Monthly Archives: December 2010

pocket pencilskirt in progress

I have a project in progress! My approach to my very loosely organized and ongoing stashbusting project is to figure out how to get the best use possible from a piece of fabric. What is the largest kind of garment I can make with the fabric available? What is the fabric suitable for?

The fabric-scrap I’m working with now is from a length of dark wool suiting fabric I have. I’ve already made a dress from this fabric (which I haven’t blogged about – yet!), and there really isn’t much left:

See the bodice cutout at the bottom?

I think the piece is 60″ wide, and only perhaps 25″ long at the shortest point. So there are some serious limitations in making this skirt! In the picture I laid out the first draft of the pattern I made, moving the pieces around and allowing for all the “cut 2″ and “cut on fold” pieces.

When I decided a skirt was the best use with this fabric, I realized it needed to be in many pieces to have as much flexibility as possible, moving pieces around and making them all fit on my fabric piece. I saw a skirt in a Threads magazine issue that served as inspiration, since it had a yoke waistband, vertical panels, and slanted pockets built into the construction. I drafted a pattern and crossed my fingers it would all fit in my piece of fabric! Next I sewed up a very quick muslin to check the fit.


(click for larger images)

Taking decent fitting pictures is a lot harder than I thought! And the fitting issues I noticed aren’t showing up nearly as well as I was experiencing with the muslin on. I’ll just fill you in (and help myself remember what I decided on!):

  • The waistband will be shortened. It’s 3 1/2 ” wide now I think, and it hits in a very unflattering spot. I’m shaving off half an inch or so, and I think that’ll  do the trick.
  • Something weird is going on where the yoke meets the skirt in the back. My swayback might be part of the problem, but I think the width of the skirt and the yoke is just too big. I’ll be slashing and overlapping the yoke to reduce the width there, and pinch the seams of the skirt the same amount.
  • The hip area feels a little tight in the back, so I’ll add a little ease just across the hips – about 1/8″ at each of the four seams in the back.
  • The pockets are way to low. I’ll bring them up to within a couple of inches of the yoke waistband.

I find the limitations of this stashbusting project both challenging and fun – but it does come with drawbacks. In this particular project,  since there is a very physical limit to how long the patternpieces for this skirt can be, I need to make compromises in the design, and patternmaking, and construction of the skirt. I’ll have to make a really narrow hem instead of folding it up, and also have a slightly shorter skirt than I would choose if I had all the fabric in the world.

I’m planning on adding a lining; I’m pretty sure I have enough lying around somewhere. I’ll just use the same patternpieces but add some ease, and shorten the length so it doesn’t show at the bottom. I might even add some trim at the lining hem like Gertie (link and link) and Tasia have done on some of their garments. I have some ribbon I want to use for this project, and I was thinking at the waistband, or at the lining hem. The ribbon came around a birthday present from a friend, but I thought it could make a nice little touch on the inside of the skirt!

mmmm, new fabrics

There hasn’t been a lack of fabric and yarn purchases lately, but not all of it has been for me. These lovelies however, are all mine…

I bought the bottom two fabrics for my pants-project, which I have to admit hasn’t made much progress.. yet! I’m waiting for a chunk of available time to take my existing pair apart, but I have gotten my hands on some fabric I intend to make pants of! There is a dark denim that I’m hoping will fade to something closer to grey than blue, and a fine-waled dark brown-grey corduroy. It’s fairly thin however, and it might not be as suitable for pants as I thought it would be when I bought it. Fear not! I’m pretty sure I can find something to make with it! It’s so soft and pretty…

The yellow dupioni is really more muddy acid green in real life – it’s like navy or true red I guess; really hard to photograph. I only got myself a half yard of this, but it should make yards upon yards of bias strips. After the sewing techniques workshop I took a little while back, I’m completely in love with bias strips and what they can be used for, and I have bound seams, hong-kong hems, piping, and lots more in mind! Imagine finishing off the inside of a skirt with a pop of shimmery yellow-green silk dupioni? Fun!

Lastly, my splurge… There was a fabric rep at my school recently, and we were able to order some fabrics usually only available wholesale to designers. This richly colored silk/cotton blend just jumped out amongst the rest, begging to come home with me and be turned into the best summer dress ever. And that’s the latest addition on my sewing list: The Best Summer Dress Ever. Oh! That fabric is so pretty!

