The Christmas Quilt

Wait, what? A Christmas quilt in June?

Yes, a Christmas quilt in June, but I'm actually behind, not ahead of the game.

I bought some Michael Miller Christmas fabric from a coop last summer. I thought the fabric was fabulous and bought a lot and than realized there was nothing I normally made that would necessitate 11 yards of Christmas fabric. Cue quilting music. So I spent an afternoon at a friends house looking through her quilting magazines until I found something. I had intended to make it for last Christmas, but it didn't get done in time (obviously) so I finally started on it last week. I got all the blocks pieced together and I laid them out and I'm just not happy with it. It's hard to look at and something is off. I've decided that the border fabric isn't right so I've sent off for some more evergreen ta dot in hopes that a darker border fabric will make the difference. Stay tuned for the finished results.

some experiments fail

After my relative success with the last gauzy shirt I decided to try my hand at making this shirt featured in the Boden's summer catalog (If you're not familiar with Boden you really should go look. They have the most fantastic clothes. Some things are overpriced, but some things are very reasonable. Bonus is that they carry up to a US 18).

Mistake number one was using my final fabric right away instead of making a muslin pattern.

I used a old shirt as a pattern for the size and just eyed up the cut of the neck and the length. I added as much extra fabric for gathering across the bust as I had fabric to do. The yoke was cut from the shape of my bodice piece and the sleeves were copied from aforementioned old shirt.

I put the yoke on first and it turned out rather nicely. I used elastic to gather along the waist.

Mistake number two was forgetting that the underbust measurement that I took did not accomodate for my ample chest.

All of those extra inches I included to make the gathers only served to actually make room for my nursing boobs and I found the fabric to be stretched tight instead of attractively gathered.
I also failed to realize that my chest would bring the resting position of the elastic higher up in the front than on the rest of my body so it droops in the back. This can be remedied, but it will involve the tedious task of ripping out all of those triple stitch zig zag stitches.

Mistake number three (which is really mistake number four) was not remembering that the old shirt was stretched out in weird places from a nursling pulling on it all winter.

The armholes ended up being too big because of this. I'm not exactly sure how i'm going to go about fixing this, but I'm confident I'll find a way. In the end I'm sure I will have a wearable end product, but I will definitely remember to make a mock up out of muslin the next time I try to draft my own shirt pattern.

wool shorts

I know some people don't care to knit in the summer, but I do. I suppose it's mostly out of necessity though. If I didn't knit in the summer I'd never get anything done and the baby needs wool. I had planned on making Oz four pairs of wool shorts for this summer season, but realized some wool from Carter would fit him and I made a pair out of a upcycled sweater so I think I'm only going to knit three pair. I'll also need to make a pair for my BFF's baby girl. This is the first completed pair:

These were knit with Three Irish Girls Lindon Merino in her Liam colorway. I knit them on 7's even though it's an aran weight yarn as I like the stitches to be tight when used for the purpose of keeping urine of my jeans.

I used a trim yarn to Huckleberry Knits' Flying Fish colorway (which is what's on the needles right now) as it happened to match the gray perfectly. I love when things work out that way. I also tried out a new crotch gusset. It's functional, but it doesn't look quite right. I used a k1f&b increase. Anyone know what I did wrong?

i hate when this happens

I hate when a fabric line comes out and I procrastinate on buying it. From the moment I saw Lush by Erin Michael I was in love. When it hit stores I was out of fabric buying money so I waited. And now I want it for a project and most of it is sold out everywhere.




(fabric originally pictured at True Up last december)

So, anyone know where I can find some? I'm looking for a yard or two of either deer print (though I'd prefer moss and really, would take any scraps I could get) and several of the coordinating prints in honey and moss. I like the sky best, but since it's my mom's living room I guess I'll give her the final call.