879 view B, blue microfibre, a refashioned mens' shirt
Skirt; my own design based on Vogue 7303, white stretch lace, details here
Thongs; Havaianas

This is my first project from Knitting with Icelandic Wool, a knitting book I bought as a souvenir from Iceland on our recent trip away. The jumper is my birthday present to Sam and it's um, only two months late... yikes! but here's the thing... while we were travelling in Iceland and I was admiring all the gorgeous Icelandic jumpers on everyone there, I hit upon the bright idea of knitting one for each of my boys for their birthdays. And so it seemed only fair to let them choose the style and the colours that they wanted. And I thought at first that I would use Australian merino. I'm very loyal to Australian wool, you see :) so I took quite a bit of time searching for something of a suitable gauge here but sadly I actually couldn't find anything. So decided I would go completely authentically Icelandic and use Alafoss Lopi. And so of course I had to order the wool from Iceland, and then wait for it to arrive and then knit the thing... so two months late is not too bad all these things considered! I've been knitting like an absolute maniac since the wool arrived! I started it last Wednesday, and finished it exactly a week later, which is not too bad if I say so myself! and fortunately Sam doesn't mind that it's a bit late. We still have a few months of cold weather ahead so he can wear it for a bit longer this year. And there's next year too. I'm hoping it will be lifelong classic for him :)
Sam chose the Alafoss jumper on p38 of the book, incidentally also featured at top left on the cover of the book, above. According to the blurb the colour pattern on the yoke is the first ever pattern published by the Alafoss wool factory in the 1960's.

The colours I used are, from left: ash heather (0054), ecru heather (9972), grey heather (0057), dark grey heather (0058) and black heather (0005). I changed the design just a little bit on the strip second from the top but otherwise stuck exactly to the pattern. The design is knitted in the fair isle style, and completely in the round with no joining seams, aside from two short grafting rows under the arms. Grafted seams really do look so much nicer than sewn seams imo, so I think that's a nice feature.

I do have one, well I have to say it's a fairly major gripe wrt the pattern; for Sam's size S the pattern stipulated 5 balls of the main colour. Well, it's extremely fortunate that I had bought another, 6th ball of this colour for Tim's jumper, since you actually need well into that ball to make this size. And it's not even a close call, I used about half of that sixth ball. Now I'm sweating a bit, planning the re-jig of the colours in Tim's design so I can actually finish his jumper with the remaining wool that I have. I'll have to incorporate some of the leftovers from Sam's jumper otherwise I simply will not have enough! Not happy, Jan...
As a last resort, yes, I could order more wool, but the postage from Iceland was so astronomical I'm really hoping I can successfully work something out with what I've got.
Anyhow, that's the fault of the pattern; I am glad I did use the Alafoss Lopi! Icelandic wool is renowned for being thick and lofty and at the same time very lightweight. This jumper looks as thick as and it is amazingly warm, but surprisingly it is as light as a cloud!

I've made some jeans/pants/jeggings type of things... hmmm, I'm still not sure what to call these!
My oldest jeans, my olive/greys, are holding up so well, the best out of all my jeans! and I think it's due to the fabric. They are made of a very stretchy and thin synthetic bengaline stuff from Fabulous Fabrics, and I've been keeping a look out for fabric like this in colours that would fit in with my wardrobe. Last week at Spotlight I got lucky at last. It's not identical to the olive/grey fabric, but pretty darn close; and the colour! Dark mustard, burnt toffee, desert, tobacco, dirt, tawny brown, however you'd describe it; it's perfect for me. I also bought some of the same fabric in a very pale coffee colour, so if I get enthusiastic I'll make that up soon too.
I used my old favourite Burda 7863. This is my eighth? version of this pattern I think... man I'm so boring. Oh well, at least I know it works!

Pattern alterations; a sway back adjustment, rtw jeans order of construction and a zip placket, all these modifications described here. and a couple of decorative part-circles top-stitched onto each pocket,using a dinner plate and tailor's chalk to mark. The designs are mirror image of each other on the two butt pockets.
This fabric has the stretch going parallel to the selvedge; so you have to remember to lay your pieces crosswise to the grain. And note to self, lay the waistband with the length crosswise too! otherwise you will have to rip it off and cut a new one. And replace it. Grrr.

