Indigo Mouse

Yay! It’s the post you’ve all been waiting for! Okay, it’s the post I’ve been waiting for. I finally finished my Macaron Dress! I actually finished it last Wednesday, but I’ve been waiting all this time for a slip short enough to wear with it that I ordered online, and it finally came. I celebrated my finished dress with some new shoes too. Of course today it was pouring rain, but I didn’t let that stop me from the long awaited FO post.

I cut out the pieces for this dress exactly a month ago, and I have very little sewing time, so someone without a kidlet could probably easily knock this out in a weekend. I will definitely sew this pattern again–it was fun, it turned out cute, and I got lots of compliments at work today. Also, with the invisible zipper, lined sleeves, and blind hem, it doesn’t feel like I’m wearing something homemade, which is always a sensitive point for me.

Here’s a less-flattering side view of the dress, which shows the cute sleeves well, and might be useful for someone else sewing it:

When I make this again, I will lengthen it by about 2 inches, as this is too short for me to wear comfortably without tights. The blind hem really could have been thicker at the bottom too. As you can see a little from the photo above, the contrast band actually hits me about 1-2 inches above my natural waist. I think it’s designed to be like this, but I think it would be more flattering (and longer) if I extend the bodice pieces to be longer in the waist. I would make the darts shorter to accommodate the lower waist.

Pattern notes for those making this dress:
-The front contrast bodice piece seems to be too narrow for the main fabric bodice piece to match correctly. This was true for my muslin, so I added 1/2 an inch on each side of the pattern piece in this version, and it fit much better.
-There is a small error on one of the pattern pieces, as it says to use contrast fabric instead of main fabric. The cutting diagrams in the pattern are correct though.

All in all, I am really pleased with my successful re-entry into sewing clothing for myself. I’m glad that you guys talked me into the orange shot fabric with butterflies too!

I hate writing blog posts when I haven’t kept up on the blogs I read. I feel like I’m in my own little world totally disconnected to what is going on in the craft blogosphere. I’ve kept up with sewing blogs a little bit because that’s related to my job, but I’ve not a clue what’s going on in the knitting realm. I think it’s the Olympics now (I don’t have network TV either), so I imagine there’s lot of fun knitting-related challenges, which I never managed to participate in before, so that’s nothing new.

Anyway, I have been knitting. I started this cute dress for Alice, but it’s with a new spring Knit Picks yarn, so I can’t show my progress on that yet.

After I finish the dress, I’m planning on the Vine Yoke Cardigan with another new yarn.

I’m a little hesitant about it though. I love the way it looks in the photos, and the construction seems fun, but there are some notes about the fit on Ravelry that give me pause. Apparently the garter stitch grows considerably, so people are making these with a ridiculous amount of negative ease. Hmm. Anyone have experience with this kind of sweater? I’m feeling sweater shy from my last disaster. Alternately, anyone have suggestions for a cute spring/fall sweater that would be good in worsted weight cotton? I am really digging the vest/short sleeve sweater layering look lately. There were a couple of nice looking vests/tops in the latest Knitscene, though they all had button fronts like the Vine Yoke sweater.

The button fronts also make me hesitate because I like negative ease, and in my experience buttons gap or don’t close with negative ease.

On a side note: Is it just me or is Knitscene much more appealing than Interweave Knits lately?

Now that I’ve rambled on and on about random knitting stuff, I’ll show you what I originally wanted to talk about. A few weeks ago some kind relatives took our old oak bookcases off of our hands, so I got to replace them with new ones from IKEA. I got a narrow Billy unit with a glass lower door to keep Alice out of my craft stuff and hooked a CD organizer to it to hold my thread.

The best part is that this aluminum framed glass door allows you to put something flat between the backing and the glass for decoration. I jumped at the chance to show off a large print focal fabric that I love and bought on impulse. The CD shelves are perfect for thread, though unfortunately only the top half of it is useful, as my tall walking toddler can reach really high. It’s worth it though because I love being able to see all my thread out in the open. So pretty!

My wonky log cabin blocks are coming along swimmingly. I finished the first eight blocks. Now I need to measure the wall on which I plan to hang the quilt to figure out how many more blocks I’ll need to make. I put up some white flannel over my sewing table for a design wall, so I could audition block layouts. I still can’t decide if I want to frame them with white sashing, or join them with no sashing. (The colors aren’t quite that bright–my camera was struggling with those oranges in the weird winter light.)

With the white space in between (above), each block is like an individual piece of art. Without the sashing (below) the wonky blocks interact and create a lot of movement in the overall quilt. Any votes? (Mom, I know you suggested black sashing, but we just bought an almost black bedroom set, so I think that would be too much dark color in the room.)

When I started these blocks, intentionally didn’t do all of them at once because I planned to incorporate some Connecting Threads fabric collections that I knew were upcoming. Now they’ve finally arrived. I just love these brights! The top row is a bunch of fat quarters from the new Sip of Summer collection, and the bottom row is from Cheep Talk.

So fun!

While I muse on the wonky log cabin quilt, I’m also still considering my options for the Macaron Dress. I’ve picked out the top fabric, but I can’t decide between an orange Kaffe Fasset Shot Cotton or a brown lightweight corduroy for the bottom. The corduroy seems like the safe choice, but the combo with the orange is so fun.