(Denim and corduroy from Fishman’s Fabrics, and silk dupioni from Vogue Fabrics, both in Chicago)

on granola, bread, and ‘taking what one has’

There is a saying in Norwegian that goes like this: “man tager hvad man haver” – one takes what one has. Though, if it’s a proper saying is perhaps debatable. The origin is from a book on housekeeping, published in the mid-1800s by one Hanna Olava Winsnes. She ran a large household, and her book covered everything from husbandry, butchering, and baking, to cooking soap and making candles. The line of “taking what one has” seems perfectly in line with her belief s in the importance of good planning, and making the best use of the available raw materials.

It is also a saying that, while perhaps not directly shaping my beliefs in sustainable consumption and deep desire to get good use out of what is in my hands, has certainly encouraged it – again and again.

In a more tangible way, it affects my cooking and baking. I find it much easier to make meals based on whatever I have lying around, and baking is the perfect place to use what I happen to have on hand. Bread and granola are two things I make on a regular basis, and where the ingredients differ with the contents of my cupboards.

This is what I had for bread-making one day:

3 cups of warm water
Packet of yeast, pre-proofed with ½ cup warm, sugery water
A dash of oil
A dash of salt
Whole and white flour
***
A couple of handfuls of oats
Handful of potato starch
Handful of wheat germ
A dash of milk

Other things that would work: seeds of any kind, such as sunflower seeds or flax seeds, uncooked brown rice (yes really!), flat beer.

I wouldn’t call this a bread recipe as much as a guide – kind of in the way that a lot of Elizabeth Zimmerman knitting patterns aren’t really patterns, but more so a hand to hold. While bread truly isn’t hard to make, there are a lot of variables in baking due to elevation, humidity, oven peculiarities, etc, so bread-making usually involves some trial and error before you figure out what works the best.

So! Proof the yeast, dump the water, oil and salt in a large mixing bowl. Dump the non-flour extras into the water, add whole wheat flour until the dough is like a thick soup. Add white flour and knead until the dough is firm and doesn’t stick any more.

Let rise in a warm-ish spot for 30-60 minutes, knead and place in flour-dusted bread-pans. Let rise again for 30-60 minutes, and bake for 40ish minutes at 400° F (200°C). The breads should slide out of the pans, if they don’t, let them bake a little longer.

j
*        *        *

Similarly, granola bars are not hard to make. I find them particularly satisfying to whip up because they are much cheaper than buying them in the store, but also because they are so forgiving in terms of ingredients. They practically beg to make use of whatever you can find in your cupboards! I use this recipe on allrecipes.com, but my simplified version reads something like this: 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk, 3 cups of oats, 3 ½ cups of other stuff.

This time around, this is what I had lying around:

3 cups oats
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup sunflower seeds & honeycake
1 cup raisins
½ cup white chocolate chips

Other things that would work: nuts, flaxseeds, cranberries (dried or fresh), dried fruit, wheat germ.

Mix all the dry ingredients together, add the condensed milk. Spread out in a greased 9 X 13- ish inch pan, and bake for 20-25 min at 350° F (175 ° C).

Use what you have, and happy baking!

my traveling scarf

Some people like to call it the shifting sands scarf, that is true, but I prefer “my traveling scarf” – this has been my travel-knitting project ever since I cast on last summer.

For a year and a half, this growing sand-dune has been pulled out of my bag on airplanes, buses, on trains of all kinds and sizes – in airports, and in cars. It’s been a good travel companion; a pattern that is easy enough to memorize, but still involved enough to keep me somewhat occupied. It was also satisfying to see it grow, and it was easy to roll up to a manageable size while I was working on it.

The yarn came from the everlasting thrifted Eddie Bauer sweater, but this project actually utilized the very last scraps of it! This was my intention for the scarf too – since I could just keep going until I ran out of yarn.

Other than the interesting texture, I love that this scarf can be worked up in any yarn, with any needles, and to any length – with successful results. In addition to being a versatile pattern, it’s also well written. The scarf has, by the designers calculations, thousands of cables. Which actually is as easy as slipping stitches if you follow her wonderful tutorial on cabling without cable-needles!

I’ve never been terribly interested in cables, which I suspect has a little something to do with not being terribly interested in most “extras” – which holds true both in knitting, sewing, and most other aspects of my life. Hence, no cable-needles have ever touched my hands. With this technique in my arsenal however, I might just attempt a more traditional cabled project after all! Oh, and I’m pretty sure there are more shifting sands in my future. Pretty sure!


(Blog pattern here, ravelry link here. All photos by the boy.)