Details:
Jeans; Burda 7863, burnt brown bengaline, my review of this pattern here
Blouse; Burdastyle magazine 10-2010/102, ivory brushed cotton, details and my review of this pattern here
Socks; knitted by me, here
Shoes, Francesco Morichetti, from Zomp shoes

*another week of furious knitting later* and I've made an Icelandic hoodie for Tim, my birthday present to him. He chose the Grein design on p108 of Knitting with Icelandic Wool, the knitting book I bought while in Iceland, but wanted it to be a zip-up hoodie.
I guess I should have seen that coming; a hoodie is far more his thing, and since obviously you want them to want to wear it, I complied. It's not hard to convert the jumper to a hoodie, but it's a little bit more work and takes about one extra ball. The hoodie is still knitted in one piece like Sam's jumper with two short grafted seams underneath each armhole. However, instead of knitting in the round I just split the front in two, continued knitting on for the hood, and afterwards neatened up the opening front edges with one row of single crochet. Finally I sewed in an open ended zip (Spotlight) by machine. Which means yes, unlike Sam's jumper which was mostly a blissfully heavenly affair of mindless non-stop knitting, in this case I had to turn around and do purl rows as well. Not quite as quick and mindless as knitting in the round, something I find to be an enjoyably zen-like meditative exercise. I had to actually think about it, harrumph...
The book doesn't have any adult sized hoodies that I could use the pattern for - and can I just say, what were they thinking?! - so in consultation with Craig's Icelandic hoodie that we bought over there I knitted Tim's the following way:

After finishing the yoke pattern and before knitting the neck hole ribbing, you have 72 st on the needle and wrong side facing...
change to 4.5mm needle, P one row, inc 1 st in centre of row (73 st)
(K1 P1) repeat until last st, K1
(P1 K1) repeat until last st, P1
rep last 2 rows once (4 rows of ribbing)
change to 6mm needle;
(P1 K1) twice, P1, K to last 5 st, (P1 K1) twice, P1
(P1 K1) twice, P1, P to last 5 st, (P1 K1) twice, P1
rep last 2 rows until work measures 35cm from last rib row
divide row in half, fold halves wrong sides together, and graft stitches together.
This gives you a plain stocking stitch hood with a wide moss stitch border.

I used Alafoss Lopi, in the colours, from left:
indigo (9959), light indigo (9958), light denim heather (0008), ecru heather (9972) and black heather (0005).

Actually, using that ecru heather, a leftover from Sam's jumper, was a punt. The white-ish parts of this jumper were supposed to be ash heather, a pale grey, however I ended up having to use most of the that ball for Sam's jumper. And since I ended up with more of the ecru heather leftover than I did of the ash heather, I used that, hoping that there might be enough to do the pattern in this jumper. The gods were smiling upon me, because there was, just enough!
~~Funny~~ barely amusing story; the night I was getting close to the end of the ecru heather strip I stayed up til, like 12.30 or 1am or something crazy like that, knitting like a mad thing, because I just could not stand the suspense; would I have enough of the ecru heather, or would I not?? I HAD to know!!
The relief when I did was, er, palpable.
Yeah, my life is filled with gripping moments like that ;)
And now, well! I only finished the hoodie today and I'm actually dying to leap straight into a new knitting project, like, right now! start a rather special new design that I came across recently.
But my wrists are aching. :(
Maybe a little break is in order .

I've made something useful; slippers, that clean!
I pinned these mopping slippers a while ago, and have now got around to making my own. See, we have no carpets in our house and lots of animals; meaning furry dust-bunnies appear on a daily basis to scurry and swirl across the floor like mini tumbleweeds across the desert. Meaning I'm forever getting out my big floor dusting mop thing out from where it lives in the cupboard under the stairs and doing the sweep of the house. Which is a chore. Well, now I can do the same job just by performing graceful balletic sweeps with my dainty pointed toes into the corners of the room, as I glide about the house, doing whatever I'm already doing, without having to go and fetch the duster. Hands-free.
Which is not a chore, but fun!
Well, that's the theory, anyhow :)
Making them is a very simple procedure...

I bought a couple of dusting pad refills; and also used some extra odds and sods from around the place; a thick cleaning sponge for padding so they are comfortable to walk around in on our hard floors, and an old towel for the straps and lining. I also used a bit of an old bedsheet to "interface", if you will; effectively it's there to stabilise and hold all the lining and padding bits together. The sponge I used for padding is actually a bit smaller than my feet but it still does provide a nice soft comfy padding when I'm walking around on them. I already had these in my cleaning cupboard, which was lucky! The sponge is very thick, so I cut it into three layers like you would a sponge cake.
I drew a template of my foot and cut out two generously sized versions out of the towelling and bedsheet lining, sandwiched a piece of the sponge between them and sewed the three layers together around the edge of the sponge.

Then cut the foot straps from the edges of the towelling, making use of the existing selvedge on one side and hemming the other edge. Fitted it to my foot dimensions, making them nice and snug so they stay on my feet ok; but not so tight that I can't slip my foot in easily in one go.

Finally cut the micro fibre dusting pad with a big fold over allowance all around the edges, and simply folded the edges over as I went along, top-stitching it down around the edge.

Dust bunnies; begone!