Would it be totally crazy to wear a handmade dress made with butterfly fabric on top and orange fabric on the bottom? I’m thinking I’ll use the corduroy no matter what at some point–it’s just a matter of if it goes with the butterfly print or not. Oh, and I picked out some orange piping for the bodice and waistband accents. Oh, piping, how I love you so.

2009 was my least productive crafting year, not just in total number of projects completed, but in projects that turned out well. No big surprise, really, seeing as how much my time was limited and my attention divided. What surprised me though is how much I actually changed as a crafter. Before motherhood, I never understood the crafters who didn’t want to think about their projects–who just wanted to sit and knit miles of stockinette and follow a pattern to a tee. I used to love planning projects, making modifications, and figuring things out for myself. Now I just don’t have time for all that. I can get in some rows of knitting while riding in the car on a trip to Costco or Babies ‘R’ Us or while sitting in a meeting at work, but that’s about it. Those environments aren’t particularly conducive to actually applying brainpower to the project. The best evidence of this is with my most recent finished sweater (Ravelry details). Yep, I finally finished it–four months after I started.

As you can see, this is not a flattering or very wearable sweater. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but I know it isn’t getting any rotation into my wardrobe. As I was knitting it, there were all kinds of red flags that were popping up along the way. Old me would have stopped and addressed the issues as they came up. New me just kept following the pattern because I didn’t have the time to stop and rework it. It’s very easy to get upset when projects don’t turn out because of how limited my time is, but I’ve decided to remain positive on this one. I’m going to borrow Peacock Chic’s FO format this time because it really works on this one:

THE GOOD:
- I tried out Mary Scott Huff’s steeked sleeves technique and loved it.
- The yarn was a pleasure to work with, and I did end up liking the stripe pattern.
- The pattern directions were clear, especially the tubular cast on and bind off directions–two techniques I’d never done.
- I had something mindless to knit and keep my lap warm all fall.
- This was my first pieced sweater, and while I don’t like how hard it is to judge fit, I do actually like seaming. Go ahead and call me crazy.
- I learned how to knit ribbing continental style, which made it much less tedious.

THE BAD:
- The body of the sweater is about 2 inches too short to be worn comfortably.
- The armholes of the sweater are too shallow, so the shoulders end up much too wide.
- Because it was pieced and sewn together, there is no way I am ripping it out and redoing it.

THE UGLY:
- Because of the wide shoulders and the placement of the yellow stripe at top, I look like a linebacker.
- There is no shirt I could wear underneath that would look good because of how the sweater wants to fall off my shoulders.

So there you have it. I’m going to count this as a sweater fail, but as a entertainment value success. I learned lots of great techniques and enjoyed working with some lovely yarn. Maybe I should rename this the Pollyanna sweater.

Since getting back into sewing this past couple of years, I’ve noticed that there’s tons of cute baby patterns, toy patterns, and home decor patterns, but I can never find good clothing patterns for me–especially using cotton fabric as opposed to knits. As an extreme hourglass, most patterns don’t have enough shaping to them to be feasible. Recently, however, I discovered the Portland clothing designer Sarai Mitnick and her new line of Colette Patterns. So perfect! Her patterns have that retro flare that I love with shaping for curves, and they use the fabrics that I want to sew with.

I decided that I had to try one of the Colette Patterns, so I picked the Macaron Dress and promptly drove down to Bolt in the pouring rain with a baby in tow to get the pattern locally (and browse their fabric, since I’d never been there). What a fantastic little shop! I had a terrible time picking out which fabric I wanted for the dress. I’m still not sure about what I ultimately picked (I’m too lazy to go take a photo of it). I don’t know why I can pick out fabric for quilts, baby clothes, etc so easily but freeze up creatively when it comes to clothing for myself.

Anyway, after my clothing sewing disaster with the Juliet tunic, I got smart and decided to do a muslin this time, using some cotton fabric I had yards of leftover from an even older sewing disaster (do we sense a theme?). It took me several weekends, but I am so glad I did it. Not only did I discover what I think is an error in the pattern template, but after trying it on, I think I’m going to skip the pockets. They are cleverly concealed in the pleats, which is cool, but it means the pleat has to go down quite a ways and my short waist and wide hips need the room sooner. So it will be shorter pleats for me. Here’s a photo of the muslin on my dress form (It actually looks better on me, but I was not about to show a photo of me wearing it, since it’s skin colored fabric and there’s a big slit in the side where the invisible zipper will go–this isn’t that kind of blog!)

Overall I’m very pleased with the pattern. It’s very nicely written and presented, and I’m looking forward to making the real version with my fancy fabric. Oh, I almost forgot: The muslin was a good excuse to try using pattern weights and cutting out the fabric with a rotary cutter. Long ago when I learned to sew, it was all about pinning the pattern to the fabric and cutting with scissors, which was always puckery and slow for me. The rotary/pattern weights method is awesome! So much faster and more precise.

I was going to buy pattern weights, but when I saw how much they cost ($2.50 each), I decided to make my own using some big flat pieces of metal from the rebar section at Home Depot and hot glueing that no-skid drawer liner stuff to them. Each weight cost about half of what a commercial pattern weight costs. Cha-ching!