Fun with knits and knitting

Hi there! I made a few things.

This is another Colette Moneta, with a whole story to go with it. I bought a very nice heavyweight mustard ponte at Fabricland, tried on my previous Moneta to make sure it still fit properly, cut fabric, and sewed up the top. And it was way too small! And too small everywhere - I almost couldn't get my arms in the sleeves. Turns out this fabric had almost no stretch, and apparently that matters. :) So, re-bought the fabric, re-cut the next size up, and sewed the whole thing up. And then it was far too big. Because the fabric I'd bought the second time around wasn't exactly the same as the first fabric and had far more stretch. 

So I unpicked the skirt and took in the side seams. It's a little misfitted, but it's just fine. Nice to wear, too. (My camera is slowly dying, and won't show the screen with the timer anymore, so it's mirror photos for me. I'll never be a real blogger.)

   

                            

I finished my cardigan, too.

It was really fun to knit. I think I enjoy the knitting more when it's something more than just the same stitch all the way through. I taught myself all sorts of things too - seaming, cables, creating a button band. I also learned that sizing is just as important with knitting as it is with sewing, alas.

I picked the size based on my bust measurement, but it's too big in the shoulders, so I need to pick my upper bust size and learn to do the knitting equivalent of a FBA. It's also a little long, as I should have anticipated. But I'm pretty pleased.

I also knit a scarf and a hat as gifts, but forgot to take photos. Of course.

Bonus photo: the dress I'm wearing in the photos above (not made by me!)

Stretching myself

Hello! I'm back, to finally post about the dress I finished just before Christmas. Fair warning, the photos in this post are terrrrrible. Sorry.

Here it is - my first attempt at sewing with knit fabrics. Short story: I like the result, but the process was annoying. Long story, well, that's the post.

This is some of the fabric I bought in London, on Goldhawk Road. It's great, but I suspect possibly not the highest quality, because I think it's already starting to stretch. I found cutting it out to me a massive pain - it kept shifting and stretching, and it was hard to feel like I was really getting the actual lines of the pattern. I'm sure it would be easier with a rotary cutter and mat, but that's just more things to find somewhere to put.

The sewing part was okay - there's a stretch zig-zag stitch on my machine which I used (and a few other stretch stitches, so I'll have to experiment). I even figured out how to set up and thread a twin needle, which wasn't expressly in my machine's manual - I used that to hem the neckline and arms and hem. The actual stitching felt weirdly slow, until I realized that's because it was - the stretch stitch just takes longer to stitch the same length than a regular stitch.

[ETA: the pattern is Colette Moneta. Forgot to mention that!] I didn't bother doing an FBA (the blessing of stretchy fabrics and a pattern that's drafted for a C cup instead of the normal B), but I did add a little length to the front bodice, and did my regular sway back adjustment on the back. It's still a little low in the back waist, so I took another 1/2 " off the pattern for next time. (Looking at the side photo, I might want to add that 1/2" back on to the skirt at the back, hmm.) And there probably will be a next time - despite not loving sewing with stretch fabric, I did like the end result (dresses with sleeves and pockets, hooray!), and I'm sure I'll make it again. And once I figure out the world of knit fabrics, I have a few other patterns lying around to try.