I've made some shoes!!! This is my first foray into "proper" footwear. Yeah, I made slippers recently, but I'm not counting those. And technically these are slides, which are pretty basic things on the shoe scale, really.
But still. They are real shoes! Wooooooooooooooo!
ok, I'm sorry, calming down now. I'm just a bit excited about them :)
So, for ages I've dreamt longingly about having a go at making my own shoes. However cool stuff like shoe-making courses are just not on offer here in Perth. Well that's just that and it can't be helped, but life is too short to not do stuff that you really want to do, right? so I just decided to GO FOR IT! havva go, just DO it, whatever, even without a teacher or the tools or even the faintest idea of what I was doing.
The choice of denim; well every time, and I mean every time my friend J and I go out on girly shopping trips, as we head into our favourite shoe stores I say for the eleventy-billionth time; "ooh, I really would like a pair of denim- or denim-coloured shoes." I've often though they would be sooooo useful and would go with a lot of my wardrobe. I mean, we all know denim jeans go with everything, right? So, it stands to reason, denim shoes should go with everything too. And; quick aside; honestly, why has that thought not occurred to shoe-makers yet? Because so far my search for denim-y shoes has been one big, long, mournful FAIL. It's sad, but they are a non-existent beast. Or should that be a pair of non-existent beasts, maybe? I still wanted them though.
And now I have some!
Now; before I introduce my procedure for making these, obviously I am no expert and I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm making it up as I go along with educated guesses, and I don't have the proper equipment, like lasts or an industrial sewing machine. I'm sure shoe-making experts would look at my efforts here and roll about, laughing helplessly at how awful they are. It's true, they are far from perfect. Hopefully I can improve!

For the bases I used two balsa wood blocks from Bunnings; chosen mainly because I spotted them and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I drew a template of each of my feet, overlaid/combined them to draw a single "master" template. I used a coping saw to cut out the main chunks and get the right shape; and then three sheets of sandpaper to smooth and contour, ranging from super rough to light. I used the roughest sandpaper to do most of the contouring for my foot pads and heel pads to sit in the base nice and snug and comfortable.
Shaping/contouring the wooden bases to be equal-sized and -shaped mirror images to each other and to fit my feet was the MOST time consuming part of the whole thing. Really, ten progress photos slotted in here would be a fair and accurate representation of this step rather than just one; but that would be extremely boring, so...

I used an pair of old jeans for the denim.
I cut long strips for the side coverings, and topstitched the ends down using orange thread, to match the orange thread usually used in jeans topstitching. Glued it in place using PVA exterior wood glue. I chose this glue because it was not too quick-drying therefore easy to work with, and yet is still super hardwearing and durable and dries to a hard, water-resistant finish. Not waterproof, mind you. NOT that I'm planning to wear my shoes to slosh about in puddles or anything like that, aiyiyi perish the thought!
Clipped the curves etc, to minimise overlapping, so the edges would lie as flat as possible; and glued them down, upper and under.

Made a template for the top bits via the auditioning of a thousand "muslins"; well, not really, but it felt like it. The winning design was cut so as to make a feature of the existing jeans' side seam with the allowances double top-stitched down in that distinctive shade of Levi's orange. The tops are double layered; lined with plain denim, sewn right sides together then turned out and under-stitched. The excess at the sides was trimmed to wrap right around underneath my foot then glued in place.

I made a padded insert by trimming a purchased foam shoe insert from Coles to fit, then stitching to a piece of denim around the edge using orange thread. The ends were clipped, turned under and everything glued in place.

I covered the curved part of the sole with denim...

Finally, I cut thick rubber floor matting (Bunnings) to fit the soles using a stanley knife, and glued this in place. This will be quite hard-wearing and will stand up to a lot of knocks, hopefully.

Making these was an interesting experiment, and a learning exercise in how not to do a few things. Yes, a second pair of shoes is in the pipeline already. My second pair will definitely be better, I think. My first mistake; balsa wood does not hold nails, thus the need for lots of glue. I'm definitely going for harder wood and nails in the future.
The big question for me is: am I going to dare to actually wear my shoes? outdoors? like, for a full day? well today I almost did since I was meeting my same friend J for lunch, and I thought they went really nicely with my outfit... but then I chickened out! Too many puddles around from the recent rain :S
Maybe I'll just keep them exclusively for me-made May, haha! ;)
No, of course I'll wear them, but it's going to be hard to avoid babying them. I'm ridiculously pleased with them. Well so far, until I can make something better anyway!

Me-Made May 2014

a travel wardrobe; Scandinavia

Fabric shopping in Scandinavia

Svenskt Tenn AB

Tygverket - Tyger i Stockholm

Ohlssons Tyger & Stuvar AB

Rainbow Tekstil AS

Nordic Store ehf.

Magicka robe

Fashionary tape; and a giveaway

the spoils from Scandinavia...

Jim jams

On tights and socks...

Caramel suede cardigan/jacket

my Milanese Panther dress

Chocolate...

Cocoa georgette dress, and a giveaway

"watercolour" floral lingerie set

Mum's Alabama Chanin skirt

A split-backed top

an Icelandic jumper for Sam

burnt brown bootlegs

an Icelandic hoodie for Tim

Dusting slippers

Denim slides!